According to Joseph Berger’s “The World in a City”, Ditmas Park, Brooklyn is the epitome of ethnic diversity and tolerance in a community. People are neighbors to people from all stretches of the globe and are all able to coexist peacefully. Ditmas Park, therefore, is an example of the social contact theory mentioned by Putman, in which people come together and through contact with other people’s differences learn to tolerate it. However, Ditmas Park also demonstrates characteristics of the social conflict theory. As mentioned in the article, people in the community tend to associate along social lines. The lawyers associated with other lawyers, and homeowners associated with other homeowners. This shows how although Ditmas Park may appear to be more tolerant of diversity than other communities, it is not perfect. The consequences of differences between different groups of people are still present.

What is also interesting is how the creation of the diversity in Ditmus Park is believed to be the result of the spilling over of residents from the monoethnic enclaves that surround it. If this is true then won’t one community spill more residents into Ditmas Park and eventually that group will become the dominant group, removing the diversity of the community? If so, the state Ditmas Park is in now is only a transition state. I believe this is inevitable because it is a natural tendency to find others that share common qualities. As a result, the residents of this community, no matter how peacefully they coexist, will want to be with others that celebrate similar cultures and ultimately smaller ethnic sections will be formed as more new residents move in.

-Wendy Li