ABSTRACT
They believe that cities and city-regions are focal points of neoliberal transition that have experienced particularly intense problems and social conflicts caused by the dismantling of financial and governmental regulatory mechanisms, and the recent tendency towards overproduction and periodic economic crises. They see cities as institutional laboratories for the rolling out of neoliberalism, as climates of economic austerity and deficit reduction have led to municipal cost-cutting and retreat from urban services. Similarly to the experience in the developing world, neoliberal cities in the developed world have shifted increasingly to free trade and entrepreneurial strategies, enterprise zones, and privatization schemes. The ascendance of neoconservative political and social movements has also led to demonizing of subcultural groups, the poor, and immigrants as “dangerous classes” that threaten public morality and family life. But the disenfranchised have responded with struggles in response, marking cities as flashpoints of contention in the neoliberal period.
