ABSTRACT
All discussion of urban formations, the organisation of urban space and the behaviour and aspirations of city dwellers can be said to depend on relations of power to some extent. In previous chapters I have tried to show how writers and researchers have interpreted such phenomena sometimes using deductive (i.e. preconceived) and at other times inductive (or ‘open ended’) methods of investigation. In this chapter, I concentrate on power in its political form, especially in terms of its relationship to the management and organisation of urban space, the populations contained within it; the social, economic, cultural and political activities that urban government is charged with regulating or sanctioning; and the ways in which social actors have sought to contest and resist forms of authority or the measures that authorities have tried to implement in different urban contexts.
