ABSTRACT
This book has been devoted largely to experiments with and initiatives for fermenting socially emancipatory practices in urban neighbourhoods, often characterised by multiple forms of exclusion and deprivation. Ironically, the still persisting socio-spatial inequalities that choreograph everyday life in the poorest areas of cities are often exacerbated exactly by the perverse logic of uneven social development and deepening uneven power relations. These inequalities are etched in and accompany the tactics to rejuvenate, reinvigorate or otherwise render more competitive urban and regional economies in a globalising (neo)liberal world (Swyngedouw et al., 2002). The inevitable moment of reckoning of this competitiveness obsession arrived with the onslaught, in the fall of 2008 of the deepest economic crisis since at least the 1930s, which will make matters undoubtedly worse for these neighbourhoods. More than ever before, innovative thought and creative practices will be required to deal with the fallout of this spiralling urban crisis (Harvey, 2009a), which will further widen the already considerable gap between rich and poor, between empowerment and disempowerment, between those who cannot any longer think about what new needs to chase and those who do not have the means to satisfy even the most basic needs.
