Emerging cities of the third wave

I argue that three distinctive waves of urbanization can be recognized, each of them associated with a major historical phase of capitalist development. The leading edges of capitalism today can be typified in terms of a basic cognitive–cultural system of production that is transforming the economic foundations of many large metropolitan areas all over the world. This turn of events is evident in two further aspects of urbanization processes at the present time. First, a new division of labor is strongly under way with major implications for the restratification of urban labor markets and urban social life. Second, the economic and social transformations currently evident in large urban areas are provoking significant changes in the physical milieu and built form of the city, from gentrification to what I call aestheticized land use intensification. I attempt to synthesize important elements of the discussion by means of a disquisition on the city and the world, in which I point to some of the more outstanding institutional failures within the current system of neoliberal local–global development.