Something that increasingly troubles me is the common supposition that urbanites are cosmopolitan by virtue of being urbanites. Not only does that bias attribute what in modern eyes is a morally desirable quality to the mere experience of living in densely populated areas, it also assigns the negative quality of parochialism to non-urbanites.The thing is, the line between urban and rural is no longer as clear as before, and therefore the association between urbanity and cosmopolitanism – a tie that...
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is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His latest book is Signals in the Noise: Notes on Penang, Malaysia and the World (Singapore: Faction Press) Homepage: wikibeng.com.