Cities of Europe 1 Introducing European Cities 1 Cities of Europe : Changing Contexts , Local Arrangements , and the Challenge to Social Cohesion

European cities are back on the agenda of urban scholars and researchers in social sciences as a distinct topic. In the last few years scientific production has markedly increased, highlighting their distinctiveness in comparative terms. [1] This increased interest towards difference is the outcome of the scientific debate and empirical research emerged from the need to understand the transformation trends set in motion at the end of the 1970s, their impacts, and the resulting growing diversity at different territorial levels. The deep process of spatial re-organisation which began in the aftermath of the crisis of Fordism brought about two apparently contradictory directions of change, running partly parallel and bringing about this distinctiveness to emerge. From the economic point of view, the extensive globalisation of production strategies and consumption behaviours, with multinational firms and financial markets playing a decisive role, has been paralleled by an increased localisation of production into regional economies and industrial districts with varying impacts at the local level. From the political point of view, the rise of supranational institutions and political configurations (e.g. EU, IMF, WTO,.), gaining strategic guidance in fostering the mobility of capital, goods, services and labour, has been paralleled by a transfer of regulatory authority downwards to subnational territories, namely regions and cities. These processes bring about a growing complexity which needs to be disentangled and this book is one of the few available contributions in that direction from the perspective of European cities. In fact, the way in which Converging trends characterised by the spread of market regulation mechanisms in a frame of increased and global economic competition have been played out are characterised by diverging impacts bringing about and increased heterogeneity at different territorial levels. This points to some distinctive elements that European cities have retained in this process, a distinctiveness which derives, according to an emerging body of literature with which I tie in, from the regulatory framework that structures the processes of social cohesion and integration taking place at the urban level. As will become evident changes do not occur in an institutional vacuum, but take full advantage of the regulatory heritage within which they are embedded. Even though not all chapters explicitly address the distinctiveness of European cities as their main focus, their difference from other contexts -in particular the US -emerges as a recurrent trait. The varied and partly mitigated impact of resurging inequality and poverty linked to the spread of market relations, the new forms of governance linked to the emergence of new local actors and innovative policies are just a few examples of how change might produce new contexts for cities. Investigating these changes in western European urban societies, understanding the tensions they might give rise, their multiple dimensions, the potential patterns of social vulnerability that might emerge, the impacts on the built environment and the solutions provided are the aims of this book. The authors address these issues providing the reader with a rich and diversified set of analytical tools and empirical evidence from comparative research to understand these processes. The book is even complemented by a highly innovative CD-Rom on visual paths through urban Europe to which all authors of the book refer to for any visual accounts given in the single chapters (see the specific section on the CD-Rom). The chapters have been grouped into three main sections. The first section addresses the changing contexts and the link with the local dimension this process might have. The second section