Separation or integration: on evolution of the spatial model of the multinational city

Resumen

The traditional model of the multinational city, which was based on the harmonious coexistence of separated ethnic residential districts and common multinational public areas, where the exchange of services and goods took place, gives way to the contemporary model, based on the principles of dispersion and segmentation. In the postmodern city virtual space has increasingly becoming a platform of exchange: numerous economic, social and cultural functions are performed through the ubiquitous electronic communications. Public space, symbolic for the European concept of the city, is losing many of its previous functions in favour of the Internet. The dispersion of immigrants in the structure of the multinational city is conducive to the emergence of an attractive, kaleidoscopic and multicultural urban organism, their separation in ethnic ghettos results in intensification of pathologies.