Urbanity as a Political Project: Towards Post-national European Cities

The world is in a transition period with far-reaching social changes. The umbrella metaphor for these changes is the “process of globalisation.” Both the term and the scale of globalisation are a matter for discussion. At least one important dimension of the process is the precarious nature of the balance between the market driven world system on the one hand and the political system of nation-states on the other hand. The global order is under reform. Within that tension, the increased urbanisation adds a specific dynamic. For the first time in history, the majority of mankind lives in an urban context. In the most industrialised continents that amounts to more than three quarters. The quantitative process does not in itself imply a qualitative shift. In the framework on the global restructuring of governance though, the urban systems tend to burst out of the national frames they have been caught in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is in that context that we agree with those like Davis (2006: 1), who are radicalising the importance of the transition: “it will constitute a watershed in human history, comparable to the Neolithic or Industrial revolutions.” The discussion on creative cities finds its full importance at the centre of this paradigm shift, where creative industries and actors are not merely a new kind of economic entrepreneur beneficial for post-industrial economies, but where creative cities are thought of as society builders of a new kind (Castells 1996, 1997, 1998; Featherstone 1990; Harvey 1989; Lash 1994).