This paper discusses the problematic relationship between urban issues and social issues, from classical studies to contemporary dilemmas. Drawing on French authors, this paper studies the crisis of the cities as an expression of acute contemporary social issue. It presents the transition from conventional approaches of social class on the urban structure, that guided urban studies in the 60s-70s, the deregulation of the nineties, which produced social processes of dissocialization, and the paradox of the managerial vision of the city, away from the dimension of redistribution of the welfare state. It examines the urban polarization through notions of exclusion, underclass and the suburbanization of cities and concludes by showing how territory questions the State and society through a culture of daily urban violence. Finally, it states that the challenge is not restricted to market relations, or to a political order, but concerns politics and the conditions the "city" has to produce "society."
urban issues; social issues; urban segregation; poverty; social conflicts