Conclusion: Assessing the Dark Side of Globalization Alexander Clarkson and Ramon Pacheco Pardo Rationale behind the book In the final two decades of the 20th century, the erosion of barriers to the movement of people and capital reshaped urban life across the globe. While there were undoubtedly differences in how vari- ous cities have adapted to an increasingly interconnected world, the socially disruptive consequences of globalization have also led to the blurring of the boundaries between the legal and illicit in many large cities. The intensification of trade and transport links made it more difficult for governments to control the movement of people and capital, resulting in a significant expansion of immigrant communi- ties in many major cities. As part of wider transnational diasporas, political and economic networks within these communities have often reshaped established power structures in ways that have helped shadow economies to flourish. The free movement of capital has had a similar transformative effect, creating new opportunities for legal as well as illicit entrepreneurs in some cases as well as speeding the decline of established business networks in others. As we have seen in this book, the impact of the movement of people and capital on urban spaces has attracted significant atten- tion from researchers. Particularly from the early 1990s onwards, scholars such as Saskia Sassen (1999), Ulrich Beck (1997) or Carolyn Nordstrom (2004) have continued to explore these processes through a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Yet there have also been aspects of the impact of globalization on urban spaces that have remained rather neglected. While the economic structures 192 L. S. Talani et al. (eds.), Dirty Cities © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013