ABSTRACT
As with most other generic terms, that of the ‘western city’ disguises a diversity of forms. Undoubtedly there are common strands as most Western societies achieve an advanced stage of post-industrial urbanization but the variety is still there; a continuum of urban forms and situations can be identified which relate to societal processes and change. West European societies, notably the United Kingdom, were the first to experience industrial urbanization and as America urbanized it did so in even more dramatic ways; some forms of the metropolitan urbanization found their earliest and most emphatic expressions in the United States. As the isolationism of the former socialist societies of Eastern Europe breaks down in the last part of the twentieth century, their cities begin to merge into the Western urban system and both the cultural differences and the ‘time-warps’ are thrown into sharp focus. South African cities with extreme forms of racial segregation in residential areas have begun, in the new political order, to experience changes which have major social-geographical consequences.
