ABSTRACT
This section focuses on the significance of politics and political power in shaping the urban landscape. In exploring these themes, the concerns of the section range from the global – how, for instance, has globalization affected city politics? – down to the local – what, for example, has been the impact of new institutions of urban governance on the inner city? To be sure, many cities are involved in so-called “smoke-stack chasing” by driving down the local costs of land and labor, but it is also important not to underestimate “the politics of particularity”. Urban Development Corporations provide one example of the new kind of institutions of local governance that during the 1980s and 1990s played an increasingly prominent role in the management of spaces within UK cities. The juxtaposition of rich and poor in London Docklands is an important reminder that the local politics of growth cannot be separated from the local politics of welfare and social provision.
