The global neoliberal shift of the 1990s forward— the wholesale privatization of public goods and cutbacks in all social programs combined with an identity-based reading of human rights—and U.S. imperial responses to global terrorism have further complicated urban representations and realities. Among the factors reconfiguring U.S. urban life are the representation of cities as targets of terrorist attacks; the uncertainty occasioned by simultaneous economic growth, unstable markets, rising public deficits, and wholesale layoffs; the outsourcing of white- and blue-collar jobs to non- U.S. urban workers; the explosion of “urban contemporary” (black and Latino) music, dance, and fashion; the hyper-gentrification of urban housing markets; and the development of urban cores as tourist destinations. Simultaneously, the development of a network of “global cities”—New York, London, and Tokyo, among others—has centralized the administration and growth of finance capital (Sassen 1991). At the dawn of the twenty-first century, cities continue to serve as metonyms of both nations and their discontents.

This is an excerpt from Micaela di Leonardo’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (43-44).