It has been so in modern times in most, though not all, countries. Most buildings in a city tend to be privately owned. It is the challenge of understanding when that inequality becomes unacceptable to many and destructive of the complex system of differences that is a city. Thus my concern here is not with some romantic notion of equality for all. This level may vary enormously across cities.

The question becomes, at what point does the sharp rise in inequality become unacceptable? One of the issues with the current wave of acquisitions and developments, and their inevitable expulsions of the modest working and the middle classes, is their trespassing of acceptable levels of inequality as seen by the larger population of a city.

Such a transformation has deep and significant implications for equity, democracy, and rights. This could alter the historic meaning of the city. less mixity, more segregation of the rich, and so on). I want to argue that the scale of acquisitions of major buildings in the past several decades marks a systemic transformation in the pattern of land ownership and the spatial distribution of people (e.g.

Saskia sassen global city definition