The fragmented or cosmopolitan metropolis?

The typical cultural form of the metropolis is cosmopolitanism, an exposure to a mix of many kinds of cul- tural and social frames of reference, thanks to which the individual has the simultaneous experience of both proximity and distance. [...] Canadian cities had a relatively low profile in these conversations until the estab- lishment of the Metropolis network,2 funded by the Canadian government, which has from the outset linked the question of the metropolis to that of immigration (for which Canada had already earned a sound reputation thanks to its early adoption of the multi- cultural model). [...] Thus, since the merger of all 28 municipalities of the island of Montréal in 2002 (and the subsequent de-merger of 15 of them), almost every one of the 17 boroughs that make up the new city of Montréal is larger than what we might call a sociological neighbourhood. [...] However, a few pockets of immigrants were in the process of laying the foundations of a new geography of immigration that would literally and figuratively colour the culture of the city. [...] African-Americans who, like the Chinese, arrived in Montréal in the wake of the expansion of the North American railway system settled in Little Burgundy in the south-west of the city, not far from the city centre.