The Emerging 'Urban Agenda' and the European Spatial Development Perspective: Towards an EU Urban Policy?

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of escalating problems in European urban areas caused partly by economic and technological changes in the European and global economies. The most visible representation of these changes has been a growth in urban unemployment and social exclusion. The European Commission has taken a growing interest in these issues and attempted to develop an European Union (EU)-wide approach to urban change. The focus of this paper is on the Commission's attempt to develop an 'urban agenda' and to promote policies which are more 'urban sensitive'. With reference to the 'urban agenda' this paper examines the contribution of, and problems associated with, two Urban Communications recently published by the Commission and the European Spatial Development Perspective. It then assesses the prospects for the development of an EU Urban Policy, arguing that an 'explicit' urban policy is unlikely to emerge in the short or medium term.     

THE POLITICS OF KNOWING: SPATIAL ISOLATION,DISCONNECTION AND SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL

Overarching connectivity, technologically mediated co‐presence and the flow of social association have become taken‐for‐granted features in the central narratives used to characterize our contemporary condition. Yet the pervasiveness of such perspectives risks theoretical hubris; there is a need to codify suitable antidotes that reflect on the relative limitations of such positions. This article provides the opening discussion for this special issue on socio‐spatial formations of isolation and disconnection. It is argued that to render visible those spaces and populations often ignored become important theoretical, empirical and political projects because of the way that assumptions about the extension of networks has tended to amplify the marginalization of those not attached to them. A consideration of disparate examples, including loneliness, electronic isolation and purposive concealment, guide us perhaps to a less strident and more finely graded account of the fuller range of human experience and myriad contexts in which it occurs.