ABSTRACT
Social policy has always had the city and its problems at its core, looking at issues to do with poverty, crime, drugs, ‘race’, women, local government, housing and education. The languages of urban poverty are now polarised between those who see it as a matter of inequality and those who see it as a problem of ‘race’ or disorder or morality. The fragmentation and sub-division within social science mirrors and reinforces fragmentation and division within the city. Social policy is faced with another pressing and related problem of fragmentation, that of the welfare state itself. Social policy as a discipline needs to face up to these new and profound developments otherwise it will die out with the demise of the fabian welfare state. The Mega-Cities Project is an international network of action-researchers with a presence in most major cities in the world.
