Cosmopolitan Vs. Multi-culture

After several days’ trip around Vancouver, from downtown to Metro city, from Fraser to China town, I was really impressive to find how diverse the ethnics and cultures are here in Vancouver. You can probably have the bubble tea originated from Taiwan, take your lunch at Phnom Penh restaurant in China Town, pass by the Vietnam neighborhood and order Indian style Chinese food for dinner. The experiences and transformation can be done within one day and I do not need to travel around the world to immerse in different cultures. When people read about this description, they probably will conclude that this city is very cosmopolitan since it is very culture-diverse or multi-cultural.

Chinese restaurant in China Town, photoed on 21st May, 2010

However, is multi-culture equal to cosmopolitanism? Are we able to use same criteria to scale the Cape Town or New Orleans as cosmopolitans?

Multi-culture is an existence state of culture which has been identified in many cities around the world. However, quite a few of them are resulted from historical reason like imperial occupation, mass migration due to black slave traffic or early mass migration. This contributes to the mixture of different cultures and ethnics in different continents where South Africa, Jamaica and Australian cities are some examples. I refer this kind of multi-culture to be static sometimes since the mixture of cultures has been done for a long time and the new hybrid culture may not be that embracing to any new culture. The state of multi-culture is not probable to adjust itself when facing new comers. This attitude towards a new culture and ethnical group is just opposed to the dynamic character of a cosmopolitan city which is more tolerant and embraced. This is what people expect from the cosmopolitan cities like New York and Paris.

Cambodian style exotic restaurant in China Town, photoed on 21st May, 2010

After the settling of a culture in a city, new problem is raised as in what forms the numerous cultures should be preserved or exist to contribute to the cosmopolitanism of a city. Should the cultures segregated from each other and preserve their authenticity or essence of each culture like Vancouver or Singapore where you can see the distinction of cultures? Or should they merged and integrated into a new hybrid culture like what happened in Jamaica and New Orleans where black cultures are far more distinguished from their origins? If the criterion of cosmopolitan about accessibility to different cultural experiences and knowledge holds, Jamaica and New Orleans are out of the cosmopolitan list even though their cultures are originated from multiple cultures but none of them are able to provide authentic knowledge and experience of their parental cultures.

Canadian Cactus cafe on Granville Street, photoed on 19th May, 2010

Then if a cosmopolitan city requires the coexistence and preservation of multi-culture, is any multi-culture composition fulfilling the cosmopolitan requirement? For example, Vancouver has a rich emigrant culture of early European, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and other Asian cultures while Singapore is composed of Indian, Chinese and Malay cultures. If we define the extent of cosmopolitan based on the region which the culture located, Singapore is more regional-politan which the diversity of cultures is more constrained in the South-East Asia and South Asia regions. Furthermore, its location and influence within that region makes Singapore more like a Southeast Asian hub rather than cosmopolitan city. In contrast, New York and Paris have absorbed the cultures and people from a more global scale like Middle East and Eastern Europe which make them seem to be more globalized. Or Vancouver which is located in North American concentrates numerous Asian cultures thousands miles from here may be considered to have more cosmopolitan characters than Singapore. This leads to the question about cosmopolitanism of a city or place, do location and composition of cultures matter? A consensus upon this question will shed some light the debate on which is more cosmopolitan between Vancouver and Singapore.

Southern American style BBQ house in downtown, photoed on 18th May, 2010

P.S.: the photos are less relevant to the content of this journal. I just want to present the diverse side and cosmopolitan side of Vancouver from the food culture side. That partially proves the consumption character of cosmopolitan.