Elaborating, the
development of a larger theoretic body, connected at least partly to the
Marxian tradition, focusing on the city as a unique spatial form and/or on the
city in relation to the production of other geographic scales conveys a range
of alternative approaches in defining the uniqueness of the city, which I
intend to summarize as follows:
1. The Urban as a New Stage in Social Development
This approach most transparently
concerns the perspective on cities developed by Lefebvre in The Urban
Revolution where the urban defines a virtuality – a social formation in
gestation, emerging from industrial society (2003: 14-17). For Lefebvre, the urban encapsulates a range
of conditions embodied in diverse Marxian conceptions of communism, including
industrial and municipal self-management (urban/concrete democracy)
(2003: 150, 180) and production on the basis of use value, inclusive of the
production of spatial milieux as an outcome of the practice of
habiting/development of everyday life (2003: 82-83, 90).
A critical
implication of Lefebvre’s reasoning, one that has been fecund in shaping other
Marxian theories on urban society, is that every social formation produces its
own social space as an outcome of spatial practices that reshape lived
spaces in conformity with the logic of each social formation (1991: 38,
348-349). Such social spaces exist as
composite layers of infrastructural sediments in which new social formations
appropriate, displace, consume, and/or redefine the meanings of spaces from
preceding social formations. Early
manifestations of social space, dominated by the production of religious or
politically symbolic absolute space, appropriated and transformed natural
space, producing a kind of “second nature” (Ibid: 48-49, 109). In industrial society, this “second nature”
is, again, transformed into a functionally-defined and homogenizing abstract
space, corresponding, on the one hand, to the demands of industrial
capitalism and, on the other hand, to a subjugation of spatial form to state
planning – living and working spaces conceived mechanistically in accordance
with Cartesian/Euclidean visions of space to serve differentiated functional
roles through rigidly determined architectural and topographical forms (Ibid:
49-53, 360-362). The rigid
differentiation and impositions of functionality through architectural
conception on spatial forms, most evident in modernist architecture, qualifies
industrial social spaces as abstract.[3] Abstract space seeks to reflect both the
homogenization and conformity imposed on everyday life by industrial mass
production and the commodification of use values, and the regimentation and
repression of difference imposed on civil society by the bureaucratic
state.
By contrast, in
the transition to urban society, the possibility exists for the creation of a concrete,
differential space corresponding to a different, democratized constitution
of human needs – the creative liberation of spatial form and content from the
fetters created by industrial, Cartesian rationality and the abolition of state
bureaucratic repression (Lefebvre, 1991: 52-53; 2003, 178-180). In particular, differential space represents
the possibility of a reintegration of conception (i.e. architectural and land
use planning) and the lived experience of space by its users. Proceeding in distinctly Hegelian
dialectical terms, industrial society/abstract space represents the negation of
absolute space, in turn to be transcended through the negation of the negation
– differential space, existing as the product of a democratized human
creativity, restoring, in turn, the unity of conception (i.e. democratized planning)
and the lived experience of urban space.
I attribute a
good deal of importance to this approach not only because it has influenced
numerous other Marxist theorizations of the city, but also because it concerns
the projection of a new social formation across space or, expressed in a
slightly different terminology more fully developed in The Production
of Space (1991), the production of a different kind of space conducive to a
different post-industrial and post-capitalist social
formation. An all-encompassing
appraisal of this approach is beyond the focus of this project, but it suffices
to argue that Lefebvre’s urban society is significant because it reframes
counter-hegemonic struggle against industrial capitalism in reference to the
differential appropriation, utilization, and assignment of meaning to urban
space, and comprehends the urban, at least potentially, as an all-encompassing
reality, as a socially produced “second nature.”
2.
The City as Locus for the Reproduction of Labor Power
The onus in this approach to the
city rests on its role as a particular site for the reproduction of the human
capacity to do work (labor power) on a recurring basis, required for the
productive consumption of labor power in capitalist commodity production. It constitutes a theoretic extension of
Marx’s initial discussion of the commodity labor power in Capital,
focusing on the practical/historical questions of consumption practices and,
especially, the particularities of consumption practices in large population
centers. This approach most strongly
reflects the direction taken by French Marxist sociologists in the 1970s,
including theorists connected to the PCF (e.g. Lojkine, 1976) and those lying
on its margins, like Castells (1977; 1978).
The focus for
all of these theorists is the provision of public services (education, health
care facilities, public space) by the state as a component of collective
consumption, produced primarily in cities.
In this manner, the development of a distinctive urban sociology in this
period directly concerns the characteristics of public service provision, the
role of state intervention in labor power reproduction, levels of public
financing, and ideological effects (relative to the potential for working class
organization against capitalist exploitation) as the distinctive
characteristics separating urban social processes from those of non-urban
populations (Lebas, 1981; Saunders, 1986).
A key problem to
this approach concerns its inability to rigorously connect collective provision
of public services to the spatial/geographic form of the city. Most emphatically, Castells argues in The
Urban Question (1977: 445) that the city structurally defines a unit of
collective consumption, implying that the concrete historical and geographic
conjuncture of any particular city, including its roles in capitalist
production processes, would be irrelevant to its description relative to the
consumption-oriented social relationships that define it. This reduction of the city to a unit in the
collective reproduction of labor power prompted Saunders (1986: 204) to argue
that the terms of urban sociology, as defined by Castells, had, in fact,
nothing to do with the geography of cities and that the retention of the term “urban
sociology” constituted a pure matter of convention. The only apparent resolution to this problem
appears in the convergence of this approach with Lefebvre’s definition of the
urban as a unique and all-encompassing social formation. That is to say, if state intervention in the
reproduction of labor power constitutes the urban and such intervention is
ubiquitous across space, then the state must produce the urban (or, rather,
industrial society, as the homogenized though fragmented predecessor of urban
society in gestation) in the manner understood by Lefebvre.
Following
further from this line of criticism, the approach, in general, fails to explain
why consumption processes involved in the reproduction of labor power cannot be
de-collectivized (e.g. through tax subsidies for private purchases of
individual houses rather than through the construction of large-scale public
housing (Saunders, 1986: 332-351)).
This observation is important insofar as the retraction of the state
from direct provision of goods and services in support of labor power
reproduction, as a component of Neoliberal policy, is a ubiquitous
feature of contemporary public policy in Western industrialized economies. In fact, to the extent that Neoliberalism
goes beyond the retraction of the state from the provision of articles of
collective consumption, to incorporate tacit support for reductions in the
value of labor power and, hence, in the mass of goods and services consumed to
reproduce labor power as a means of enhancing capitalist exploitation, the
development of definitions of the city with regard to labor power reproduction
demands a reformulation to account for historically and geographically
contingent relations between labor, capitalist firms, and the state.
Assuming, for the purposes of argument, the basic admissibility of definitions of the city based on consumption processes, the larger body of theories contained within this approach reflect conditions of “high Fordism” that are, in large part, no longer current. Rather, the more contemporary equivalent of this literature is reflected in images of the “Neoliberal city” of state supported gentrification, appealing both to the desire of higher income groups to upscale, urban residential lifestyles and the desire of local states to reap the effects of an enhanced tax base (Smith, 2002). In neither the case of state supported collective consumption in the 1970s nor contemporary manifestations of state supported gentrification is there any indication of a generalized retraction of the state from development of the city as a spatial entity but merely a transformation of its role. In both cases, the relationship between consumption practices and state intervention is critical to the definition of the city.
3. The City as a Product of Accumulation in the Secondary Capital
Circuit
This approach attempts to read
urban spatial form/geography directly in reference to Marx’s theorization of
capitalism in Capital, specifically in relation to alternative circuits
for accumulation of capital in simple and expanded reproduction (Marx, 1992:
468-599). In particular, this approach
highlights the relevance of capital accumulation in the production of the
physical space of cities (residences, office space, means of communication/roads/rail,
etc.). Lefebvre’s The Production
of Space (1991: 345-348) references such manifestations of capital
accumulation in the production of the built form of cities, arguing that
produced urban space, including infrastructures, constitute means of production
critical to the production of surplus value.
Gottdiener (1985) expands on Lefebvre’s account, specifically making the
claim that real estate processes can, under certain circumstances, produce
realizable surplus values rather than simply constituting a drain for surplus
capital not otherwise invested in other capitalist commodity producing
processes. The argument most strongly
concerns the capacity of investors in the development or redevelopment of space
to transform the characteristics of built infrastructure in order to facilitate
different uses. Notwithstanding the
relevance of Gottdiener’s take on real estate processes, my main concern in
introducing this approach regards Harvey’s theorization of capital accumulation
in urban built form.
Harvey’s key
contribution involves theorization of a secondary capital circuit,
implied by passages in Marx’s Capital (1992: 471-474) concerning the
division between departments I (means of production) and II (articles of
consumption) in a capitalist economy. Harvey’s
secondary circuit includes investments in the construction or purchase of
non-productive urban built infrastructures, very often under speculative
motives. Such investments arise, in
part, as an outcome of overaccumulation in productive, commodity producing
capital (primary capital circuit), generating diminished rates of profit
to commodity production and inducing capitalists to find alternative sources
for investment of an accumulation fund bearing above average rates of
return. Harvey (1989B: 73-83) argues
that the construction or purchase of residential and office space in cities
constitutes a possible source for such returns, under the condition that
financial markets and state support (e.g. fiscal incentives for real estate
development) facilitate the realization of profits from construction and/or
rents for consumption utilization over an extended turnover period on invested
capital.
Further,
according to Harvey’s argument, the need to develop such an outlet for
accumulated capital may give rise to accelerated devaluation of built
infrastructure, often with the help of state policies (e.g. tax incentives for
new commercial or residential construction) or financial sector practices (e.g.
redlining in poor neighborhoods) in order to make room for redevelopment of
existing spaces (1973; 1989B:
117-124). Such institutional expedients
become necessary when the existence of an extensive built environment inhibits
the development of new infrastructures serving the needs of both consumption
(collective and individual) and commodity production. Harvey’s account covers much of the same ground as Gottdiener’s
elaboration of real estate investment, but does so at a more generalized level
of abstraction at which complexities involved in competitive determinations on
the use of space disappear in favor of an image of functional rationality to
capital in general.
The importance of this approach consists of its effort
to integrate the logic of Marx’s arguments about capital accumulation in Capital
into an explanation of urban spatial development. The arguments here are, further, suggestive of a larger
explanation on what Harvey (2001; 2006A: 431-438) has termed the spatial fix
for diminishing rates of profit in industrial capitalism, incorporating a
diversity of strategies for capital accumulation in multiple circuits (primary,
secondary, and tertiary) across a global array of urban contexts, through which
surplus capital may become locked into built space. The approach implies a definition of globalization, driven
expressly and reductively through the accumulation of capital in myriad,
discrete urban geographic contexts. In
this sense, Harvey’s theories have been influential in shaping the theories of
other Marxian geographers seeking to directly link urban development to
capitalist laws of development (e.g. the law of uneven development
(Smith, 2008)). For my purposes, such
approaches convey a particular, partial explanation for the localized
production of spatial forms in relation to capitalist accumulation, but they
can neither be wholly explanatory of urban spatial production nor do they
effectively situate other processes contained by cities (e.g. commodity
production) as definitive features of the city.
[3] This
position on modernist architecture and urban planning in Lefebvre’s writings
follows and is shaped in some degree by that of the Situationist school and its
most important theorists like Debord (1955) and Constant Nieuwenhuis (1972).
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