Neo-liberal globalisation and crisis in winning and emerging spaces

Abstract

The profound transformations experienced by economic, social and labour structures observed since the end of the 20th century have speeded up and become more profound over the last decade when a crisis of exceptional importance was generated. Although this crisis started as a financial one, it has developed until becoming systemic. Closely connected with these processes, associated territorial changes also occurred, on the one hand, to the innovations linked to information technologies that have allowed the exponential growth of flows and the resulting densification of the network area; on the other, to the serious alterations and impacts arising from the crisis. In this general reference context it is interesting to pay attention to those more dynamic and innovative areas which, being more directly associated with the dominant economic and spatial logics, have come to be considered as winning or emerging. In that regard, this article tries to resume the reflection made on these types of areas almost two decades ago by looking at them anew in order to try to recognise the changes they have undergone during a particularly convulsive and complex period. Apart from the consolidation of the neo-liberal ideology which has proven so decisive in the make-up of the crisis, social and territorial inequalities have also deepened during this period.