1 Unequal development. Economic specialization and social inequalities in six European Cities. (Draft version) Roberta Cucca Laboratory of Social Policy, Polytechnic of Milan roberta.cucca@polimi.it Urban Affairs Association Conference 2011 New Orleans, 16-19 march 2011 Introduction This paper focuses on the relations between economic competitiveness and social inequalities in European contemporary large cities. It is a contribute to the theoretical debate on the transformation of the urban social structure, after the globalization and finantiarization of the urban economy, as well as the widespread of neo-liberal policies challenging the welfare state. This is a very popular and controversial topic into the field of urban sociology. Starting from the Nineties, several scholars have highlighted the growing of stronger cleavages in the social structures of Western city. In the north American context this process has been mainly represented as a progressive trend of social polarization (Sassen, 1991) between the populations at the extremes of the employment strata: on one hand a substantial process of concentration in the urban context of high-skilled workers (in the fields of ICT and finance) (Florida, 2004) and on the other a conspicuous increase of low-skilled workers (employed in services with low specialization tasks), badly paid and scarcely protected with respect to the risks connected with their work condition. As regards the European context, starting from the late Seventies, many phenomena have forced a way out from a social-economic system basically fouŶded oŶ the Fordist AgreeŵeŶt ;HarǀeLJ, ϭϵϵϮͿ ďetǁeeŶ State-Capital and the working class, through the welfare state (Piore and Sabel, 1984; Markusen et al., 1986; Esser and Hirsch, 1989, Turok, 2006). The main theoretical and empirical contributes on this topic have focused on the increase of the income inequalities between social groups (Ranci, 2007), rather than polarization. Following this line of thought, the passage from an economy based on manual labour to a system based on services and EDP would have involved a sustained increase in medium to highly qualified jobs and a significant decrease in the lesser qualified ones. In recent years, several studies carried out on creative economy in cities (Florida, 2004) and the financial sector have further strengthened this theory, focusing on the identification of a progressive process of professionalization of the urban middle classes (Hamnett, 2003).