ABSTRACT
Reflecting upon much of the recent theoretical literature on urban and regional development, and especially those studies which have applied a broadly conceived Marxist method of enquiry, it seems clear that the advanced capitalist societies have been retained at the thematic centre of investigation. This observation must not be overemphasized since it is also evident that from the early 1980s interest and concern for global trends and processes of internationalization have been increasingly inserted into the contemporary research agenda. Moreover, there definitely does seem to be a greater awareness of the existence and specificities of peripheral societies than a decade ago. Nevertheless, there still remains an underlying, perhaps unconscious, tendency towards universalism or Euro-Americanism in the formulation and priority given to topics for theoretical discussion. Even though this tendency is not only to be located in the realms of Marxist urban and regional analysis, its presence in this sphere has received far less interrogation than elsewhere.1
