The year 2016, marked by the British vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump's election as US president, crystallised a wider populist turn that also brought to power governments from Hungary to Brazil, India and beyond. These movements channelled a backlash against globalisation, immigration and established elites, frequently mapped onto a divide between cosmopolitan cities and a 'left-behind' hinterland. Migration, national identity and economic decline in former industrial regions became defining political cleavages. The trend strained both domestic and international consensus.
It hardened a metropolitan–peripheral political split that overlaps with the geography of urban growth and rural decline. It also strained the multilateral climate and urban agreements on which much planning consensus had relied.
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