ABSTRACT
Cities are highly complex spatial and socioeconomic entities. Different views exist on how cities in the advanced countries of the North have changed in the last three decades. In their introductory essay to the book Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order, the editors of the volume Marcuse and van Kampen (2000:1 and 270) raise the important question as to whether there is a new internal spatial order in today’s cities which is significantly different from that of the cities of yesterday. Their answer is a decisive and surprising “No,” although they do concede that there have been important and visible changes, especially greater structural and spatial divisions and increasing inequality among cities. Their conclusion carries the implication that the spatial structure of the cities of today differs from that of the recent past only in degree, not in its basic nature.
