Editorial

'Danger. Deep excavations. Deep water. Private property. Keep out’ If we were to seek to tell the story of our current moment, global and domestic, in five words, these could perhaps hardly be bettered. It is a moment of economic, social and environmental danger. Deep excavations abound, both neoliberal and alternative. Some, many, a multitude might learn to swim in these waters, but others have already claimed them: 'Private property. Keep out.’ There are, of course, other ways of telling the story. A much more specific one runs: 'As the economic crisis for the industrial economies is far from over -- but a spring of resistance movements is challenging governments in their blatant support for financial capital -- a new phase of neoliberal capitalism seems to be on the horizon.’ We start here with this more specific telling, first as told in three sentences (of which the above is the first), and as further presented and explored in this issue of CITY, returning eventually to the 'Danger’ sign and its landscape. The specific telling focuses on what the new phase of neoliberalism, if that is what it is, imposes in terms of deliberate socioeconomic outcomes, and then on alternative needs, on what is needed in order to overcome these impositions.