ABSTRACT
In the race to restructure and market themselves for the consumer class (Eisinger 2000; Zukin 1995), many cities run the risk of depleting their original character. A trend towards the standardization of cityscapes has been termed ‘McDonaldization’ (Ritzer 1996) and ‘urbanalization’ (Muñoz 2006), implying that beyond the corporate-driven reconstruction of city images, there is also a (dangerous) simplification in functions and habitats which may make cities less resilient to global changes and new cultural stances. Paraphrasing Martinotti (1993), the ‘fourth generation metropolis’ today has less and less space for differentiation, in spite of the driving force of the diversity discourse which is pushing urban change, and of the rhetoric of the knowledge-intensive urban society in the last decade.
