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The ongoing crisis in Europe has dramatic impact on the life in many Southern European cities: Unemployment, social deprivation, poverty, political instability, severe cuts in the welfare state budgets and a wide spread feeling of despair have eroded much of the social foundation of the cities.In this book, contributors from Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy provide an insight into the complex interference between the different aspects of the crisis. They show that the recent urban crisis is not purely a result of the budgetary problems of the nation state ("austerity urbanism") but needs to be seen as multiple contestations. The Crisis of the City is therefore understood as a result of a changing nation state, cultural diversity, challenged urban planning and politics and a globalized economy.

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"Eine wichtige Bereicherung der stadtsoziologischen Debatte um die europäische Stadt." Detlef Baum, www.socialnet.de, 21.03.2016 Besprochen in: Portal für Politikwissenschaft, 11.02.2016, Matthias Lemke Stadt und Raum, 1 (2016)

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Frank Eckardt is a political scientist and a professor for urban studies and social research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. In 2007 he was a guest Professor at Science Po Paris and from 2008 till 2010 he was an acting professor for urban sociology at the Goethe-University Frankfurt. His main field of research are social inequalities and cultural diversity in the city. Javier Ruiz Sánchez (PhD) is a professor for urban planning at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

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