But in spite of the fact that the two issues are intimately related – underlying the question of the future of cities are a series of theoretical issues related to how human societies relate to space, and how technologies are part of that relation – there has so far been no attempt to bring theories of society and space together with a view to throwing light on the future of cities. At the same time, the more general issue of the relations between society and space, until recently profoundly ignored outside spatial sciences, has also become a focus of great theoretical attention, particularly in social theory and critical cultural studies – what has been called, remarkably, the spatial turn in the social and cultural sciences.

The effort to catch up with social, economic, technological and spatial transformations has divided theorists: questions about the end of the city as we know it and the emergence of new spatialities, to theories about the increasing importance of the city in the contexts of a new, global economy powered by information technology.

The future of cities has been subject to intense debate.

Definition global cities