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World population is expected to increase by some 2.6 billion from 6.9 billion in 2010 to more than 9.5 billion by mid-century. Most of this population increase will occur in the developing nations, and most of this increase will be absorbed in the rapidly expanding metropolitan regions of these countries – the so-called megacities of the twenty-first century (United Nations, 2009). And as urban development accelerates across the globe, most of the population increase will occur in the emerging megacities and other metropolitan areas in Africa, Asia and South America. Because the original areas of settlement in the city centre have long been established, much of the population increase in these metropolitan regions will occur in the suburban areas of cities in the Global South – areas of favelas and shanty towns alongside earlier middle-class and upper-class suburbs, newly planned gated communities and garden suburbs, and indigenous models of suburban growth that will emerge in the next century.

Consideration needs to be given to the difference [that] the diversity of cities makes to theory.Robinson (2002, p. 549)

The marginalisation of council housing in Britain since the Housing Act of 1980 threatens to obscure some of the very valuable lessons to be learned from almost a century of mass public housing provision. This chapter demonstrates that despite considerable economic problems, and in the face of social change since 1980, a relatively poor council estate remained a site of social capital, and that women were particularly prominent in working with local agencies to solve problems.

Governor Robert F. Casey made his first state visit to Homestead, Pennsylvania the day after his inauguration in January 1987 to announce a package of plans for restoring economic vitality to metropolitan Pittsburgh in the wake of steel's collapse. Earlier urban renewal had involved large-scale demolition of older downtowns for conversion to commercial and industrial use, but state and local officials now emphasized a two-pronged redevelopment approach largely modeled on the success of the postwar suburbs. The closure of the Monongahela River (Mon) Valley's mammoth steel mills opened large swaths of land and prompted calls for planned riverfront manufacturing and retail districts similar to those sites sprouting up at suburban interchanges. A second and related effort involved schemes to build new highways tying aging communities in the river valleys to both Pittsburgh and new suburban growth areas, such as the sprawling “edge city” of Monroeville less than 10miles away. Indeed, Casey had a special project in mind for revitalizing the iconic Homestead – construction of the long-delayed Mon/Fayette Expressway that would parallel the river south of Pittsburgh. “This is another big step [to] help bring businesses and jobs into the region,” the governor later declared. “No longer is this valley a forgotten valley” (as cited in Basescu, 1989, p. 1).

While I do not intend to provide an exhaustive survey of North African emigration to France and the history of banlieue and urban formation in France (see Stovall, 2003), I nonetheless provide a brief background related to place and immigrants in order to contextualize how place is invoked, or is not, in second-generation North African immigrant identities. France's relationship with the Maghreb began with the colonization of Algeria in 1830, of Tunisia in 1831, and of Morocco in 1931. Algeria remained in French control until 1962, and Tunisia and Morocco remained in French control until 1956.

The international literature on the impacts of globalization on large cities has insistently pointed to the increase in residential segregation. Three mechanisms have been identified as the causes of this phenomenon: globalization, which by disseminating neoliberal ideas throughout the world, generated changes in the regulatory models and paradigms that guide urban policy; institutional reforms toward market liberalization and the property and housing market were undertaken in various countries; real estate prices became the central mechanism for distributing the population throughout the city, reinforcing income inequality as the determinant of urban spatial organization. At the same time, privatization exacerbated the growing inequality of access to the services and infrastructure that ensure urban well-being, especially with regard to quality. The wealthier areas, where those with greater purchasing power concentrate, have at their disposal an abundant supply of goods and services, whereas the areas populated by the poor are supplied with inferior goods and services. Further, globalization caused structural changes originating in the transformation of the productive base of the cities, creating trends toward social polarization. The social structure of the great metropolises is no longer represented by a pyramid, and is expressed instead by an hourglass where the middle positions narrow while the extremities widen. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in the distance between the average incomes of the higher and lower strata.