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attention tends to focus on the growing social-economic problems, but increasingly some
member states also stress the potential of towns for stimulating the economy.
Cumulation of widespread social problems in the medium-size and larger cities
Nevertheless, the social-economic problems of the towns are still an important national
concern. The investigation has confirmed that a growing number of cities are confronted
with such fundamental social problems as unemployment, poverty, (youth) crime, arrears
in education, drugs consumption, and the integration of minorities and persons claiming
asylum. The fight against unemployment in particular has a high priority in almost all
countries, and persistent unemployment is one of the very problems that are increasingly
concentrated in urban areas. In the early industrialised North-European countries and in
the metropolitan regions in Italy and Spain, urban concentration of unemployment is a
well known phenomenon, but in the other member states, too, it is increasingly an urban
concern. In Greece, for instance, unemployment and poverty used to occur mainly in rural
parts, but progressive urbanisation has clearly caused a shift to the urban regions. In
Finland and Ireland as well, the unemployment problem is shifting from the periphery to
the towns. In short, whatever the degree of urbanisation which the member states of the
European Union have reached, unemployment notably scourges the cities in the whole of
Europe.
Besides unemployment, the integration of minorities and asylum-seekers in the urban
society claims much attention from national and local governors. These groups in society
appear to live mostly in the cities, and their massive throng to the towns and spatial
concentration within the towns obstructs the integration. The traditional inflow from other
parts of the world has in many member states greatly swollen under the influence of the
war in former Yugoslavia, especially so in the towns of South-Germany, North-Italy and
Austria, which already used to exert great attraction on former eastbloc countries.
In a growing number of member states, urban safety is increasingly important, and so are,
in its wake, the problems of drugs consumption and (youth) crime. Evidently, citizens in
the larger towns are more and more (feeling) insecure. The nature and intensity of other
social problems besetting the towns, such as the concentration of educational arrears, is
consistent with the degree of urbanisation.
That all these social worries are to be found notably in the towns is an interesting finding,
but what causes the typically metropolitan problems, explicitly recognised by national
governments of the member states, is their mutual reinforcement and their cumulation in
certain quarters or neighbourhoods of the central cities or suburbs. The danger of social-
economic and spatial segregation, a situation in which exclusion from the labour market,
educational level, ethnic descent and social origin raise barriers to a certain group within
the urban community, is recognised in all to some degree urbanised member states.
Balance in the national urban system
The interest of the national governments for the typically metropolitan problems and for a
balanced social development of the towns, has greatly increased in the past few years. In
some countries the national authorities attach much worth also to a balanced development