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This article examines municipal government roles in immigrant settlement, integration and cultural diversity in six of Canada's most diverse cities. Drawing on documentary and interview evidence, the review of corporate initiatives in Vancouver, Abbotsford, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Brampton addresses three areas: the position or profile of these issues on the municipal government agenda; diversity, human rights and anti-racism policies for city institutions and the broader community; and access and equity policies. The inventory provides the data for a proposed local-scale typology that classifies and distinguishes among cities according to the normative premises underlying the official recognition of cultural differences in the public sphere, the types and extent of initiatives and the locus of bureaucratic authority for these issues. The analysis identified distinct approaches at the sub-state level. Toronto was the only city that has fully embraced a multicultural approach recognizing cultural diversity in most or all aspects of its corporate policies and structures and which grants collective rights to members of disadvantaged groups. The intercultural or civic universalist approaches prevailed in most study sites. Just three cities have developed comprehensive and relatively centralized approaches to these issues. The results suggest that sub-state authorities will not necessarily adopt the discourse and policy responses associated with state-level multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]