Motley (adjective): made up of many different people or things

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/motley

“Over a lifetime , that adds up to a lot of neighborhoods, the motley construction material of your jerry-built metropolis”

I encountered this word while reading an article we are discussing class “City Limits” by Colson Whitehead. This is my first time hearing of this word and it wasn’t easy decipher it by the use of context clues , so I went straight to the internet to find the denotation. It means made up of many different people or things. I finally understood what he meant ” the motley construction material of your jerry-built metropolis”. He basically means that the readers version of New York City is built with different materials of poor quality. An example of the word motley in a sentence would be, ” The motley protesters outside city hall included people of all races and economic classes.”