This review surveys the recent evidence and debate surrounding social and spatial polarization within cities. To begin with, a brief account is provided of the significance of global restructuring and the contraction of the welfare state for widening inequalities in capitalist societies, and how this is being reflected, in turn, in modifications to the character and incidence of poverty in cities. In this section, to pick up on the concluding remarks in the preceding review (Badcock, 1996), attention is drawn to how emphatically important structural effects remain to an understanding of spatial polarization in cities and the profound changes that are taking place in people's lives at the community level. The next section selectively documents some of the key contributions to research on urban poverty and polarization in the USA including the theories relating to the 'new urban poverty', the formation of a ghetto-bound 'underclass' and the emergence of a new spatial order based upon a 'global city' paradigm. In the third section the comparative evidence for growing spatial polarization in cities is examined. This includes some consideration of the portability and relevance of constructs developed under American conditions for cities in other, mostly western, societies. Lastly, a case is made suggesting why this research on spatial polarization is quite vital from a public policy perspective, and why human geographers should be in the thick of it.
