Cosmopolitan cities: the frontier in the twenty-first century?

Abstract

People with independent (vs. interdependent) social orientation place greater priority on personal success, autonomy, and novel experiences over maintaining ties to their communities of origin. Accordingly, an independent orientation should be linked to a motivational proclivity to move to places that offer economic opportunities, freedom, and diversity. Such places are cities that can be called “cosmopolitan.” In support of this hypothesis, Study 1 found that independently oriented young adults showed a preference to move to cosmopolitan rather than noncosmopolitan cities. Study 2 used a priming manipulation and demonstrated a causal impact of independence on residential preferences for cosmopolitan cities. Study 3 established ecological validity by showing that students who actually moved to a cosmopolitan city were more independent than those who either moved to a noncosmopolitan city or never moved. Taken together, the findings illuminate the role of cosmopolitan settlement in the contemporary cultural change toward independence and have implications for urban development and economic growth.

Ongoing Voluntary Settlement and Independent Agency: Evidence from China

“…Initially, we used several indicators to select a counterpart city: population size, economic indicators such as GDP per capita, contact with Western culture, and the cosmopolitan index (Sevincer et al, 2015, 2017). Based on this, we created a list of candidate cities.…”

“…Two studies explored the relative importance of these three mechanisms toward independent agency (especially self-selection versus adaptation) and found self-selection was more important than adaptation in both geography and its new form-cosmopolitan city (Kitayama et al, 2006; Sevincer et al, 2015). …”

“…For example, a few studies have examined Hokkaido, a northern island of Japan with a voluntary settlement history during the 19th century, and these areas showed more independent agency measured by cultural tasks such as implicit social orientation, dissonance reduction, and attribution tasks ( Kitayama et al, 2006 ; Ishii, 2014 ; Ishii et al, 2014 ). Researchers have argued that the frontier of the modern world is the cosmopolitan city ( Sevincer et al, 2015 ).…”

“…There are three possible mechanisms underlying the establishment of frontier spirit: (1) self-selection for settlement, which means voluntary settlers are self-motivated to move to a new place for personal goals and development; (2) adaptation and acculturation, where challenging situations and environments reinforce settlers’ independent agency; and (3) institutionalization of tacit beliefs and practices of independence, meaning that the culture and social regulation in chosen settlement regions influence future generations and prospective immigrants reciprocally ( Kitayama et al, 2006 ). Two studies explored the relative importance of these three mechanisms toward independent agency (especially self-selection versus adaptation) and found self-selection was more important than adaptation in both geography and its new form-cosmopolitan city ( Kitayama et al, 2006 ; Sevincer et al, 2015 ).…”

Personal Learning Environments that Facilitate Socio-Educational Integration of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors

“…Constant migratory movement towards cities that offer better basic opportunities, is a fact that characterises the majority of developed countries of the 21st century [ 1 ].…”