ABSTRACT
The world has recently become an urban place principally because of major changes in the distribution of population in developing countries. Until mid-century, urbanisation was a process that was largely restricted to the core regions of the mercantilist, industrial capitalist and monopoly capitalist economic systems, where it produced high levels of urban development across large parts of Europe and North America. In the fifty years since, urban growth and urbanisation have affected the rest of the world. Behind this shift lie major changes in global patterns of accumulation and consumption which have profoundly different urban geographical consequences. On the one hand they have concentrated global economic power in a small number of world cities in the core economies, as is discussed in Chapter 7. On the other they have extended and accelerated urban development throughout the periphery.
