ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some of the characteristics of contemporary cities in order to better understand the challenges that they pose to the redefinition of citizenship. It examines the social and political context in which contemporary cities are evolving in order to present the specific demands associated with the emergence of an urban citizenship. The chapter looks at the notion of urban citizenship and at some ways in which social movements have experimented with this notion. Urban areas are influenced in various ways by the economic, social and cultural processes that many scholars have associated with globalisation. The changes in the built environment in contemporary metropolises, which testify to a profound restructuring of the urban fabric, have had an impact on the renewal of approaches to urban management and urban governance. Urban movements have certainly played an important role in the modernisation of urban planning and of municipal administration in general, in both their aims and their democratic functioning.
