ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how local events and processes affect global conditions, and specifically instability, by tracing patterns of causation from the global to the local and from the local to the global. It outlines a set of hypotheses about the likely results of the global economic crisis and the way they would affect urban areas. The global economic crisis in 2007 was precipitated by the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the over-leveraging of banks and other financial institutions. Millions of 'local loans', financing individual home mortgages, proved to be non-performing loans which, when opened to public scrutiny, led to reassessment of balance sheets throughout the US banking system. Moreover, community-based organizations (CBO's) by definition are unable to speak to the larger issues of urban form at the city level. As the McKinsey global Institute's studies of urban production and consumption show, there are now some 450 cities which account for more than 80 percent of global GDP.
