ABSTRACT
The intensifying globalisation of the last decades has transformed many social and economic structures, among them the hierarchy of cities. The new urban hierarchy, which has been emerging on a global scale, implies a sharper differentiation of urban functions and has led to stronger differences between cities located on different hierarchical levels in terms of living conditions, conflict structures and development options than those prevailing during the Fordist era. Thus, urbanisation patterns at the top of the hierarchy, in the so-called ‘global cities’, differ structurally from those of medium-sized and smaller cities or from cities less integrated into global processes. But not only the cities at the top of the hierarchy are increasingly shaped by intensifying transnational links and flows, leading to new forms of inequality as well as to new avenues for action. Recent urban research has set out to analyse the emerging structural differences within the urban system, explaining them within a variety of different approaches-as a process of economicfunctional hierarchisation (Krätke 1995:126); as an uneven clustering of different roles and functions within a transnational system (head-quarter city, innovation centre, module production and processing, Third World entrepôt, retirement site: Logan and Molotch 1987:258); or as polarisation between the organising nodes of the global economy and subordinate cities within a global urban network, as in the global city literature. While such work begins to allow us to identify unique and specific economic and spatial patterns within a new typology of cities, research on urban conflict and movements under these globalised conditions is as yet rather undeveloped. While we do have some knowledge about the effects of urban competition, now taking place on the global level, on local politics, we know little about interactions between local elites and social movements, about the forms of political conflict, or about the role of social movements in shaping the respective urbanisation pattern. How do local movement actors of the 1990s act, and what chances do they have to influence the shape and the politics of their city?
