ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide a definition of urban social movement that is expansive enough to capture empirical variations across cases but also delimited enough to exclude phenomena that do not qualify as urban social movements. Conflicts stemming from urbanized inequalities are, the people suggest, a necessary condition and attribute of urban social movements. The early concept of urban social movements was strongly informed by case studies both on European and South American cities. In sum, urban social movements are motivated by grievances and conflicts associated with the urbanization of inequalities. The urbanization of inequalities helps explain for the conflicts driving urban social movements, but it does not explain for how some conflicts evolve into actual urban social movements. Networks play a decisive role in transforming aggrieved actors into social movements, and large cities are conducive to facilitating complex networks between organizations and activists. State institutions shape the opportunities for conflicts to grow into full social movements.
