ABSTRACT
This chapter will show that over the past twenty years the nature of everyday urban life has been profoundly affected by the global reconstruction of economic, political, social and cultural processes. Related to this profound change has been the decline of the heavy and manufacturing industries that dominated the modern city and an increase in the importance of post-industrial service industries such as financial services, banking, advertising, marketing, public relations and the retail sector. This has been coupled with social and demographic forces that saw the simultaneous increase in mass unemployment, and the rise of a ‘new petite bourgeoisie’ (Giddens 1973). These processes have been reflected in new spatial and social formations, and academic attention has been concerned to map their impact upon the changing city. Theorists have described these changes as being bound up with a movement to late or advanced capitalism-rom a modern to a postmodern epoch.
