Conclusion: the New Frontiers of Urban Research

The analyses presented here have given us the opportunity to appraise a gradual transformation of what has been understood as ‘urban’ in advanced capitalist-countries, both in practice as well as in theory. The most distinctive feature is that urban politics are at the centre of the urbanisation process, and that they play an increasingly important part in the whole of the political process as such. It therefore becomes essential to understand the relations between power and the city in order to grasp the meaning of one and the other. Furthermore, these relations become intelligible only when they are introduced within the general dynamic of social classes. This dynamic does not simply refer to the social inequality between socio-professional groups, but is first and foremost defined by the historical process of the class struggle; that is to say, relations between power and the city must be studied from the viewpoint of the ability each class develops in orientating social organisations according to its interests, among which are its intervention in the sphere of the social practices of the city.