The Urban Process under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis

Author: David Harvey
Year: 1981 (chapter; orig. in Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society, 1978)
Source type: chapter
Raw file: raw/chapters/harvey-1981-urban-process-under-capitalism.md

Summary

Harvey's framework for understanding the urban process under capitalism, organized "on the twin themes of accumulation and class struggle." The urban process entails the creation of a "built environment" — a physical infrastructure serving as a "complex of use values" for the production of value and surplus value. Investment in the built environment forms a secondary circuit of capital into which overaccumulated capital is switched (via credit and fictive capital), subject to long-wave rhythms, periodic devaluation, and the contradiction between fixed, immobile spatial assets and capital's drive to "annihilate space with time." Class struggle (the "housing question," suburbanization as an antidote, the "principle of community") shapes the urban form.

Key Claims

• Accumulation and class struggle: "Within the framework of capitalism, I hang my interpretation of the urban process on the twin themes of accumulation and class struggle ... different sides of the same coin." Accumulation is "the means whereby the capitalist class reproduces both itself and its domination over labour."
• The built environment as resource system: the urban process entails "the creation of a material physical infrastructure for production, circulation, exchange and consumption" — a "complex composite commodity" that is "long-lived, difficult to alter, spatially immobile and often absorbent of large lumpy investments."
• The secondary circuit and overaccumulation: capitalists "tend to under-invest in the built environment relative to their own ... needs at the same time as they tend to overaccumulate"; overaccumulated capital can "be switched ... via ... the creation of fictional capital within the credit system" into the built environment — "a 'long wave' in investment in the built environment." At some point investment becomes unproductive and "the exchange value being put into the built environment has to be written down, diminished, or even totally lost."
• The contradiction of fixed capital in space: fixed capital "freezes productivity"; capital "builds a physical landscape appropriate to its own condition ... only to have to destroy it, usually in the course of a crisis"; "annihilate space with time" produces spatial structures that become "themselves barriers to further accumulation." The resulting landscape is "the crowning glory of past capitalist development" but "expresses the power of dead labour over living labour."
• The housing question and class struggle: housing is a key item in the cost of labour power; postwar US overaccumulation was "in part resolved by the creation of a whole new life style through ... suburbanization," with homeownership as an antidote to class struggle ("the 'moral influence' of the suburbs"). The "principle of community" can be either a bourgeois antidote or "a springboard for class action."
• Switching crises: class struggle can provoke "switching crises" that change "the structure of investment flows"; when capital cannot switch geographically or concede, it must invest in "repression" or "fall before the worker."

Connections

Concepts: Neoliberal Metropolis · Gentrification · Ideology · Everyday Life
Authors: David Harvey
Debates: (capitalism, urbanization & gentrification)
Related source notes: The Enigma of Capital (Harvey 2010) · The Architecture of the City (Bismarck)

Direct Quotes

"[C]apital represents itself in the form of physical landscape created in its own image ... The geographical landscape which results is the crowning glory of past capitalist development. But ... it expresses the power of dead labour over living labour."

"[T]here is ... a perpetual struggle in which capital builds a physical landscape appropriate to its own condition at a particular moment in time, only to have to destroy it, usually in the course of a crisis."

"[T]he task of keeping capitalism going at this compound rate is nothing if not daunting." (on the surplus-absorption problem)

"[T]he 'principle of community' can then become a springboard for class action rather than an antidote to class struggle."

Open Questions

• Does the secondary circuit/spatial-fix framework give a rigorous account of iconic architecture and the "Bilbao effect" as an outlet for capital surplus, and of gentrification as devaluation-and-revaluation of the built environment?