Neighborhoods In The Globalized World

Are neighbourhoods still important in a globalised and connected world, where people are supposed to be crossing borders more easily than ever, and connected all the time with others no matter where they are? Does it still make sense to look at the neighbourhood level to understand the dy-namics of change in and of the urban fabric? How do social networks and space - mainly neighbourhoods - interact with one another? This volume collects some of the papers presented at the session “How much do urban neighbourhoods matter in a networked globalised world?” of the RC21 Conference held in Berlin in August 2013. The relation between space and social relations is an old one in urban studies (from Weber and Simmel on), and it is now reformulated in terms of space/neighbourhoods and social networks. I will not go through that litera-ture which is referenced by almost all authors in this volume and in particular in Marques’ article. All contributions presented in this volume tackle the is-sue be it from different perspectives, and all together they show the complex and bidirectional relation between these two fundamental elements. Starting from the contributions in this volume, two issues can be raised that are shown in a powerful way in the articles: access to places and spaces is always mediated by social networks; space and places contribute to struc-ture social networks, and the access to those spaces/places contributes to re-affirm differentiation in social status