This interdisciplinary text examines the contemporary nature and possible futures of cities in a postindustrial and globalized world. Cities are considered both as complex systems and as the product of collective human action. The theoretical perspectives of urban history, geography and sociology, and empirical studies from the developed, developing and former soviet systems, are brought together to describe the crucial processes of the restructuring of urban employment, the creation of the built environment and the transformation of "culture" in cities.