Recently the political philosophy of agonism has been applied by urban theorists to model intercultural urban encounters in so-called ‘micro-publics’, such as the workplace or the classroom. The paper examines to what extent agonism offers a viable model for dealing with urban diversity in these mundane, social encounters. I will argue that, applied to these lower-level social contexts, agonism takes the vulnerability of citizens with regard to their ethnic, cultural or religious attachments insufficiently into account. The resulting injuries will most likely be counter-productive to the goal of living with diversity. By way of a contrast, I will offer two less demanding, more practicable types of intercultural civility.