The Rise and Fall of Urban Movements and the Role of Comparative Analysts

The paper is concerned with the changing incidence and militancy of urban movements since the 1960s, The diversity of experience between countries, and within countries over time, poses a problem of comparative analysis. This can be tackled by advancing a single model applying in highly diverse situations—as in Castells's The City and the Grassroots—or by constructing a series of submodels each of which applies in specific conditions. Castells's work is criticized for stressing movement characteristics at the expense of contextual characteristics, and an alternative approach is argued for in which urban movement experience is shaped by five contextual features: urbanisation conditions, state action, the political context, the development of middle class, and the general economic and social conditions. Submodels drawing on these features are used to make a comparative analysis of urban movement experience in France, Italy, and Spain. A typology of urban movements is drawn up: movements for the provision of and access to housing and urban services, for control and management, and for the defense of housing and neighbourhood. These relate to three distinct notions of urban—collective consumption, local political process, and spatial proximity—and the differential impact of the contextual features on each type of movement is shown. The paper is concerned with all types of urban movement, and uses the term ‘urban social movement’ to refer only to the extremely rare cases of a major change in urban power relations.