Decentralization as a Cause of Spatial Segregation

Abstract

The city is a complex, constant and incomplete process. Dynamic changes in the demographic and spatial growth of the modern city, affect its functional organization. Consequently, cities with the specific expansion both vertically and horizontally, change the urban concept over the time. In this regard, the paper will highlight the problem of spatial segregation and alienation of the population which is the idea of a functional city, as it continues to exist through the concept of polycentric cities. This was a clear message that the rationality of the organization of the city did not offer good results. This principle of urbanism is characterized as a new form of organizing the social differences and creation of segregation, contrary to the idea of urbanism that turns the city into a single homogeneous entity eliminating differences. Along with the aforesaid, the neoliberal globalization process, emphasizing the hierarchical divisions, deepens and inaugurates a new concept of the divided city. Due to the extreme inequalities, the town itself produces a new urbanism that is reflected in the significant spatial divisions and forms of behavior in cities. Socio-economic polarization and inequality pollute the space giving birth to a new idea of a city. The city becomes a complex process and structure that is imprisoned in the model of duality between conflicting social spaces. All this implies an unbreakable bond between the divided society and the divided city.