ABSTRACT
As part of the global economic order emerging since the 1980s, the responsibilities of cities have been much enhanced. "Cities have become concentrations of inequality", where different forms coincide, often also with segregation. The objective of equality in left politics has been based on the claim that capitalist societies by their nature create inequalities and conflicting interests. In British politics a definition of social exclusion as a condition came to prevail, according to Fairclough, as "in the language of new labour social exclusion is an outcome rather than a process – it is a condition people are in rather than something that is done to them. The two definitions of social exclusion and social inclusion, respectively, seeing both as a process and a condition, can be associated with two types of causes, firstly the processes that exclude and secondly the conditions that make it difficult to become included.
