ABSTRACT
This chapter compares different types of legal dimensions of cities explained by these models of states formation which are crucial for the comparison of cities. It argues with historical comparisons that the collective capacity of cities, urban governmentality is in part determined by the state-city relation framework, a point often omitted by urban scholars. In the decades of neoliberal globalization, it was understandable that urban research turned to focus on how cities were situated in a world of surging capital flows and corporate power. The European colonial powers, which once governed most of Africa and Asia, had little interest in introducing it, as cities were the sites of colonial authority. Post-colonial states generally developed without providing significant autonomy and capacity to city and other local governments. From the colonial occupation, the post-colonial states inherited and usually reproduced a fundamental duality of state and of cities.
