ABSTRACT
Increasingly, urban wounds also result from globalization processes, unfolding with few constraints since the 1980s. Whatever the source of the affliction, wounded cities, like all cities, are dynamic entities, replete with the potential to recuperate loss and reconstruct anew for the future. When one takes past histories and external pressures into account, it has the power to evoke collective action, imaginative construction in the face of destruction, and creative initiatives in the face of decay. Just as the causes of urban destruction are multiple and varied, the forms of reconstruction everywhere reflect a battle over the control of the direction of the urban body politic. In cities torn apart by violence and war, globalized processes, far from being the principal or obvious source of devastation, may actually present themselves as part of the solution, a path to the restoration of urban health.
