EUROPEAN CITIES, THE INFORMATIONAL SOCIETY, AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

In this article the main structural-trends are discussed, that togethe r and in their interaction, provide the framework of social, economic, and political life for European cities in this particular historical period. The informational technological revolution is the backbone of all other major structural trends. It produces a new social structure, the informational society, depending on the capacity to retrieve, sto re, process, and generate information of a global economy. Finally, th ere is the ineluctable process of European integration. From these tre nds stem some spatial transformations. First, the national-internation al business centres, made up of an infrastructure of telecommunication s, urban services, and office space, are the engines of the informatio nal-global economy. Secondly, the cities are becoming socially and fun ctionally more diversified spaces. The new elites are locating in reha bilitated areas of the central city, also the locus for the ghettoes o f new immigrants. In these dual cities, urban policy has to meet the a rticulation of the globally oriented economic functions of the city wi th the locally rooted society.