Urban policies and the globalization crisis
By Gustave Massiah
19-05- 2012
The globalization crisis puts a new perspective on the issue of urban transformation. After considering some aspects of the connection between globalization and urbanization, we will return to urban policies and urban models before going on to repeat the importance of urban social movements. We will then go into the effects of the crisis on urban policies and end with alternative policy proposals, initially restricted to local policies.
The crisis of neoliberalism puts into perspective recent decades and the close link between globalization and urbanization. Urbanization has changed and is no longer an extension into the South of the 19th century urban revolution. It now corresponds more to a breakdown in urban development. The evolution of globalization upsets the geopolitical system and calls into question the very nature of States. It alters the links between local, national, regional and global; between rural and urban; and between individual and universal.
Therefore the author reviews the transformation of the world’s population through migrations and explosion of cities, the evolution of urban models and urban policies in the North and the South, as well as the development of urban social movements with the demand for inhabitants’ participation in democratic processes. While the dangers of the general crisis linked to globalization are known (poverty, housing, violence, insecurity), the opportunities are not, and the author presents examples of them. The challenge is that of asserting rights and their inscription in urban policies and in the generation of cities, including the right to the city for everyone. With a description of different alternative local policies in their challenges and strategic lines, the author introduces the importance of the linking of levels and scales, between the local, the national, the large regions and the global. Urban and spatial thinking must combine the responses to balanced, multipolar geopolitics, to social justice, to the ecological urgency and to respect for liberties.