A Tale of Two Cities: Framing urban diversity as content curation in super- diverse London and Toronto

In major cities across the world policy-makers are searching for new ways to represent and govern their increasingly diverse populations. In this paper we analyse the ways in which authorities in two global cities, London and Toronto, have drawn on corporate, public management, strategies as their principal mode of diversity governance. In both we see a shift in policy making as a conscious attempt to reframe and re-imagine cities as corporate-like structures that can be conceptualised, represented, and managed through the lens of diversity management. In both cities specific representations of the city and its populations are curated to fulfil wider policy objectives. City governments present both as iconic centres of diversity, super-diversity or hyper-diversity, that embody and represent an era of progressive globalisation and new forms of contemporary cosmopolitan living. The presence of diversity is celebrated and seen a key component of ‘success agendas’. This paper is based on empirical evidence derived from a policy-oriented research project in both cities. Policy analysis and critical discourse analysis are conducted in both cities on the basis of review of policy documents at national, local and community scales, and interviews with policy makers. The paper first frames diversity as a technology of description, where we explain how diversity has become a curation strategy in public management within the framework of growing mobility of management frameworks and shifts in framing diversity in urban policies. We will then provide a comparative analysis of London and Toronto.


Introduction
In major cities across the world policy-makers are searching for new ways to represent and govern their increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan populations. An intense and polarised academic and political debate has emerged. Some view the growth of diversity as a threat to place cohesion and collective identities and economic well-being (Goodhart 2017). Governments, it is argued, at multiple scales should work to limit diversity and focus on meeting the needs of local population groups. Others argue, conversely, that new forms of inclusive (urban) cosmopolitanism are emerging and that this is stimulating dynamic economic growth and new forms of socio-cultural vibrancy, inclusiveness, and urban vitality (Borén & Young 2013). What both groups of writers agree on is that the growth of sociocultural and economic diversity is presenting new challenges for the governance models that have been used to plan for the growth of cities and the role and structure of welfare states. During the 1990s and 2000s Public Management [PM] frameworks have expanded, within which public welfare agencies have increasingly looked to private sector practices and systems-management models to govern and implement social policy programmes. The growth of diversity has created new challenges for such approaches as the demands of populations have become more varied and complex.
In this paper we comparatively analyse the ways in which authorities in two global cities, London and Toronto, have sought to navigate a policy path to meet these new challenges. In both we see the implementation of reformed, but more intense, PM approaches being rolled-out and a conscious attempt to reframe and re-imagine cities and their diverse populations as corporate-like structures. By drawing on private sector narratives this approach, we show, has required the mobilisation of specific and carefully selective curations of diversity and its role in generating both economic competitiveness and an enhanced cosmopolitanism. These curations view the presence of diversity as something to be made visible, celebrated and valued. Moreover, they seek to marginalise broader concerns and conflicts over the impacts of demographic change and direct attention towards more consensual cultural narratives such as 'vibrancy', global city 'branding' and enhanced economic performance. Such policy fields are relatively safe in political terms. They are highly instrumental and focus on 'collective benefits' and the contributions that diversity makes to economic growth and cultural life.
In our case study cities, the curation of 'diversity' has therefore been brought into being as a vehicle for both describing new 'realities' and generating managerial techniques and technologies to govern them within the frame of a success agenda. Moreover, diversity discourses can be seen as a new corporatized version of cosmopolitanism, that enables policy-makers to bypass structural issues such racism and inequalities, and instead, focus on operational terminologies over the presence or absence 'of diversity' amongst population groups and labour markets (Bhanot 2015). This shift displays a form of bridging institutional entrepreneurship, which, according to management literature, allows combining aspects of established institutional logics to create new forms of hybrid logics (Tracey et al. 2011). From this point of view, we argue that while diversity is curated as a public celebration through new forms of hybrid logics, a PM approach is deployed to allow policy makers to downplay issues like growing inequality, polarization and poverty along racial and ethnic lines in each city; or to put selective emphasises on other social phenomena. In short, it represents the extension of managerial systems theory to the governance of cities and urban populations in which more challenging policy questions concerning, for instance, the impacts of migration on housing, employment, and local politics remain firmly off mainstream political agendas and become residualised.
The discussion draws on a major international research project to develop a comparative analysis of the relationships between urban policy agendas and content curating policy discourses in London and Toronto, two cities in which policy-makers have made strident claims over their 'successes' in managing and promoting beneficial forms of sociocultural diversity. They provide a powerful contrast and comparison for this article. Both have undergone structural quantitative and qualitative demographic changes since the 1980s. City authorities have sought to curate notions of diversity as core components of their inward investment and economic development strategies. The UK and Canada have also been at the forefront of PM reforms since the 1980s and more recently have adopted post financial crisis agendas that are designed to boost growth and inward investment into their built environments. Our selection of case studies and our intensive research methods were designed to bring out the comparable policy trajectories evident in both cities, while also addressing specific place-based contextual factors that influence implementation (Peters & Fontaine 2020). We show that in both, the corporatisation of urban diversity seeks to depoliticise many of the contested aspects of demographic and socio-cultural change, and has met with limited success. On a wider canvas we use the research to reflect on the ways in which PM agendas of the 1980s and 90s are expanding into the governance of new fields of social policy, such as those relating to diversity and its effects. Such agendas are premised on top-down models of governing that lack contextual awareness and conceive of policy problems and solutions as generic projects to be identified and tackled through the application of abstract instruments (Lascoumbes & Le Galès 2012).

Curation
Urban planning and social policy have long been concerned with fundamental questions over diversity, cosmopolitanism and the spatial configuration of different groups of citizens and communities. During the 1990s and 2000s various terms were used in many EU cities to promote multi-cultural visions and pluralist forms of thinking that saw diversity as something 'permanent' and to be welcomed (Borén & Young 2013). Specific policy interventions were called upon to support different needs, with diversity presented as a natural consequence of the demographic changes and economic realities brought into being by heightened globalisation. The most influential early writings on the topic in the 2000s were produced by the anthropologist Steve Vertovec (2007; and his conceptualisation of 'super-diversity' that addressed the shifting form and character of complexifying urban diversity especially in relation to migration, and offered an operational frame of analysis (see also Wessendorf 2013). Again, reflecting on the complexity of diversity conceptualizations, some others incorporated intersectionality (Foner et al. 2019;McCall 2005), seeking to move beyond the traditional focus on ethnicity or class. Looking from a more governance-oriented perspective, a hyper-diversity approach emphasized the possibility of various identities acting simultaneously in individuals, emphasising the importance of capturing dynamics and patterns of behaviour, lifestyles, and activities in the life cycle of individuals through community-oriented policy framings . While these discussions provided influential frameworks of analysis, a combination of economic and political crises during the 2010s has re-shaped the landscape of European migration politics and has moved the scholarly focus from urban diversity and identity towards broader questions of governance, (neo-liberal) welfare reform and growing inequalities (Raco & Taşan-Kok 2019).
Optimistic cosmopolitan writers saw growing diversity as a direct challenge to traditional, nationally-organised forms of citizenship and identity (see Delanty 2006;Held 2006). For a group of post-political writers and thinkers the future seemed to be inexorably associated with multi-culturalism and the expansion of progressive politics (Giddens 1994). Governments and populations had little alternative but to accept that globalisation was here to stay, and that growing urban diversity was a core component of it. In Rancière's (2010) terms, a new Millennial thinking dominated imaginations in which the continued existence of racism, prejudice, and conflict in cities became elided with the 'backwardness' of specific interests and the failure of sections of society to understand the pervasiveness of the new realities unfolding around them (Goodhart 2017).
At the same time, the structures of urban governance in many western cities, especially in the UK and North America, were being systematically re-configured by systems-led public management theories and practices (Clarke & Newman 2012). All public bodies became subject to corporate systems-approaches and the extension of target cultures and private sector practices. These approaches were principally developed during the 1950s in the fields of organisational studies and management sciences and their transfer to the public sector has been a complex and contested process (Mirowski 2002;Thrift 2005). They represent an attempt to synthesise and analyse the breaking down of governance problems and challenges into logical and effective compartmentalisations and hierarchical structures of order (Ackoff 1990;Kast & Rosenzweig 1972). Under PM reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, public institutions responsible for planning and urban policy were required to re-imagine themselves as corporate-like, private sector agencies delivering services to citizen-as-consumers, defined through 'a narrow conception of the consumer, imagined in neoliberal terms as a rational self-maximising economic individual' (Bevir & Trentmann 2007, p.1). Through the application of such practices and techniques, governance processes, it was argued, would become more efficient and effective and better able to deal with the day-to-day challenges facing governing authorities (Pierre 1999).
However, the growth of cosmopolitanism and diversity poses a significant, yet underresearched, challenge to these PM models. The presence of citizens with a broader range of material needs and socio-cultural outlooks has required the introduction of new systems and approaches, if management reforms are to be effective and seen to be legitimate. During the 2000s policy makers and planners have therefore increasingly looked to private sector models of 'diversity management' for solutions to the growing challenges that they face. The term first emerged in the US corporate management textbooks of the 1980s and 1990s and was used in that context to highlight the advantages that could accrue to employers that sought out more diverse teams of employees and managers (Lauring 2009).
There are two elements that are particularly significant for our discussion. First, diversity management adopts a supply-side perspective with the claim that businesses obtain a competitive advantage by encouraging greater diversity within their workforces (see Rose & Miller 2010;Swan 2010;Syrett & Sepulveda 2012). Contemporary management texts call on firms to re-shape their recruitment practices to take account of the practical consequence that people from different cultural backgrounds may have different belief structures, priorities, perceptions, assumptions about future events, beliefs about the role of information, and information-processing methods (das Neves & Melé 2013). Global management consultancies such as McKinsey's (2015) have produced publications including Why Diversity Matters to implore their client companies to establish 'talent pipelines' to manage the diversity of their workforces: 'companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians' (p.3).
Second, managerial narratives have also focused on demand-side factors and meeting the needs of citizens-as-customers. Demands, it is argued, are becoming increasingly linked to cultural and social diversification and by establishing new forms of diversity awareness, companies are able to vary their approaches to management and open up more successful 'customer-focused' outlooks. A more visibly diverse workforce also establishes new possibilities for corporate branding and the explicit promotion of a corporate social responsibility agenda. Influential texts such as Gundling and Zanchettin's (2011) Global Diversity, set out a series of measures to help managers navigate increasingly complex markets consisting of diverse consumers. It claims that 'the consistent winners in the marketplace are firms offering products adapt to fit local variations in needs and tastes that are presented by people who know how to use the buyer's own language' (pp. 2-3).
It is in this context that reformed PM theorisations and practices are emerging founded on both a re-assertion of systems theories of management and the creation new frames of reference around the managerial concept of content curation, both of which are being adopted from the private sector. The rise of optimistic, managerial, and de-politicised visions of diversity have become increasingly influential for policy-makers, particularly in global cities, with firms such as PWC and other consultancies publishing good practice guides for how to govern and manage change. In framing cities as 'diverse' or 'cosmopolitan', policy-makers are able to develop a managerial focus around which to organise systems, policies, and projects. Diverse cities can be re-imagined and governed as corporations, that are simultaneously diverse and bounded entities. The managerial practices surrounding 'content curation' have played a growing role, particularly in the wake of growing economically and culturally diverse populations. In the same way that domains such as 'the economy' are brought into existence through the use of economic theories (cf. Rose & Miller 2010), so curations such as 'urban diversity' are being used to generate representations of urban populations and convert them into manageable spaces of governance for, and to whom, PM systems of governance can be applied. The emphasis on curation as taken from the private sector seems to address a number of governance problems simultaneously: meeting increasingly diverse social and cultural and welfare needs; promoting economic growth; and generating new forms of engagement and inclusivity. While these policy frames are presented as inclusive and empowering, the real challenges of responding to the diverse claims of increasingly complex urban societies are hidden behind them.
Curations do not simply describe places and populations but play a role in bringing them into existence, by creating objects and transforming them into 'realities', subject to governmental action. In corporate management, communication is an important aspect of the act of managing. Corporations manufacture content of communications by the official communicators (corporate curators) in diverse ways but the main idea is to push the essence of the company strategy to the public and employees with a 'content curation strategy'. By following these strategies large corporations communicate their products through interactive and collaborative methods with their customers and employees, and create a perception that diverse voices are heard in the strategy making process. In this way, content curation in corporate terms functions in the form of a technology of representation (Ahmed 2012), which is deployed to frame imaginations and visualisations of cities. Content curation is about framing a relevant content and then sharing or presenting it to audiences in a targeted and optimised way. In corporate management, the quality of the product is defined on the basis of the curated content (ibid.) and while much of the literature on place-marketing examines how 'almost all major cities now apply these [marketing and branding] strategies to improve their image' (Boisen et al. 2018, p. 1), there is less emphasis on how specific and selective curations of diversity are developed and operationalised.
However, the intensification of PM systems through forms of curation generate new tensions in the governance of contemporary cities. Rather than accepting that modern populations generate complex demands that could act as a source of conflict, there is a danger that a post-political managerialism acts to 'to simplify the world, attempting to gain for itself the powers of expertise by resolving it into simple forces and oppositions' (Mitchell 2002, p. 34). Technical and managerial policy narratives can rapidly descend into simplified characterisations of the essential characteristics of groups of citizens and communities who have little say over how they are assigned and what these representations consist of. Lived places become spaces of governance in which 'institutions and rules appear separate from the supposedly material world they govern' (p. 8). Indeed, for critics such as Bauman (2013), managerial visions of diversity 'act as a catalyst triggering the production and selfperpetuation of difference, and the efforts to build a community around it' (p. 77). In some instances, the desire to present an 'accurate' picture of diversity, leads to 'recognition wars' between groups that require combatants to absolutise their differences (Bauman 2013). The result, as Michaels (2016, p. 33) notes is not only that 'the successes of the struggle against discrimination have failed to alleviate inequality, but that they have been compatible with a radical expansion of it'. A focus on tolerance and diversity legitimates neo-liberal capitalism 'because it is exploitation, not discrimination, that is the primary producer of inequality today' (p. 34). These material inequalities have expanded in almost every society despite decades of civil rights legislation and even within the corporate sector diversity narratives have co-evolved with management practices of downscaling and flexibilization, and have played a part in creating greater labour market inequalities (Zanoni & Janssens 2004).
In the next sections we draw on our case work in two diverse global cities, London and Toronto, to analyse the curations of diversity that have been deployed by public authorities and some of the managerial technologies that are used to implement these strategies. Our research consisted of three parts in both cities: a detailed critical discourse analysis of the core strategies and policy frameworks relating to diversity planning, social policy and economic development strategies; over 60 semi-structured interviews with practitioners, business representatives, civil society groups; and focus groups with key players. We divide the discussion into two parts to examine forms of curation that are designed for different audiences. In the first, we examine the externally-oriented curations, which are part of globally-focused PM competitiveness agendas that seek to build 'corporate identities' for the two cities, in ways similar to those deployed by private sector companies. The second section, conversely, covers the internally-oriented curations that are designed to play an important political role in reducing conflict over diversity and cosmopolitanism within the cities. Techniques of managerialism are used such as the selective curation of quantitative data metrics and an instrumental emphasis on the 'benefits' that diversity brings. Here we discuss how policy-makers curate public services in the cities are 'models' for private sector action and use diversity narratives to legitimate shape potentially controversial reforms. We show how curations of city governments as model employers have been introduced (a form of supply curation) along with a new emphasis on establishing responsive governance systems that are more 'in touch' with diverse populations (a form of demand curation). We begin by giving some context to contemporary policy challenges in both cities.

Managers
Toronto and London are amongst the best examples of a new generation of socially and culturally diverse global cities. In 2016 Toronto had an estimated population of about 2.81 million greater in its census metropolitan area (CMA). It is the most populous city in Canada and nearly half of its population is foreign-born. This gives Toronto the second-highest percentage of foreign-born residents of all world cities after Miami although, unlike Miami, it possesses no dominant culture or nationality, which also makes it one of the world's most ethnically diverse cities. Just under half (49%) of the population belong to a visible minority group (compared to 14% in 1981), and visible minorities are expected to hit a majority of 63% of the Toronto CMA population by the 2020s (Toronto Population, 2020). London has similarly been defined by writers such as as a city of 'super-diversity' (Vertovec 2007). The 2011 census revealed that out of a total population of 8.17 million, 2.6 million (31%) were born outside of the UK. Moreover, 55% of respondents defined themselves as other than White British (including both residents who hold a foreign passport and British citizens from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds). This proportion has risen from 31% in 1991. The city is home to 41% of all non-White British residents of England and Wales, to 37% of all residents born outside the UK and to 24% of all non-UK nationals.
Alongside this ethnic and cultural diversity, socio-economic inequalities have also expanded relentlessly in both cities in the wake of neo-liberal welfare reforms, economic change, and shifts in housing markets. Diversity has become associated with a growing divergence in life chances, opportunities, and incomes. As Douglass et al. (2012) argue, global cities have become increasingly associated with new forms of 'enclave urbanism' in which powerful elites live in exclusive and increasingly gated and gentrified parts of the city (Atkinson 2019). Dorling (2014) similarly draws on numerical evidence to show that inequalities in 'diverse' global cities are now higher than at any time since the Nineteenth Century. Despite London's overall economic vitality, 28% of the population live in households that are in poverty (after housing costs) compared with the UK figure of 22%, covering more than two million Londoners. Both cities are also in the grip of housing crises, particularly in relation to affordability (Jacobs & Manzi 2019).
Increasing numbers of citizens are finding it impossible to access housing and overcrowding has become a growing problem. So, while there has been a significant growth of socio-cultural diversity in both cities, this has gone hand-in-hand with growing inequalities and political conflicts. Similarly, Hulckhanski's (2007) work on Toronto clearly shows how the city is segregated along the lines of race and income, and how poverty has moved from the centre to the edges of the city. The proportion of low-income neighbourhoods went up from 19% in 1970 to 53% in 2005 and it has the highest rates of poverty and child poverty amongst Canada's 20 largest cities. The share of low-income households is 19%, which is significantly greater than in Canada (14.9%). Poverty and income segregation also have a strong racial and ethnic component. A 2018 Toronto Child & Family Poverty Report notes that 84% of Indigenous families with children live in poverty. Moreover, 33.3% of children from minority backgrounds in live in poverty, while this figure is much lower for other groups (15.1%).
Within this framework, in both cities ethnic diversity is the focus of attention, with less attention given to its intersections with growing material inequalities and power structures. However, as we demonstrate in the next section dominant policy narratives and instruments are moving in different directions, bypassing these challenges and focusing on less politically-divisive and carefully curated entrepreneurial notions of diversity and cosmopolitanism. We focus, in turn, on the externally-and internally-oriented forms of PM curation that are being mobilised.

Externally-oriented curations of diversity and cosmopolitanism
City governments in both London and Toronto have used selective curations of diversity as a means of promoting their cities to external audiences and to encourage externally-financed forms of economic growth. The presence of ethnic diversity takes centre-stage and takes on some of the 'work' given to the term in private sector managerial narratives. Most significantly, the diversity has been re-defined and commodified and acts as a cornerstone place-marketing tool to attract direct foreign investment and mobile consumers, such as tourists and students. It is used as a narrative to encourage investors and skilled workers to inmigrate in ways that go beyond the simplifications associated with decades of urban placemarketing. In both, direct references to 'creative class' agendas with the presence of sociocultural diversity elided with visions of competitive labour markets and used as a springboard to attract investment in high-tech and 'creative' industries. Diversity and openness are equated with a 'talent agenda', with policy-makers and economic development strategies openly drawing on the language and rhetoric associated with Millennial visions of open, global economies and new types of economic activity. Openness to a diversity of people, it is claimed, has allowed firms to attract workers at all levels, from the higher skilled professions to lower skilled workers, often at relatively little cost to employers. The promotion of diversity therefore brings social and economic policy objectives together, as the curation of a 'welcoming' city acts as magnet for further immigration.
In Toronto, for instance, dominant narratives of social policy are framed around the city's adopted motto of 'Diversity: Our Strength'. These curations apply not only to newcomers but to a wide range of groups and individuals, including: seniors; youth; women; LGBT -Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer; persons with disabilities; ethnic minorities; the homeless; and indigenous peoples (Ahmadi & Taşan-Kok 2013). The current Toronto Official Plan (2015) presents a vision for the city with 'diversity and opportunity' as one of the underlying principles, which is frequently cited regarding the city's success agenda (Özogul & Taşan-Kok 2016). It notes that 'Diversity is our strength because it means vibrancy, opportunity, inclusiveness and adaptability -it is a fundamental building block for success. To be successful, our future must also be diverse, inclusive and equitable'. Central Toronto is described as 'Toronto's image to the world' with comfortable, cosmopolitan, civil, urbane and diverse living conditions. In recent years the focus of immigration policy shifted from building citizenship to importing economic capital as an asset-based approach to diversity.
Following the predecessor's 'strength' motto, the 'progressive conservative' Mayor John Tory's city government approach also curated diversity as part of a success agenda but with a 'technology' twist. As advocate for innovative economy, the Tory administration emphasises gender and ethnicity diversity especially for tech innovation. The economic agencies that are financially connecting the city to the global economic networks also frame diversity as a strength. These agencies, either as part of the city administration or independent, has become especially important for the 'innovative economy' agenda of the Tory administration. In 2016 the mayor created a position for an 'innovation chief', officially announced as 'Advocate for the Innovation Economy' (Galang 2016). According to Tory, this '[…] will encourage collaboration between the tech sector, government, and corporate partners and encourage more diversity within the sector' (ibid.). In June 2017, the City of Toronto's Economic Development Commission's Chair and Councillor (Galang 2017) framed diversity as a 'big part of what makes Toronto's economy unique and competitive'. In the same event Mayor Tory indicated that 'Diversity and inclusion are a huge part of our value proposition and I will be supporting and championing those events that help build that reputation at home and globally' (Rider 2017). Similarly, several marketing, investment and branding agencies were used in Toronto (such as Invest Toronto, Toronto Global, Clear Space) to define the diversity as an 'unmatched pool of talent, skills and experience' for the city. In support of these claims, the Toronto region is marketed as one of the most educated populations in the world, with a 'diverse labor pool'. Here, diversity is framed through the curated advantages of its large immigrant population, which 'attracts and creates investment in new areas with the ability to do business in your native tongue' (Toronto Global 2020).
These marketing and branding efforts frame Toronto and its surrounding region as a welcoming home to all cultures and ethnicities and this labour-force oriented approach seems to embrace diversity for increasing the competitive advantage of the city. However, next to the growing inequality, polarization and poverty along racial and income lines in the city (see http://neighbourhoodchange.ca/) housing conditions have also been worsening, with a lack of access to affordable housing, especially for minority groups and low and middle income workers, becoming a divisive and growing political fault line. The rental vacancy rate is 1.2%, which is actually 0.9% for larger units for families; as the rents went on a historically high level, apartment viewings attract hundreds of people at once, and affordable housing lotteries are organised to select among thousands of households to be located in a few available units (Collie 2018). This trend is mostly a result of increasing production of owneroccupied residential units in the form of condominiums through financial market mortgage tools mainly concentrated in the downtown and waterfront areas but also elsewhere in the city (Rosen & Walks 2015). Although rental construction is reported to be slowly rising in the city, the average rent for two-bedroom housing units is the highest in the city as reported in October 2018 at $2,173/month in Central Toronto and ranging between $1,100-$1,800 in the outer suburbs.
In London, similarly, there has been an attempt to use PM narratives to demonstrate that the city's 'success' rests in large part on the presence of cosmopolitan diversity and the contributions that migrant workers play in supporting its economy. In a direct challenge to national policy agendas and the rise of anti-migration rhetoric, there has been an attempt to curate the benefits of cosmopolitan openness. In 2017 the Mayor launched a London is Open agenda that was explicitly designed to counter 'hostile' narratives surrounding Brexit and the policies of national governments. As the Mayor stated, 'I want all Londoners to be in no doubt: London Is Open and no matter where you're from, you will always belong here'. A concerted effort has been made to brand the city as a type of coherent corporation, competing in global markets and citing its diverse 'labour force' as a core asset.
However, the importance given to diversity and cosmopolitanism in these externallyoriented curations downplay some of the divisive issues that surround globalisation and the internationalisation of investment in the city. The property and investment market, particularly in regard to real estate, has been booming but in ways that are helping to fuel a crisis of affordability for many existing residents. The average house price in London is £478,853 (gov.uk), beyond the research of many residents, encouraging more to move into the private rented sector, which is also experiencing rapid inflation and has grown to an average of £309/week (Wheatley et al. 2019). As in Toronto, the inequalities generated by these processes and the presence of high-income, high-skilled workers are downplayed and subsumed under a 'united' curation in which the cities are represented, in the words of one interviewee in London, as being 'like a plc [public limited company]', or a corporate body that is competitive and united. Both cities are represented as commodities to be sold in global markets and which possess dynamic labour forces and skills. However, both have struggled to manage the material consequences of increasing diversity and inequality, which requires extra attention under market-driven planning models that both cities follow. Evidence of this is found in Toronto City's current Official Plan that underlines the need for private sector involvement, resulting in massive reinvestment in up-marketing the existing housing stock through increased deregulation of planning (Özogul & Taşan-Kok 2018).
These tensions between the focus on externally-and internally-oriented curations are particularly acute in the attempts to implement new PM agendas in the two cities and it is to these that the paper now turns.

Internally-oriented curation strategies in London and Toronto
Within both cities there is a remarkable degree of commonality in the discourses of diversity that are adopted, in large part reflecting the implementation of systems-based forms of PM, taken directly from management narratives and practices within the private sector. In each, there is an attempt to curate diversity through the construction of concerted strategies underpinned by measurable, quantitative targets and 'corporate strategic actions'. Through such measures it is imagined that the cities can be treated like corporate bodies, with diversity converted into a field of targeted governmental intervention crossing a range of social and economic policy fields. Diversity-awareness and its promotion are designed to cover the 'full range' of government activities and act as a focal point for policy-making and practice. These curate diversity as being at the heart of a governmental Vision Statement, highlighting that diversity is 'valued and celebrated' and diverse 'communities are a source of pride' in seeking to advance the City Council's vision, mission, and goals. COT's Strategic Plan 2013-2018 establishes core priorities, and these are supplemented by sectoral plans for core areas (such as public health strategy, aboriginal employment strategy, children's services plan, and equity, diversity & human rights, etc.) as of 2019. The Strategic Actions document highlights six Strategic Themes namely city building, economic vitality, environmental sustainability, social development, good governance, and fiscal sustainability with the ambition to integrate planning and performance frameworks within the complex governance structure of CoT. This highlights diversity as a benefit for the economy. For instance, while setting the goals to accelerate economic growth, it aims to leverage 'Toronto's diversity as an economic driver and asset'. The document makes it clear that CoT 'strives to provide high quality and affordable services that respond to the needs of our communities and invests in infrastructure to support city building' (p. 3). These curations are reflected and reproduced in an Integrated Planning Model, that seeks to guide the 'service planning and budgeting process' (p. 6). In the same vein, referring to Toronto as a 'complex city', the Strategic Plan (2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018) highlights that providing 'customized solutions that reflect the diversity of character and social profile…will require both intra-divisional and inter-divisional involvement and broad public engagement ' (p. 33). CoT claims that by incorporating diversity through such PM structures, it facilitates an 'all-inclusive' approach, with 'participatory practices' becoming a part of daily governance practices.  (2015) However, despite the highlighted attempt to embed the 'consistent application' of diversity principles into 'policy development, program delivery, evaluation, and reporting' at all levels, market-oriented priorities shadow the discursive claims to be principally focused on addressing diverse community needs. In direct mimicking of private corporations, the 2015-2018 Strategic Plan produced by Equity, Diversity & Human Rights Division identifies formal Service Outcomes that focus on becoming an 'employer of choice', 'customer service excellence', and 'increased public confidence' (Shakir 2015). This will be delivered through an Integrated Functions Model and a Division Strategy Map that extend performance management and target-setting to the full range of Corporate Strategic Actions outlined in Figure 1. Figure 2 similarly outlines the core features of Mayor of London's (2017) Vision for a Diverse and Inclusive City set out, in highly managerial terms, 'priority areas for action' (p.8). The Strategy represents a set of tensions between the need to establish compartmentalised, structured and closed systems of governmental practice to be managed and the realisation that the objectives of diversity planning are stretched so broadly that the number of policy fields has multiplied. Their plurality now includes mixed housing, small business premises and support networks, poverty reduction, education and skills provision, quality training, enhanced community and citizen engagement, accessible labour markets, affordable transport networks, and the impacts of crime and security. In each, communities have taken on the role of acting as both the subjects and objects of policy with the objective of creating an 'empathetic city', in which greater tolerance and understanding will 'ensure that our growing diversity strengthens, rather than erodes, the social fabric of our neighbourhoods' (Mayor of London 2018, p.5).   (2017) There are two distinct elements of curation that are present in the development of these strategies. First, in creating strategies and 'measurable' programmes of action the emphasis is on the creation of calculable representations of diversity that convert it into a problem of government to be addressed through managerial practices and actions. In the London case there is even a curation of the Mayor's Social Evidence Base that will allow the city authorities 'to track the specific impact of policies and projects' and enable policy-makers to 'plan strategically to improve social integration and invest more in the initiatives that are working best' (Mayor of London 2018, p.68). More significantly the collection and representation of London-wide data is designed to act a basis to promote a greater sense of awareness and integration in the city: 'the importance of collecting data on social integration goes beyond measuring success. Improving the evidence base can also be a way of promoting social integration. It allows Londoners to become aware of how social integration affects our wellbeing and prosperity'. Moreover, in governmental language 'it puts into context the powerful contribution that all Londoners make to the success of our city…and find collective solutions'. (p. 68). Such binding curations are important in the city as recent evidence shows that in terms of cross-cultural social networks London is the least integrated region of the UK (Social Integration Commission 2014). They also play a role in generating externally-oriented forms of curation. The creation of a comprehensive social database, for instance, is designed to 'make the social evidence base widely available to others…to allow individuals and organisations, nationally and internationally, to benefit from London's work and the Mayor's focus on social integration' (Mayor of London 2018, p. 14).
Similarly, in Toronto, the focus of policy is increasingly targeted towards the development of new statistical and managerial representations that describe and prescribe policy goals, systems, and targets. Indices and statistics are used as a form of curation to show sceptical groups that 'all' stand to benefit from the promotion of diversity and cosmopolitanism and that an urban policy focused on the 'requirements' of such groups would be for the benefit of all. Objective representations including reports, strategies, census data, and other materials are used to 'demonstrate' and calculate the value of diversity in quantitative and sometimes qualitative terms. In this way, the politics of diversity has been converted into a technical discussion in which policy deliberations focus on how to extract maximum benefit from socio-economic changes. In Mitchell's (2002) terms city economies and territories became constituted through 'a set of practices that put in place a new politics of calculation' (p.8). The perceived value of such managerialism is that it provides legitimacy for a more positive conception of diversity and can be used to demonstrate to sceptical groups that policy-makers are 'in control' and are managing the wider impacts of enhanced diversity.
By curating the two cities as corporate-like bodies, there is little direct reflection on the broader politics of diversity, other than a belief that by creating new representations, more integrated and cohesive forms of governmentality will emerge, as individuals and communities think of themselves as part of a collective urban whole. It is also clear that both the subjects and objects of diversity governance are to be citizens and communities who are the only ones that 'can make a real difference…and give us a renewed sense that we are united as neighbours, as citizens, and as Londoners' (Mayor of London 2018, p. 5). The idea of a 'united identity' through an entrepreneurial discourse is also emphasised to 'unite this city as one Toronto' as a 'place where there is opportunity for all' by the Mayor of Toronto (Tory 2014). The policy towards diversity is, paradoxically, focused on establishing representations of difference and divergence between individuals and communities, but then seeking to manage their interactions and develop them through a Social Integration Strategy consisting of four parts: relationships, participation, equality, and evidence. Each is compartmentalised and broken down into a series of measurements, themes and numbered policies and priorities, and seek to convert the qualitative outlooks and relationships that exist between individuals and communities into quantifiable and measurable sources of data.
And yet, despite this reframing of management systems as 'output-focused', respondents in both cities were candid about their lack of authority to deliver on their diversity strategies. In London it was noted that policies relating to diversity were generated and implemented across local and national government departments, making it difficult to coordinate and delivery policy at the city (and sub-city) scale. Similarly, in Toronto government actors highlighted their limited capacities to deliver on a range of policies, especially those relating to structural labour market and neighbourhood changes. Such sentiments were widely shared in our research and indicate that despite the deployment of managerial systems and carefully curated representations, the underlying reality is one of making trade-offs and taking potentially divisive decisions over resource allocations and policy priorities. Their role, it was noted, was often to 'encourage' other organisations to work collectively towards meeting broader strategic targets, but as with all local government spending, agencies working at the urban level are facing significant budget cuts, many of which are instigated by central government in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. At the time of writing [2020], the City of Toronto was facing dramatic budget cuts with a C$1.5billion proposed reduction. Severe reductions are expected in welfare capacities that would see over 40,000 child-care subsidies disappear, the closure of over 60 community centres, library branch closures and dramatic reductions in other services (Pagliaro 2020). This would directly impact on the ability of government departments to deliver the diversity strategy, whatever the positive curations presented to different audiences. Similarly, in London, Centre for London (2019) research shows that local government spending has suffered a reduction of 17% from 2010-2019, from £879/capita to £729/capita, or approximately 35% when inflation is considered. As they note, this has led to cutbacks in services and infrastructure required for the delivery of diversity programmes, with even deeper cuts occurring in poorer boroughs.
But most significantly the new agendas also seek to reform public services to be more 'in-line' with the diversity of citizens and to use visible curations of diversity to achieve this. As CoT's Director of the diversity division claims, 'we will…create a public service that is representative of the population it serves, while harnessing the intellectual capital of a diverse workforce for the benefit out our city' (Shakir 2015, p.1). Both authorities are using their powers as employers and procurers to try to shape the governmentalities and practices of others. Again, there is a remarkable degree of consistency between the cases, reflecting and reproducing the corporate management literatures on 'effective' diversity strategies. The CoT's Strategic Action 17 seeks to 'enhance the City's capacity to serve Toronto's diversity' that explicitly draws on 'developing an equity, diversity, and human rights corporate model', and 'aligning' these objectives with the development of a 'Common Management Plan, Workforce Plan, and Performance Measurement and Indicators System'. In corporate language the CoT claims that 'a public service workforce that reflects the diversity of its community best serves its customers' (City of Toronto 2014, p. 12, emphasis added). The emphasis on citizens as 'customers' is further reinforced in the claims that 'a good understanding of our customers leads directly to a high quality customer service' and 'a diverse workforce better understands the needs of the pubic from the public's perspective, engages better with different communities, expands organisational creativity, improves outof-the box thinking and increases our ability to cope with change'. This will be implemented through an equity survey, followed by the introduction of evidence-based managerial actions, outcomes, metrics and programmes.
In London the Mayor's Strategy has the explicit objective to 'lead by example' and become 'models of inclusive employers, responsible procurers and open and transparent organisations, engaged with all the communities we serve'. Much of the policy discourse is taken directly from the language of management consultancy firms, such as the named Shapiro Consulting (2011), whose narratives are used in claims such as 'recruiting diverse workforces and supporting them with inclusive cultures will give us the basis for that level of performance and innovation ' (p. 41). Creative environments, it is argued, will emerge through the implementation of formal, managed, and prescriptive management systems targeted on diversity-led objectives and outcomes. Procurement and the compliance of subcontractors are seen as integral components of the diversity strategy as they 'support diversity and inclusion, economic fairness, and social integration by widening out [sic.] of skills, training and employment opportunities' (p. 41).
Public bodies in London and Toronto are also using their influence as employers to provide role models for the private sector and what are seen as progressive labour market practices. For instance, the Greater London Assembly's recruitment advertisements since 2011 have carried the following explicit statement of intent, 'London's diversity is its biggest asset and we strive to ensure our workforce reflects London's diversity at all levels. Applications from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates will be particularly welcomed as they are currently under-represented in this area of our organisation' (Greater London Assembly 2015, p.4).
In the case of London some of the most significant reforms have been undertaken to public services that have been at the forefront of interactions with socially and culturally diverse groups. One of the most significant fissures between the state and minority communities has concerned policing and the activities of London's Metropolitan Police Service. For decades these relations have been at the centre of debates over social cohesion and disconnection in the city. Recent reforms have established an explicit commitment to 'create a police force that reflects and understands London's diversity so it can continue to effectively policy a growing metropolis' (Metropolitan Police Service [MPS] 2017, p. 2). Policies, explicitly drawing on the work of consultancy Deloitte (2011), aim to 'build a more diverse Met that understands far better the city it serves…with more officers from every community in the capital ' (ibid.). In order to achieve this stated ambition a recruitment policy has been introduced that limits applications for new recruits to London residents only. The city's territorial population is thought of in corporate terms, with a clear distinction made between those within and external to the city's boundaries. This spatial targeting has gone hand-inhand with the rolling-out of clear targets with the ambition that 40% of new recruits should be from a 'minority background'.
Almost identical language is used in the case of Toronto demonstrating the influence of policy transfers and the international character of managerial systems approaches. The Police Service has a dedicated Diversity and Inclusion unit that is tasked, amongst objectives, with the requirement to help create a service that 'reflects the diverse community it serves at all levels/ranks…provide[s] a bias-free service to the community, [and in which] all members develop and demonstrate effective diversity and inclusion skills' (Toronto Police Service [TPS] 2015a, p. 1). While such agendas appear to be openly pluralist, they are also driven by a PM culture of targets and the enlistment of subjects in the carrying out of public policy. In Toronto this is explicitly stated by the TPS who openly claim that 'diversity and inclusion contributes significantly to the bottom line' and 'creating knowledgeable organizations that shares experience and skills; developing cross-cultural capabilities that facilitate operations in culturally complex environments; and implementing innovative service deliveries and strategies for diverse communities' (TPS 2015b, p. 1). Moreover, in language that is corporate in form and content the argument is used that 'changing demographics makes it more important to select, retain and manage a diverse workforce that is not only reflective of the communities we serve, but also harnessing the talents, experience, knowledge and skills of all members' (ibid.). Such words are mirrored in London where it is claimed that 'a police service is more effective if it reflects the society it serves' (London Assembly 2017, p. 1). Consequently, 'a more diverse workforce can lead to better decision-making, bring a broader range of skills and improve operational capabilities' (ibid.). The emphasis is on how the service can become a more effective body if managed in a diverse way. This will also have other effects by making 'the service better placed to gain the trust of communities and improve police legitimacy, which determines whether people cooperate with the police' (ibid.).
Such approaches highlight a complex set of citizen-state dynamics. On the one hand, there appears to be a clear recognition of difference between cultural groups who may experience public services and social environments differently from one another. Both cities' populations are re-imagined as market-places in which citizens consume the services on offer, but in diverse ways. On the other hand, the approach is directly concerned with individualisation in which, to cite the TPS (2015b): 'organizations have broadened their understanding of what constitutes difference so that diversity is about acknowledging any difference that can impact on the fair or equitable treatment of people -this can include differences in gender, race, age, culture, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic that helps to shape a person's perspective. Diversity in this context can encompass the many ways that make each person different from the other, and how we deal with individuals within communities' (p. 1).
There is less of an emphasis on collectivities and groups and a concern with individual consumer-citizens and the ways in which policing services respond to market pressures and demands.

Conclusions
In this article we have shown that diversity is curated in global cities, such as London and Toronto, by reframing existing discourses mainly around social-cultural and ethnic diversity to promote multiple governance agendas: first, to draw on management systems and technologies to establish new and selective representations of the cities as centres of 'diversity'; second, to give a new look to the success agenda of increasingly entrepreneurial urban governance primarily to external investors and mobile consumers; and third to implement new governance programmes that are designed to create a 'role-model' or 'beacon' status on behalf of the city's governing authorities and Mayors. We examined ways in which increased diversity is presenting new challenges for city governance and being used to underpin reforms across government departments. In both cities, there is a tendency to focus on selective policy framings around ethnicity or migration to present diversity as a social phenomenon to celebrate, even by using scholarly notions like super-diversity in the background to express a constructive attitude while diverting the attention to reinforce a selective agenda. This attitude allows reverting to PM systems approaches and reinforcing managerialism through strategies, targets, plans, while also promoting more positive qualitative curations of diversity. Moreover, while managerialism has a tendency to (re)produce strategies and action programmes or plans, it shifts attention away from more structural problems (like affordable housing), and disconnects responsibilities from the powers and/or resources provided for policy implementation, especially in the wake of broader funding cuts. In both cities, despite ostensibly taking a positive and all-inclusive approach to diversity, systematic inequalities and segregation along racial lines continue to exist due to the policy mismatch between macro-level discourses and the local implementation of policies at the neighbourhood level (Taşan-Kok & Özogul 2017). This is also because of policy shifts over recent decades that approach diversity as a marketable asset. Since spatial organization depends strongly on market-led urban development tendencies, social and spatial policies are becoming increasingly disconnected from each other, especially in neighbourhoods that do not provide attractive locations for new development. Within this framework, we can summarise our findings under three principal conclusions.
First, we show that curation techniques represent the extension and evolution of PM agendas into new fields of economic and social (urban) policy. The growth of more diverse and cosmopolitan populations in global cities has created new challenges of governance as demands have become more complex and existing models of relatively homogenous (Rosen & Walks 2015). The introduction of curation techniques and management frameworks has acted as a template for the corporatisation of diversity and cosmopolitanism and their conversion into objects, subject to quantitative measurement, strategies, targets and bounded forms of policy intervention. We have argued that external curations play a role in supporting broader place-marketing/branding agendas and that internal curations seek to build a sense of corporate solidarity and cohesion around management targets and frameworks. Narratives of diversity that dominate private sector management discourses and forms of (curated) imagebuilding, have been adopted and applied to the management of cities. There has been a strong focus on re-imagining cities as corporations in an attempt to generate policy agendas that promote competitiveness and cohesion (through diversity-driven public service reform). But unlike a corporation, cities are more complex and the powers of city governments to act as 'managers' are relatively limited. Moreover, as shown, 'selective' representations of diversity and the simplifications that they produce can exclude or marginalise population groups and generate new fields of conflict.
Second, we show that there are clear implementation deficits that limit the effectiveness of such strategies and seek to reduce the political spaces in and through which conflicts in global cities are able to be aired. In both cases, PM agendas and implementation strategies do not match each other. Diversity and cosmopolitanism are curated as descriptions to be promoted and celebrated, while acting as a platform for the implementation of flexible government programmes that are able to respond to the unique needs of different communities. In reality however, such measures have only produced new sources of division and conflict. Their ineffectiveness is exemplified by the affordable housing crises affecting both cities. The article has highlighted the limitations of curation-based PM programmes to do much more that bring some of the challenges around diversity and inequalities into the public realm and apply strategies to 'tackle' them, while lacking core resources and powers to bring about structural changes.
And third, as debates over diversity policy in major cities become increasingly politicised on both the left and the right, policy-makers face new dilemmas over how to govern and manage populations that are becoming increasingly diverse in material and sociocultural terms. As we emphasised in this article the need to understand how governance framings of diversity are mobilised and instrumentalised is of growing importance. However, as diversity is curated in complex multi-scalar policy environments, policy actions are not necessarily synchronised or based on effective and directly relevant regulations. As we note elsewhere (Raco & Taşan-Kok 2019), there is much evidence to show that urban planning and policy for diversity can make a significant difference to the politics of place but a clear understanding is needed in this fragmented multi-scalar policy landscape. The diversity politics in cosmopolitan cities is under constant pressure for reform and the direction, and the response of states and governments to these demands will have a significant role in shaping urban areas.