Christian Lefèvre, Gilles Pinson

Urban Powers: Cities, Politics, and Globalization.

Paris, Armand Colin, 240 p. (Coll. The Urban Century)

More than half of the world's population now lives in cities.
Urban areas have become the dominant setting for social practices and relationships,
but also the ecosystem in which globalized capitalism flourishes. Cities have thus
emerged as a key scale for understanding and acting on the economic, social, and environmental issues of our time.
Urban actors, Urban actors,
whether elected officials, bureaucrats, economic actors, city professionals,
or researchers, strive to make sense of the transformations affecting cities
and to respond to them with political, economic, and social innovations.
As a space for innovation, the urban environment has also become the subject of both
scientific and political controversy.
This book provides a critical assessment of these debates, focusing on five
controversies: widespread urbanization, the relationship between urban environments and
capitalism, the relationship between cities and states, the distribution of power in
cities and urban democracy, and the governance of metropolitan areas.