Introduction: cities and identities

We are familiar with the idea that nations need identities. But we are less familiar with the idea that cities need identities. We argue that cities do need their own normative identities, which we term ‘ethoses’, and that it is morally permissible for cities to protect their own ethoses, sometimes even to challenge the state and its values. We spell out this argument in the introduction to a special issue on ‘Cities and Identities’ and the contributors illustrate the argument by providing an account of the distinctive ethoses of six cities: London, Qingdao, Tokyo, Mumbai, Istanbul, and Amsterdam.