the urban experience, david harvey (1985)

introduction

(1-2): a more orthodox understanding of the object to be studied? the urban as city?

(3): the importance of a structuring "meta-theory," the Marxist variety of which Harvey turns to in the early 1970s

(3): against positivism, "science can never be neutral... New understandings of the world cannot come from passive contemplation, Marx argues, but arise through active struggle..." this, he adds, is the "dialectical quality" of the Marxist approach: "We think before we act but learn to think through doing."

(4): here delineating his own understanding of the contribution he made in

Limits to Capital, the "empty boxes" of Marxist theory--this helped him shift, he says, from a study of history to a study of historical geography (and of the "urban process as an active part of the historical geography of class struggle and capital accumulation")

(5): social theory has focused on time and history, but not space and spatial relations (this is anthony giddens' critique)

(5): space enters Marxism, it seems, through the underdeveloped theory of "uneven geographic development"--but this is only a stop-gap solution, of course. the work remains to be done.

(6): it's not clear to me that the "space" is as foundational a structuring concept as "time," but nonetheless (i mean, it's either trivially true, or impossible to understand, for me)--i suppose we can follow harvey as he attempts to "upgrade" historical materialism into "historical-geographical" materialism.

(6): definition of the urban: "The urban is, however, one of several spatial scales at which the production of spatial configurations, social organization and political consciousness might be examined--regions, nation-states, and power blocs being others... I do not intend that [the urban] should be considered a theoretically specific object of analysis separate from the historical geography of capitalism as a whole."

(7): what's more, "the urban" must be studied always as a "process," and never as a "reified" thing.

(7): bourdieu's critique of the pure empiricists, who disavow theory--in taking a step back, you constitute a "representation" of practical activity. and this representation makes impossible pure empiricism (the facts and data you present are always framed by a certain theoretical understanding).

(8): KEY: Harvey's representation of the "Marxist approach" (pp 8-11). he makes an important distinction between "concrete representations" (money, work, etc.), and "abstract and non-observable concepts" (surplus value, value, etc.), which are more controversial but conceivably still essential to making sense of the world in which we live. "The proof of this conceptual apparatus lies in the using..."

(12): "I focus in particular on the circulation of capital (and value) through the production and use of built environments... I think it is useful to look upon the geographical landscape of capitalism as the expression of flows of capital."

(13): positivism vs. Marxism: "The imposition of postivist standards of proof upon Marxian theory means accepting positivsm not Marxism as a working base. From the Marxian standpoint, proof is constituted in part out of the confidence that arises from the mode of concept formation and in part through explanatory power. The latter implies the capacity to interpret historical geography in coherent and compelling ways..."

(16): the evolution of more 'flexible' modes of accumulation after the slumps of the 70s cast doubt on the conceptual framework that had tried to come to terms with the post-war long boom (i.e., of "monopoly capitalism" leading to stagnation leading to socialism)

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the urbanization of capital

(16): the "eternal skepticism" of Marxism, even as science

(16): question being asked--"how does capital become urbanized?"

(18): first, commodity exchange--Harvey wants to ask what are the spatial and temporal limits placed on these transactions; in other words, there is a separation of the purchases involved in M-C/C'-M' in space and time--but "how much separation?" "The spatial and temporal horizons of exchange are evidently socially determined."

(19): KEY: "But the general point remains: when looked at from the standpoint of exchange, the circulation of capital is a geographical movement in time. I shall later seek to show that the geographical structures of commodity markets are more than mere reflections of capital circulation and function as real determinants of capitalism's dynamic." [question of labor power as a special comomdity--the limits are more real/"human"]

(20): KEY INTERVENTION, "spatial competition": "The general Marxist approach is to see the evolution of those sociotechnical conditions of production as an outcome of intercapitalist competition and class struggle supplemented by spillover needs... But here I shall have to introduce a fundamental modification of the general Marxian account. I insist that intercapitalist competition and class struggle spark spatial competition..." [so does this mean, then, that cross-class alliances can (and do) form, across space? and if they can, does this represent a de-centering of the category of class? or are they, 'space' and 'class', not to be understood in opposition?]

(20): a tension in the geography of capitalism--geographical concentration (has the advantage of minimizing spatial separation) vs. geographical dispersion (which allows firms to take advantage of particular geographical features)

(21): Harvey hints at the importance, also, of a "spatial" analysis of consumption in understanding the urban form (Marxism has focused on the centrality of production). this obviously recalls Castells.

(22): "Money represents the greatest concentration of social power int he midst of the greatest possible dispersal" -- this can help, it is implied here, understanding the importance and role of financial markets, which concentrate in cities.

(22-23): "Capital accumulation and the production of urbaniztion go hand in hand... Buidling a capacity for increased efficiency of coordination in space and time is one of the hallmarks of capitalist urbanization."

(23): study of "capital surpluses" (i.e., profits) and "relative labor surplus" provide a "powerful link to the history of capitalist urbanization", Harvey's arguing, aside from telling us a lot about capitalist crisis.

(24): urbanization preceded the "standard form of circulation of capital through production"--"A built environment potentially supportive of capitalist production, consumption, and exchange had to be created before capitalism won direct control over immediate production and consumption." [note here the ease with which Harvey is dealing with the 'urban,' accepting its convenitional definition. in a sense, of course, his entire argument is an attempt to clarify the process it denotes--but the traditional definition lurks therein, still...]

(25): distinction between condition in seventeenth-century England and contemporary Third World assessed on the basis of the massive relative labor surpluses in the latter--this informs/structures "Third World urbanization"

(25): possibility of a divergence between the particular and general class interest (no doubt, the State must step in here, to prevent individual capitalists from ruining themselves)

(27): some reflections on the depleted asset base in the Third World, vis-a-vis developing England and France--but this is not very systematic..

(27): helpful clarification: "The breakthrough into a predominantly capitalist mode of production and circulation was not, therefore, a purely urban or a purely rural event. But without the urban accumulation of surpluses of both capital and labor power, one of the crucial necessary conditions for the rise of capitalism would not have been fulfilled."

(27): and it is thus,roughly, this period of breakthrough when we see the logic of accumulation come to 'determine' urbanization, in a new way--this, in turn, leads to the sharpening of the purely internal contradictions of capitalism, and crisis (he dates the first of these to 1848). capitalism then seeks a 'spatial' fix.

(28-): rise of the "industrial city"

(29): to the earlier point about urban-based class alliances, Harvey writes: "The capacity of any urban-based class alliance to wield monopoly control, either internally or on the world stage, diminished." [in other words, the phenomenon of urban-based class alliances, or spatial competition of that sort, is contingent--and pre-industrial (no, Harvey notes Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham in the 1860s)? as the industrial city became part of an increasingly more generalized capitalist system, it's power, qua city, decreased. this doesn't mean the end of competition between cities, again--it simply means that those cities are not in control of that competition]

(31): the bourgeoisie has to respond to class struggle--"above all, the ruling-class alliance had to find ways to invent a new tradition of community [though he goes on to suggest that this formation of community identity was also organic] that could counter or absorb the antagonisms of class. [and here, collective consumption:] This it did in part by accepting responsibility for various facets of social reproduction of the working class (health, education, welfare, and even housing provision)..."

(32): Harvey notes the appearence of politics at the urban scale, but also the new barriers this activism was up against (specifically, "two reserve powers," the "discipline of competition," and of 'abstract labor' on the world market)

(32): ruling-class control over space becomes a critical means of repressing working-class mobilization (as in Paris in 1848 and 1871)

(33): important--the "industrial city" as "an unstable configuration," rather than static object.

(34): the "spatial fix", again

(34): WWII as a "neat but hideously violent resolution to capitalism's internal contradictions."

(34): the beginnings, in the post-war era, of "demand-side" urbanization. questions to ask, though: certainly it's not sufficient to see this as entirely motivated by the logic of the system, in the sense presented here--it took demands and agitation and the threat of something more (though, of course, it's important not to overstate this point, at the same time)

(34-35): monopoly era frees companies to focus on the labor market? what does this mean, exactly? he's referring to the birth of the mass market (via Gramsci and Fordism)

(36): the increasing importance of credit in the economy is reflected, Harvey's arguing, in cities, as the process of urbanization becomes linked to the available supply of capital in an economy

(37): though speaking about demand-side "urbanization," one notes that he hasn't told us anything at all about the city, yet.

(37): this periodization is important--Fordism began the switch to demand-side urbanization, but it was state intervention in the form of Keynesianism that consolidated it.

(38): theorizing the growth of infrastructures as a deployment of "overaccumulated Capital and labor-power," which introduced the illusory prospect of continued growth

(38): it is important to note the centrality of "debt-creation" to this process (the US, Harvey is saying, was confronted with a mountain of private and public debt as early as 1970), given the prevalent impression that its explosion is unique to the current historical epoch, in the US (1973 collapse of real estate markets, and 1974-1975 fiscal crisis in NY, all signaled a sea-change)

(38-39): we see the 'suburban solution' to the underconsumption problem (cf. D. Walker) ("Though suburbanization had a long history, it marked post-war mobilization to an extraordinary degree")

(39): in advanced capitalist countries, the 'urban-rural' distinction is obliterated in its traditional appearance. but, Harvey's noting, it re-appears as a "consumption" option.

(40): "The Keynesian city put much greater emphasis upon the spatial division of consumption relative to the spatial division of labor."

(40): the inner-city as the other side of the suburban, demand-side coin

(41): KEY: in summary, three problems with the "demand-side" urbanization--(1) "increased indebtedness"; (2) the spatial fix was challenged by movements seeking to preserve community; (3) focus was now on circulation of revenues (of consumption), rather than on production, which is the system's lifeblood (in the worst cases, this led to "job loss", "capital flight", and "disinvestment) [we see here, as elsewhere, grounds for supporting the argument that castells' analytic of "collective consumption" is valid as a historically specific argument, i.e. pegged to 'monopoly capitalism/keynesianism]

(43): even with limited knowledge, I don't find this a very coherent enumeration of the social movements produced by the Keynesian city--specifically, that they were motivated by this "consumption" question. and when he argues that they were motivated by a desire to "control social space"--that is fine, but it doesn't seem obvious to me why that desire is at all historically specific. here again i would like some more history and help from harvey.

(44): and so, of course, the post-kenyesian (or neo-liberal) city is born--the operative problem being: "How could urban regions blessed largely with a demand-side heritage adapt to a supply-side world? Four different possibilities... seemed possible... "

(45): I. Competition within the Spatial Division of Labor--two primary tools, of course, the pursuit of relative and absolute surplus-value. in the former, the city has very little autonomy, except by making general interventions in the labor-market and/or infrastructure. in the former, cities can of course help (free trade zones, and the like).

(47): II. Competition within the Spatial Division of Consumption--this is a battle for "cultural hegemony," for the revenues circulating in the system. it encompasses things like Disney World and Tourism, but is not limited to them, of course (think DHA City, maybe)

(48): III. Competition for Command Functions--competition for key control functions in government and finance, which requires heavy investment in "public infrastructures" that link the city to the world market (moreover, this is a sector characterized by monopoly power "that is hard to break")

(48): throughout this essay, there lies latent the question of how systematically we're speaking of the city, as agent--is it via the orthodox concept of social class (i.e., a particular bourgeoisie commands the city?) or is it through this new, contingent concept of class-based alliances? clearly, a la Brenner, there is lots of room to be thinking about the State, here (can formulate this better in RP) (see also 58)

(50): IV. Competition for Redistribution--i.e., for handouts (typically in the form of infrastructure) from the State. [is this a way in to the question of social class?] example, also, of the cities built around the "defense industry" (and we might add prisons) in the US.

(52): "The rich now grow richer and the poor grow poorer... because it is the natural outcome of the coercive laws of competition."

(53): endorsing the "cogency" of Lefebvre's call to prioritize the "urban," but in a very specific way: on the one hand the urban as the site of deployment for economic surpluses has always existed--but this is of course very different under capitalism.

(54): memorable, but meaningful?--"Capitalism has to urbanize in order to reproduce itself. But the urbanization of capital creates contradictions... Capitalist urbanization has its own distinctive logic and its own distinctive forms of contradiction."

(54): this is actually deeply confusing, and needs to be re-examined: on the one hand, he is disputing the notion of unitary identity (that people are not just their class, but also consumers, community residents, etc., etc.), which is fair enough. but he is extending this to critique the very processes he has just been outlining, to say not just that they are "not necessarily true," but even that they are about as accurate as the notion that "consciousness=class." those are not very high standards, mr. harvey...

(55): "our historical geography is always ours to make."

(56): insightful--the spectre of geo-political troubles for the US, as it becomes increasingly a site of "appropriation" rather than "production" (a mercantilist center)

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the urban process under capitalism: a framework for analysis

(58): acknowledging, again, the specificity of the 'urban' under capitalism--and within this, "I hang my interpretation of the urban process on the twin themes of (1) accumulation and (2) class struggle.

(60): contradiction one: while each capitalist lives in a world of 'unlimited' freedom and individuality, he is subject--always--to the coercive law of competition (this, then, is the problem of the general class interest: "individual capitalists..acting in his own immediate self-interest, can produce an aggregative result that is wholly antagonistic to the collective class interest."

(61): contradiction two: the classic one, between capitalists and proletariat

(62): in his "ridiculously short" summary of the argument of Capital, Harvey draws attention to Marx's assumption of a 'single time period' of production.

(62-63): the Harvey theory of crisis--overaccumulation manifests itself in (1) overproduciton; (2) falling rates of profit (prices, not values); (3) Surplus Capital; (4) Surplus labor (or rising rate of exploitation) [the question of whether this is a theory of crisis, or a 'description' can be left to more storied scholars--see also pp 70-71, where he discusses three "scales" of crisis (partial, switching, global)]

(64): fixed capital--(1) used as "aids to the production process"; (2) used over a "relatively long time period"; moreover we have fixed capital confined to the production process, and fixed capital "that functions as a physical framework" (or, "the built environment for production")

(64): similarly, we can talk of a "built environment for consumption"

(64-65): secondary circuit of capital--flows of capital into these "fixed asset and consumption fund formation" (naturally, it provides a temporary relief to capital confronted with overaccumulation in the primary circuit of capital, though there are barriers--individual and natural)

(65): capitalism, left to itself, will have trouble ensuring a "balanced flow of capital" between the primary and secondary circuits (another place where the State is important--though we can perhaps talk about if this is simply equivalent to the neoliberal State involved in creating a "good business climate")

(65-66): tertiary circuit of capital: investments in science and technology, and in the labor force (both progressive and disciplinary), which--again--individual capitalists will very rarely make on their own.

(68): distinction between "productivity" of capital, and its "profitability"--Harvey prefers the former, because it can deal with three problems that confront Marx's concept (1. equal rate of profit in diff. sectors / 2. normal pricing of commodities, which does not hold for the 2nd and 3rd circuits / 3. can we really treat total profit as total surplus value, when we look at capitalists as a class?)

(68): perhaps less abstrusely, Harvey is concerned to talk about all investments that "directly or indirectly [expand] the basis for the production of surplus value." this is the definition of productive investment.

(72): status of the "rural" in Harvey's analysis--"there are serious grounds for challenging the adequacy of the urban-rurlal dichotomy even when expressed as a dialectical unity, as a primary form of contradiction within the capitalist mode of production..." [we can flag this for later, but his argument that it can be analysed in terms of other contradictions/concepts is tolerable, but then valid for other things we concentrate on, too? although, having said this, right away he makes a qualification that aligns with my perspective, so...]

(73-74): elaborating further on the concept of the built environment (useful for reference)--it is a "gross simplification... [it] is long lived, difficult to alter, spatially immobile, and often absorbent of large, lumpy investments."

(76-77): 'devaluation' is critical to re-starting capital accumulation

(77): evidence for 'long waves' in investment in the built environment (and, moreover, switching across Atlantic economy between Britain and the US)

(80): two aspects of the theory of crisis are flagged as crucial--"overaccumulation" and "devaluation"

(80): historicizing overaccumulation wrt to the built environment, arguing that we see investment of surplus in the built environment prior to capitalism (i.e., England in the 1700s), but we cannot call that overaccumulation. Harvey, then, is targeting something else--this relationship exists only in the modern mode of production (by 1840s in Britain, at least).

(81): 1848 as "the first really solid and all-pervasive crisis in the capitalist world."

(81): and devaluation--if it is to work, it must leave behind a "use-value" that can then be used to re-start accumulation (WWII, then, doesn't count as devaluation?)

(82-83): problem of devaluation of fixed capital--new technologies make old ones (which were anticipated to be long-lasting) much less valuable. this was Marx's insight--Harvey wants to apply it to the study of the "built-environment": "Capital represents itself in the form of a physical landscape created in its own image, created as use values to enhance the progressive accumulation of capital. The geographical landscape that results is the crowning glory of past capitalist development. But at the same time it expresses the power of dead labor over living labor, and as such it imprisons and inhabits the accumulation process within a set of specific physical constraints."

(84): turning to class struggle, he focuses first on the "industrial reserve army," which is a window into a systematic understanding of the causes and effects of labor migration, obviously.

(85): notion of displaced class struggle, though this doesn't seem particularly useful or novel as a concept (simply denotes class struggle in other spheres of society--i.e., those that aren't directly economic)

(86): the importance of both "suburbanization" and the "ownership society" as attempts to resolve different contradictions in capitalism (the former, overaccumulation and class struggle (problems arising with the spatial concentration and centrality of workers)--the latter, class struggle (but also, by extension, soon overaccumulation as well--i.e., mortgages, etc.))

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the place of urban politics in the geography of uneven capitalist development

(125): the stakes are clear--castells has identified a duality in the marxist framework--the two logics that are said to govern urbanization (capital accumulation and class struggle) seem, to him, incompatible. this, then, is harvey's task in this essay: to prove that they can be dialectially reconciled (with all the failings of a formal model, of course)

(125): much will no doubt hinge on this notion of the "relative autonomy" of social movements.

(126): "autonomous urban politics" seems to arise, Harvey is saying, in that space vacated by the temporary and fleeting "class alliances" that arise in various historical moments.

(127): also, he is arguing, because of the importance of "consumption" in discussions of the urban form, social movements are always around [but this does raise the question of within-system and anti-systemic social movements? in fact, what is a social movement anyway?]

(127): "urban politics"--meant "in the broad sense of political processs at work within a fluidly defined but nevertheless explicit space" [specific enough? certainly this now encompasses both establishment and resistance. not a case of an empty concept, in some sense?]

(127-128): the urban is being re-defined for our purposes--here denotes a "geographically-contiguous labor market"

(128): Harvey notes three unique features, re: labor power--(1) its production is beyond the control of the capitalist; (2) the calculation of its exchange value is embedded in morality and history; (3) it is difficult to specify, for the capitalist, the precise use-value it represents (i.e., how much profit it will give him)

(130): problem of "structured rigidity" in labor market--i.e., things are never as flexible as the capitalist might like (though, if you expand the "time-horizon" of your analysis, you do start to see the flexibility, as well)

(131): marx's "general law of capitalist accumulation" (i.e., idea of reserve army) proves useful, harvey's arguing, as a "first approximation"--but this requires further elaboration.

(131): a critical contradiction-->capital is pulled at in opposite directions wrt to labor markets--on the one hand it likes agglomeration, for various reasons, but also obviously occasionally wants to cut loose to areas where wage rates are lower.

(132): a contradiction immanent in migration, too: individual workers flock to areas with large labor markets, but this obviously has negative effects from the perspective of their collective, class interest (it typically undermines the power of labor in the market to which they flock)

(134): labor, like soil! must be taken care of...

(134): a need to situate "class struggle" in the dynamics that affect labor market insofar as they are geographically-specific. (here, the role of the nation-state is relevant--a tendency, perhaps, for international disparities to overshadow regional ones). BUT, still: "I want to make the argument for the urban labor market as a fundamental unit of analysis..." (the others being international, national, regional, and urban--scales of labor markets...)

(136): travails of the search for "excess profits"--"two streams" (1) competitive path, where new technologies and locations prevail; (2) monopoly path, where exclusive control over technology or location is what matters (this drive is "more important than is generally realized.")

(137): importance of length of turnover time to this process--the longer it takes, the more the technological and locational inertia (this is important, clearly--and it empowers labor, as it makes the fixed capital in these businesses more and more vulnerable)

(139): this can all be understood in terms of this contradiction: "Capitalist behavior is thus ambiguous in relation to spatially defined urban labor markets. On the one hand, the thrust to gain monopoly privileges that put them above their competition... can lead firms to be both covetous and solicitous of tapping into and preserving the special privileges of exclusive access... On the other hand, competition (either spatial or technological) can push them to ride roughshod from one type of labor market... to another... The capitalist landscape of production therefore lurches between the stabilizing stagnation of monopoly controls and the disruptive dynamism of competitive growth."

(139-140): definition of "structured coherence" -- means something like the calcification and stabilization of a particular spatial-social arrangement, within capitalism (harvey here mentions a tendency towards it, though this is less clear to me from what he has argued thus far)

(140): "From a purely technical standpoint this positions labor as an appendage of the circulation of capital within the urban region" -- he's speaking about the calcification of certain production and consumption norms, but the conclusion seems more drastic (the worker is caught in a 'company store' moment. clearly it means more than the fact that we are always living within capitalism--but surely it is, then, more specific than it is being made out to be?)

(142): the interesting question of "local effective demand" ("I use the example to illustrate the idea that high wage costs do not always undermine competitiveness but can sometimes improve it, depending on the sector.")

(143): "But I speak only of the tendency toward structured coherence because it exists in the midst of a maelstrom of forces that tend to undermine and disrupt it."

(144): important--two types of response to the threat of devaluation/overaccumulation being noted here (though this is probably not exhaustive of what we've discussed thus far): (1) monopolization, space and technology--of course this threatens stagnation; (2) temporal and spatial displacement

(145): summary of his own arg. wrt to infrastructures: (1) they demonstrate idea of "structured coherence", insofar as they fix a certain "technological mix"; (2) they represent a potential source of excess profit, insofar as they guarantee unique access; (3) usually involve debt-financing, and State--which has the benefit of ensuring that they are more 'rational' than most; (4) vulnerable to devaluation, because they represent technological and spatial confinement; (5) precisely for this reason, those who have built them have a vested interest in making sure they're put to use.

(147): THE URBAN, in light of all this: "An examination of physical and social infrastructures will help to broaden the conception of what an urban region is all about. It is more than a set of overlapping and interpenetrating commodity and labor markets; more than a set of intersecting labor processes and productive forces; more, even than a simple structured coherence of production and consumption. It is also a living community endowed with certain physical and social assets, themselves the product of a long process of historical development and class struggle."

(148): somewhat cryptic and unwarranted insertion of "human agency" into his argument.

(148): important--in the argument, Harvey wants us to understand "structured coherence" as the 'material' analogue (or 'base') of "class-based alliances" (about which, now, he will ask three questions: who, how, and why unstable?)

(149): a nice example of a (very fleeting) class-based alliance on a base of structured coherence--homeowners and financial institutions in the "ownership" society.

(150): this is CRITICAL to understanding this article, as rejoinder: "Such activities [i.e., 'false' class-alliances], I want to stress, are not aberrations of class struggle but are a necessary and particular manifestation of the way class relations and accumulation unfold in space." (see also pg. 155)

(152): he pinpoints "the art of politics" -- but can't we integrate this better into a more orthodox discussion of 'hegemony'? or is this better understood as an alternative way of getting at the same phenomenon?

(153): uff, Harvey--is this not a classically empty statement? "It is, we conclude, the interpenetration of class, group, and individual relations within and between the state and civil society which provides the matrix of possibilities for building a ruling coalition."

(156): "There are aspects of urban life and culture which seem to remain outside the immediate grasp of the contradictory logic of accumulation [but] there is nothing of significance that lies outside its context... The task of the urban theorist, therefore, is to show where the integrations lie and how the inner relations work." (a formal or historical task? a formal-historical task, of course)

(156): urban politics, here, seems to enter to set the stage for capital accumulation--it coordinates, in a sense, what the individual capitalist cannot (though there is, certainly, always room for more anti-systemic inclinations)

(157): re-applying Jacobs on technology

(159): an additional layer onto the urban--the urban as "geopolitical identity within capitalism"

(160): interesting, though very underdeveloped observation that through the 1800s, there was a trend towards enhancing the political authority of local regions (i.e., cities). Harvey argues that the very success of labor and the working-class scuppered this movement, as the new formation represented too much of a threat to the status quo (hence, dispersal and deliberate fragmentation...)

(162-163): noting himself that the "urban" is merely one of the multiple scales at which the dynamics of capitalism can be apprehended. this is, nonetheless, a very "real context." ("The processes appear as abstract forces, to be sure, but they are not the kind of forces that we can ever afford to abstract from.")

(164): "By that path we might hope to liberate ourselves from the chains of a spaceless Marxist orthodoxy as well as from the futility of bourgeois retreat into partial representations and naive empiricism."