ABSTRACT
For many years welfare indicators such as those relating to housing, labour and salary conditions improved in most countries in the western economy, as did the general standard of living, including health. However, recently there have been signs of a dismantling of welfare systems. This restructuring of the world economy has been described and analysed by several scholars over the last few years, with themes such as global shift, divided cities and dual cities. A sign of increasing polarisation is the international discussion of the so-called two-thirds society (Olsson-Hort 1992), meaning that most of the population has resources while a minority lacks them. A growing international literature points in the same direction and has brought attention to polarisation, marginalisation, poverty and lately to the problem of social exclusion (Urban Studies 1994, Built Environment 1994, Scott 1994, Funken and Cooper 1995).
