ABSTRACT
In the current context of economic and urban development in Europe, cities are having to cope with intense economic restructuration (Bontje 2004). Contemporary globalization processes (Amin and Thrift 1994), with an economy that is “spatially dispersed, yet globally integrated” (Sassen 2001:3), have been accompanied by generalized deindustrialization, which has in turn set in motion changes in formerly industrial cities. Every city and its local government, which is by definition locally rooted, has to face the issue of global mobility of capital and jobs (Kantor et al. 1997). Industrial cities, more than other cities, must face and cope with these changes effectively in order to survive. The increasing mobility of capital sets up de facto a fierce competition among cities, each of them wanting to retain or attract new investments, to maintain or gain a position on the global chessboard. Former industrial cities tend to be sidestepped by globalization; they play for high stakes and usually struggle to reenter or find a new place in the current worldwide economic competition. Developing a “new social geography of exclusion,” to use a cosmic metaphor, Castells (2000: 169) portrays these spaces as “black holes of social exclusion throughout the planet.”
