THE URBAN COMPLEX IN A WORLD-ECONOMY

The focus is on major new developments. especially the urban impact of economic globalization. The first section discusses the new inter-urb an inequalities, paticularly the question of primacy and the impact of major new economic trends on so-called balanced urban systems. The se cond section is a more detailed discussion of one particular instance of the new inter-urban inequalities, thre emergent global urban system . There is a rapidly growing research literature that posits we are se eing the elements of a global hierarchy among cities that function as production sites and marketplaces for global capital. The third part f ocuses on new urban forms and social alignments. Are we seeing pattern s which suggest that the concept 'city' as used conventionally, is not adequate to describe the developments of major new urban regions, fro m the mega-cities of the Third World to the new regional grid of inter nationalized nodes that constitutes the spatial base of many global ci ties'? And are the new social alignments inside cities merely a quanta tive transformation or also a qualitative one?