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In Vienna, globalisation has restructured urban society in terms of de-industrialisation, occupational change, migration and unemployment. This paper focuses on the restructuring of urban society and the related neighbourhood changes in Vienna from 1971 to 2001. The study applies social area analysis and factorial ecology to identify the underlying dimensions in the formation of socio-spatial patterns and neighbourhood change through a cross-sectional analysis. The analysis does not directly reveal a trend towards spatial polarisation but rather supports the concept of emerging structural differentiations in a ‘quartered city’. Social housing policies on entitlements and the city's withdrawal as a housing developer just as it was embarking on subsidised urban renewal have contributed to an accentuation of structural differences. Extending the analysis to the Vienna metropolitan region indicates that suburbanisation is reinforcing a socio-spatial polarisation within the city proper, exacerbated by the territorial fragmentation of social housing policies between the city and its suburban region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review considers the following questions: Why is the city undertheorized in anthropology? Why is an anthropological voice rarely heard in the urban studies and urban policy discourse? Anthropological literature published since 1989 is reviewed, with an emphasis on contributions to urban theory and the locating of anthropological studies within the broader context of urban studies. The city is found not to be absent in anthropological theory, but it has had no major theoretical impact. The images of the ethnic city, divided city, deindustrialized city, and global city have been most influential, as has research in the areas of racism, migration, poststructural studies of conflict and resistance, and critiques of architecture and urban planning. The literature continues to focus on the links between the experience of individuals and sociopolitical and economic processes as well as on the cultural meaning of the urban environment. The newest areas of inquiry include the study of urban space and time, metropolitan knowledge, and ethnoaesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]