City, Class and Power

Abstract

Urban problems are increasingly at the heart of political debate in industrial capitalist societies. The Italian Left obtained a majority in the 1975 municipal elections in all the large towns, in part on the basis of urban protests and partly on the strength of being an alternative form of local government. The same phenomenon occurred in Japan, where socialists and communists, because they have given priority to urban and environmental issues, govern the most important cities. In the United States, the crisis of New York is only the most spectacular manifestation of a series of social contradictions which question a model of urban development which nevertheless remains indispensable for the organisation of an existence centred around the dominant interests of American society. In France, urban and regional policies are one of the clearest indicators of the cleavages and struggles between different political forces, as could be observed during the debate on the Galley Bill (which in 1975 tried to tax more heavily speculative use of land and triggered widespread opposition from the business circles), or yet still, in the successive measures which have been adopted with respect to public transport and urban-renewal programmes. The middle classes are living increasingly in the grands ensembles and some observers have gone as far as to attribute the success of the Left in the 1976 district elections to their dissatisfaction with the lifestyle in these new residential milieux. As we shall see, this process is in fact more complex.