This paper puts cities at the forefront of the discussion. Cities have become on the one hand the engines of economic growth where on the other hand large concentrations of people suffer from an increasing inequality, seriously aggravated by the crisis, but cities have also become places where new solutions are in the making. The paper pursues a perspective, defining capital as basically a social relation, which enables me to criticise growth but also the belief in no-growth. Without growth, capitalism will not survive, and thus, the demand for no-growth challenges not only a desire but a whole system. That seems unrealistic as long as no alternative exists to put in its place. Furthermore, capitalism does not only consist of economy in the narrow sense but a relationship between growth and welfare. Hence, the increasing inequality in recent decades has to be understood in its relationship to a mainly financialised growth. Various urban policies have addressed these two dominating trends, also correctly in their conjunction, but often assessing the results as failures. In contrast, I will show such assessments to be flawed, because they tend to endorse the dominating relationship between financialised growth and unequal welfare. In the attempts to overcome the current crisis there is much to learn from urban policies, and the paper will highlight some policy implications of initiatives carried out at local level.