Бунтівні міста. Від права на місто до міської революції

by David Harvey, В'ячеслав Циба (Перекладач)

«Бунтівні міста» відомого англо-американського економічного географа та антрополога Девіда Гарві — це корпус концептів та ідей, що назавжди змінили урбаністику. Ключовим поняттям книжки стало «право на місто», яке акумулює весь комплекс людських прав. Місто є соціальним та фізичним простором, де переплітаються конфлікти за економічні та символічні блага — виборюється гідна праця чи гендерна рівність. Місто — це парадоксальний простір утопічних експериментів містян та прагматичного планування девелоперів, тут вкорінюється нерівність і виробляється культура спротиву.

Коли ж міста бунтують? Глобальна фінансова криза 2008 року стала поштовхом для самоорганізованих протестних рухів, які, на думку Гарві, по-новому вимагають права на місто та надихають об’єднуватися заради соціально-економічних змін.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Urbanism, Urban Studies, Sociology, Cities, Economics

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David Harvey (born 1935) is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). A leading social theorist of international standing, he graduated from University of Cambridge with a PhD in Geography in 1961.

He is the world's most cited academic geographer (according to Andrew Bodman, see Transactions of the IBG, 1991,1992), and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline.

His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.

Reviews

[Eli Za · Rating 4 out of 5]

سرمایه‌دار، یا باید همه ارزش اضافی حاصل از سرمایه‌گذاری‌اش را صرف تفریح و خوشگذرانی کند، که در اینصورت دیگر سرمایه‌دار نیست، یا اینکه باید بخشی از آن را مجددا سرمایه‌گذاری نماید. البته برای بسیاری از سرمایه‌دارها، آنقدر ارزش اضافی تولید می‌شود که به هر دو هدف فوق برسد، اما الزامات رقابت و گردش سرمایه، ایجاب می‌کند که سرمایه‌دار، بصورت دائم ارزش اضافی را در جایی سرمایه‌گذاری کند. فعالیت‌های مربوط به ساخت‌وساز در شهر و توسعه شهری یکی از مهمترین جایگاه‌های جذب این ارزش مازاد است که البته نمی‌تواند، تا ابد به جذب این مازاد ادامه دهد.
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اما فرآیند جذب ارزش مازاد در شهرها، به زعم هاروی، فرآیندی طبقاتی و همراه با اعمال خشونت به طبقات فرودست و مالکیت‌زدایی از آن‌هاست. این فرآیندها به خوبی در کتاب شرح و بسط داده شده‌اند. از سوی دیگر، هاروی معتقد است که مارکسیست‌های سنتی، صرفا محیط‌هایی نظیر کارخانه را مأوای مبارزه طبقاتی به حساب می‌آورند و تنها اقشار خاصی از کارگران، نظیر کارگر کارخانه را مولد و تولیدکننده ارزش می‌دانند، در حالیکه پیدایش یک مبارزه طبقاتی انقلابی در جهان جدید، مستلزم ایجاد همبستگی میان جنبش‌های شهری و اتحادیه‌های کارگری حول مسائلی نظیر حق به شهر و شهروندی است. هرچند سیاست‌های نولیبرالی و افزایش اختلاف طبقاتی و تبدیل کردن شهرها به مناطق مجزای جدا از هم، ایجاد یک اتحاد فراگیر را با دشواری مواجه کرده است.
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کتاب بسیار جذابی است، با ترجمه روان، که خواندن آن را به شدت به کسانیکه به اندیشه چپ و مسائل شهری علاقه‌مند هستند، پیشنهاد می‌کنم.

[Andrew]

David Harvey, the man who systematically lays down the abject failures of neoliberalism, tries to plot out his course for how, hopefully, a revolutionary replacement can begin. Rebel Cities is divided first into a further analysis of the failures of neoliberal capitalism, and second into an analysis of where any kind of revolt would start.

And it's really in this second part where you get some serious originality of thought. Harvey has absolutely no patience for naïve optimism or the sort of hierarchy-free autonomism that, while it sounds great on paper, is inevitably going to be a capitulation to market forces. Instead, Harvey makes the simple argument of starting locally, city by city. A socialist consciousness starts at home, and if socialists fail to engage in the ordinary meat and potatoes of public works and city council meetings, they won't have a chance at revolution.

[Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I began this book with a different idea of its content. The book has a deep philosophical context on the sense of property, and the city's land use. It is a very interesting read as you can follow how several parts of the city have lost their identity because of the non/regulated acquisition of land.
Even though I'm sure that what the author suggests (to eliminate certain levels of authority to regain control of our surroundings, among other proposals) is somewhat complicated for us citizens to achieve; the book offers a very interesting perspective of what our rights and obligations as citizens of the place we live in are, making it clear that we have to raise our voice to fight the hostile takeover of our cities.
I've given the book 4 stars because, even though the book is really thorough and propositional, it sometimes gets lost among philosophical currents and their real-life examples, making it hard for the reader to follow the straight line of the book.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

See David Harvey do beautiful and practical things with Marxist theory!

For me, this book was a real coming-together of scattered bits of thought that have been gathering for some time now, about rent-as-debt, cultural production as a force in gentrification, and organizing around living issues (housing, quality of life) as central to labor and anti-capitalist organizing. At the same time, it was a useful challenge to certain habits of thought I've developed and language I sometimes use a little uncritically (local is good! greater autonomy is good!) and pushed me to spend more time thinking, once again, about really big-picture movement strategy.

Each chapter, to some extent, can be read on its own - for those not wanting to dedicate time to the whole book, I recommend the middle three ("The Creation of the Urban Commons," "The Art of Rent," and "Reclaiming the City for Anti-Capitalist Struggle"). The last two chapters are, sadly, really throw-away pieces on the Occupy movement - I'm sure they were fine as originally published but don't really see them as contributing very much to the project of this book.

[Mostafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب هام في نقطة، وصعب أيضاً في نقطة أخرى
أهمية الكتاب هو شرحه لمسألة التطوير العمراني وأفكار الحضرنة التي أصبحت تسيطر على الدول في العصر الحالي سواء كانت نامية أو متقدمة، وكيف أن تلك الآلية هي ثغرة النظام الرأسمالي في الوقت التي تشكل مظهراً على قوته، ويحاول الكاتب أيضاً أن يعيد قراءة جديدة للصراع الطبقي تتخطى التفسير اليساري الماركسي التقليدي، وتنتصر للبروليتاريا الرثة التي طالما تجاهلتها الأدبيات الماركسية، أما صعوبته فتكمن في جوانبه الإقتصادية البحتة أحياناً والتي تطل في فصول كثيرة أثناء الكتاب حيث يعتمد الكاتب في تلك الفصول على خطاب ينطلق من فرضية مسبقاً أن قارئه ضليع بعلم الإقتصاد وليس قارئ عادي

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like a series of unrelated essays, which it primarily is. Like most economic writing, the ideas here for changing our society are buried too deeply in academic dryness. Also remarkable how out of date the OWS stuff feels, not even 10 years out.

[Yasmeen Youssef · Rating 4 out of 5]

أعتقد أن أغلب المواطنين يرغبون بشدة في أن يعيشوا في مدينة مصممة علي أهوائهم ، يختارون كل شيء من علاقات إجتماعية ، لأساليب حياتية ، لنمط عام شامل . حيث أن المدينة تعتبر هي العالم الأصغر لكل إنسان و المكان الذي يتعين عليه العيش من خلاله . هذا ما يحاول ديفيد هارفي شرحه من خلال هذا الكتاب ، فهو يقدم في البداية معني الحق في المدينة . كما أنه يقدم بطريقة فلسفية حقيقية بسيطة ما يتوجب علي كمواطن أن أعرفه من حقوق و واجبات ، و فتح إلي الأبواب لمراجعة تاريخ سياسات و كيف حاولوا فقط تغيير البنية التحتية لمدن كاملة من أجل قمع المتمردين . أيضا فهو يكشف عن الأعمال الاقتصادية البشعة . هذا الكتاب شيق فهو يلقي الضوء علي المدن و دورها الذي قد يغفل عنه الكثيرون . و إن ينقصه في النهاية أن تكون حلوله المطروحة واقعية أكثر منها نظريات يكون من الصعب تطبيقها علي أرض الواقع . فالخلاصة أنك سوف تستنج إن أينما وجدت و أيا كان المجتمع الذي تعيش دور المدينة في حياتك و تأثيرها ، و كيفية تحول الرأسمالية إلي حالة وحشية جامحة .

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for anyone vaguely interested in the macroscopic roots of urbanization process and its interplay with local struggles. The following review will only touch briefly, on a minority of the points raised by Harvey. But content aside, I find the arguments made by Harvey as clearly expressed as they can be, with the occasional joke on the side!

Harvey, as he's well known to do, rigorously applies Marxist theory in the first two chapters in oder to explain urban sprawl as a dynamic of capital. Not only do these chapters link economic theory to urban development, but they also explains macro-economic theory to begin with; specifically, the reader can expect to find an explanation of "fictitious capital" (in marxist terms), or colloquially: economic bubbles; with a focus on the housing and real estates markets and their role in the global economic crash of 2008.

Once the nefarious economic workings are laid bare, chapter three puts forward a possible way to slip out from under the tentacles of global capitalism: governing the commons. Neither state, nor market solutions to managing common property, an emergent field of economics (in study only, its as old as humanity) that is far from having as much traction as standard bourgeois economics, but, which nonetheless, is recognized for its importance. To no small degree due to the extraordinary work of Elinor Ostrom.

In the predictable dialectical fashion Harvey then returns back to economics, but this time at a local level, and tries to introduce yet another way in which capitalism invades everyday life: by trying to secure for itself monopoly rents in the forms of: specific geography, culture, and things that common sense dictates should be out of the sphere of commodification, yet neoliberalism somehow still manages to do that. It is here that the dialectic—given everything we have learned about the macro and the commons—between geographical scales is explained, and we can see how an excessive drive to commodify imposes a certain "disneyfication" on the local level, but at the same time nurtures a local uniqueness in order to extract monopoly rent from it. Thus, we find ourselves with a contradiction can serve as an entry point for transformative, revolutionary struggle.

The book then ends with a rather misconstrued reading of Murray Bookchin's work (the problems of parochialism Harvey accuses Bookchin's utopian vision to have ignored, have been extensively treated in the praxis of libertarian municipalism), but nonetheless chapter 5 tries to synthesize from the previous chapters what can be done. Conclusion: we don't know, but what we can say is that a plurality of struggles at the municipal level has to be nurtured. It is at the level of the city where all woes of the citizens express themselves, and where all there woes arise from. Capitalism has to be attacked not only in the factory, but at the locus of capital realization (consumption), in order to attack predatory rents from merchants, landlords and bankers which immiserate the working class as much as the enterprise boss.

[Suzammah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was largely disappointed by this, though I was expecting something which Harvey wasn't actually setting out to do. I was after an investigation into the nature of urban public space and its relationship with revolution. Harvey wasn't doing this. I'm still not sure what he was doing. Essentially I found it frustrating because it was wholly framed through Marxism which I find constricting and staid, even when Harvey occasionally took a peek outside the superstructure. There's nothing radical in analysis like this and even when he has his passion ignited, the result is predictable.

A couple of paragraphs from near the end of the book:

'A political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery - particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected - has become the order of the day. Does anyone believe it is possible to find an honest capitalist, an honest banker, an honest politician, an honest shopkeeper, or an honest police commissioner? Yes, they do exist. But only as a minority that everyone else regards as stupid. Get smart. Get easy profits. Defraud and steal! The odds of getting caught are low. And in any case there are plenty of ways to shield personal wealth from the costs of corporate malfeasance.
'What I say may sound shocking. Most of us don't see it because we don't want to. Certainly no politician dare say it, and the press would only print it to heap scorn upon the sayer. But my guess is that every street rioter knows exactly what I mean. They are only doing what everyone else is doing, though in a different way - more blatantly and visibly, in the streets. They mimic on the streets of London what corporate capital is doing to planet earth. Thatcherism unchained the inherently feral instincts of capitalism (the "animal spirits" of the entrepreneur, apologists coyly named them), and nothing has transpired to curb them since. Reckless slash-and-burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere.
'This is the new normal in which we live. This is what the next grand commission of inquiry should address. Everyone, not just the rioters, should be held to account. Feral capitalism should be put on trial for crimes against humanity, as well as for crimes against nature.
'Sadly, this is what the mindless rioters cannot see or demand. Everything conspires to prevent us from seeing and demanding it also. This is why political power so hastily dons the robes of superior morality and unctuous reason, so that no one might see it as so nakedly corrupt and stupidly irrational.'

The thing is, what he says doesn't sound shocking; what he says sounds just like what Marxists, and indeed Marx have been saying since the nineteenth century. The 'new normal' is at least 150 years old; Harvey offers no 'new abnormal'.

[Anastasiia Nekrasova · Rating 2 out of 5]

Анотація до книги каже, що "Бунтівні міста" Гарві - корпус концептів та ідей, що назавжди змінили урбаністику. Ключовим поняттям книжки стало «право на місто», яке акумулює весь комплекс людських прав.
Ем, ну може і змінили урбаністику, але ця книга взагалі не про урбаністику і "право на місто" тут не в фокусі. Це радше антикапіталістичний маніфест, де "право на місто" використовується лише як привід для боротьби з проклятими капіталістами.
Раціональне зерно є - ми втрачаємо міські спільні простори (прибережні смуги, кінотеатри, парки), бо хтось (наприклад, забудовник) хоче заробити на цьому просторі грошей. Але якщо ви, як я, очікували тут прочитати про багатогранність проявів права на місто (інклюзивність, збереження історичної спадщини, озелення ітд), конфліктуючі права містян (напр., автомобілістів і пішоходів), і власне практики боротьби за ці міські простори - тут нічого цього немає. Нечисельні приклади протестних рухів, які наводить Гарві, стосуються протестів проти соціальної нерівності, вони мало дотичні до власне урбаністики.
Дуже багато якогось словоблуддя, за цим засиллям термінів ледь вловлюєш суть. А в кінці ще й дізнаєшся, що це не окремо написана книга, а доопрацьовані і зліплені до купи попередні публікації Гарві.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Harvey is the kind of academic figure that movement really needs I think, one of the most prestigious and well-known geographers in the world who has been writing for decades about capitalism and how we can fight it. Unlike many academics however, he remains much more open to new ideas, to change, and to dialogue with grassroots folks which is strongly reflected in this book as it attempts to present theory and practice stripped of most academic jargon yet none of its rigor. It's still quite dense, I thought I'd get through it quickly and I didn't, and it's certainly as I go over it to write this that many of the ideas are really coming home. But it's well worth the effort.

Harvey is my favourite kind of Marxist, the flexible kind who tries to apply principles to new realities, challenges old orthodoxies and rethinks revolutionary practice. He opens the preface with Lefebvre and expanding definitions of the working class, he writes "Lefebvre was tacitly suggesting that the revolutionary working class was constituted out of urban rather than exclusively factory workers. This, he later observed, is a very different kind of class formation-fragmented and divided, multiple in its aims and needs, more often itinerant, disorganized and fluid rather than solidly implanted." It is definitely true that "much of the traditional left has had trouble grappling with the revolutionary potential of urban social movements. They are often dismissed as simply reformist..." Instead of dismissing them, it is for us to grapple with how to ensure they are not reformist.

So perhaps the heart of the enterprise is here, a redefinition of labour:

Only when politics focuses on the production and reproduction of urban life as the central labor process out of which revolutionary impulses arise will it be possible to mobilize anti-capitalist struggles capable of radically transforming daily life. Only when it is understood that those who build and sustain urban life have a primary claim to that which they have produced, and that one of their claims is to the unalienated right to make a city more after their own heart's desire, will we arrive at a politics of the urban that will make sense.

He says further along

But there is a further analytic point here that must be remarked. The collective labor that Marx envisaged was for the most part confined to the factory. What if we broaden that conception to think, as Hardt and Negri suggest, that it is the metropolis that now constitutes a vast common produced by the collective labor expended on and in the city? The right to use that common must surely then be accorded to all those who have had a part in producing it. This is, of course, the basis for the claim to the right to the city on the part of the collective laborers who have made it. [78]

For non-Marxists this redefinition might not seem terribly important, but I believe it is though I am still turning over in my mind just what this labour process entails and what this means. If taken up, it solidifies theoretical ground (still different from actual ground) upon which a range of radical movements can come together along with labour unions and the host of more precarious workers not now--and perhaps never to be-- unionised given the fundamental shifts in markets and the perennial problems of racism and massive unemployment. The question becomes how to build this, and more importantly, how to build it to scale, to use it as a stepping stone to a more radical transformation as one neighborhood, one city however radicalised cannot stand alone against the entire system. I think Harvey is right in believing that the more successful we are in building alternative structures and practices, the more effort will be put into destroying them and ultimately they will not survive without broader change.

He spends several chapters going over his well established theories of capital accumulation through urbanisation, in a nutshell

Urbanization, I have long argued, has been a key means for the absorption of capital and labor surpluses throughout capitalism's history.19 It has a very particular function in the dynamics of capital accumulation because of the long working periods and turnover times and the long lifetimes of most investments in the built environment. It also has a geographical specificity such that the production of space and of spatial monopolies becomes integral to the dynamics of accumulation, not simply by virtue of the changing patterns of commodity flows over space but also by virtue of the very nature of the created and produced spaces and places over which such movements occur. But precisely because all of this activity-which, by the way, is a hugely important arena for value and surplus-value production-is so long-term, it calls for some combination of finance capital and state engagements as absolutely fundamental to its functioning. This activity is clearly speculative in the long term, and always runs the risk of replicating, at a much later date and on a magnified scale, the very overaccumulation conditions that it initially helps to relieve. Hence the crisis-prone character of urban and other forms of physical infrastructural investments (transcontinental railroads and highways, dams, and the like).

I like nutshells. Of course, although Harvey acknowledges the differential impact such urbanisation and suburbanisation has had through spatial unneveness leading to ghettoisation and crisis, I continue to find that he’s not really getting to the bottom of this dynamic or understanding how racism is a key factor in driving the ways this development occurs as well as hindering any kind of struggle against it, particularly in the US context.
What I most appreciate is the amount of time he spends thinking through visions for change. He looks at ideas of the commons stemming from the work of Hardt and Negri among others, as well as the anarchist ideas of Bookchin about horizontal organizing and federation. Some may argue his critique to be too sweeping, but his engagement is insightful (and refreshing as many have refused to consider such ideas at all) and does raise key points. I think one of the key areas where critical theory is needed is looking at this line between horizontality and hierarchy that lies in working through how people and oganisations can come together across a city, a region, nationally and internationally. Almost everyone recognises that this must happen to some extent given the scale of what we are up against, but how? Harvey doesn’t quite answer this question though there are some possibilities along with his critique.

To begin thinking it through he writes:

The political recognition that the commons can be produced, protected, and used for social benefit becomes a framework for resisting capitalist power and rethinking the politics of an anticapitalist transition.
But what matters here is not the particular mix of institutional arrangements—the enclosures here, the extensions of a variety of collective and common-property arrangements there—but that the unified effect of political action address the spiraling degradation of labor and land resources (including the resources embedded in the "second nature" of the built environment) at the hands of capital.

From here he goes on to look at rent, the marketing of the ‘global’, ‘world’ and ‘creative’ city and the ways that a city’s uniqueness is used to generate revenues, often until it causes it’s own destruction. That seemed like review to me, a condensation of much of what he has written over the years but a good review.
He ends with a discussion of the slogan, the cry and demand that has been picked up in so many ways over the past few years, when used by government agencies this cooptation has certainly been to its cost. Yet this would be true of any rallying call, Che Guevara’s face over acres of merchandise is proof enough of the ability of capitalism to ccopt. Harvey writes:

The right to the city is, as was noted at the outset, an empty signifier full of immanent but not transcendent possibilities. This does not mean it is irrelevant or politically impotent; everything depends on who gets to fill the signifier with revolutionary as opposed to reformist immanent meaning. [136]

He also usefully summarises what he believes to be the main lessons we should have learned:

Three theses emerge from this history. First, work-based struggles, from strikes to factory takeovers, are far more likely to succeed when there is strong and vibrant support from popular forces assembled at the surrounding neighborhood or community level (including support from influential local leaders and their political organizations) [138]

Secondly, the concept of work has to shift from a narrow definition attaching to industrial forms of labor to the far broader terrain of the work entailed in the production and reproduction of an increasingly urbanized daily life. Distinctions between work-based and community-based struggles start to fade away, as indeed does the idea that class and work are defined in a place of production in isolation from the site of social reproduction in the household.32 [139]

Finally, while the exploitation of living labor in production (in the broader sense already defined) must remain central to the conception of any anti-capitalist movement, struggles against the recuperation and realization of surplus value from workers in their living spaces have to be given equal status to struggles at the various points of production of the city. As in the case of temporary and insecure workers, the extension of class action in this direction poses organizational problems. But, as we shall see, it also holds out innumerable possibilities [140]

This book tries to summarise where we are and think through the challenges that confront anyone fighting for real change.

[Steffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is part of VERSO Books’ ‘essential David Harvey’ series of four landmark texts of political theory by the DH. A timely series for my ongoing efforts to work my way through all things David Harvey.

For me, he is one of the most exciting political theorists of our time. I also like that he’s this old-school Marxist who’s been teaching Capital Volume 1 since the 1970s or so. Every year and he’s still super excited about it. Cannot recommend his podcasts highly enough. He’s this white old man and while occasionally pointing out that Marx leaves plenty of room for contingency and ‘cultural things’ and that nothing is determined in the last instance by economic structures (yes, yes, we got it) he’s just not interested in the whole post-structuralist ‘reading’ of Marx ❤ DH.

So this book ‘Rebel Cities’ (VERSO, 2012) is a collection of essays from the 2000s on what I find also increasingly interesting, looking at cities – rather than factories – at the central site for capital accumulation (and exploitation through appropriation of rent and privatization of formerly public spaces and services) and revolutionary politics. The essays provide a tour from the Paris Commune to Occupy Wall Street and the London Riots and explore how cities might be reorganized and become the focus for anti-capitalist resistance. Ever since the 2008 global financial crisis when insane amounts of global capital went into real estate and cities, with associated displacement and increasing inequality, much has happened in terms of radical municipality and cities becoming sites of anti-capitalist struggle. The book should be read together with ‘Capital City - Gentrification and the Real Estate State’ (VERSO, 2019) which has some more empirical stuff on post GFC real estate capitalism (with a real estate tycoon taking power in the US in 2016).

[Cengiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book Harvey argues that cities have become the center of capital accumulation, trade, banking and culture etc... Those who posses power and capital shape the architectural structure of the cities according to their class interests. Architectural structure of the cities reflect the class character of them. He suggests that if the city has the potential to acummulate capital, take under control the citizens and empower class power then the prospect to organize the working classes and people from all walks of life as a focus of resistance against the capitalists exists.
Cities produce a huge amount of rent and all the city dwellers have the right to the city for subsistence. Citizens should claim the right to the city so as to benefit the rent and resources of the city.
Historically cities have been a space for resistance and future revolutions will be carried out in cities not in the countryside. Harvey's soiological and philosophical reference is Henry Lebfewre. Besides Lebfewre, he refers to M. Bookchin's thoughts with regard to urbanization and how to shape cities as ecologically friendly settlemets.

[clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

a historical examination of the interplay bw urbanization and capitalism and social justice and the importance of cities in revolutionary movements!! david harvey is so good at linking two things i love very deeply

[Cristian sin Hache · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuando me presento a nuevas amistades y, llegado el momento, confieso que estudio la
carrera de economía siempre me responden miradas de sospecha e interés. Por una parte
entiendo el miedo, más que justificado, a que estén delante de un hombre idealista,
utópico, de esos que viven en la fantasía de pensarse que son “hombres hechos así
mismos” No existe ni existió nunca un humano que no haya dependido de la comunidad
que le precede o de la que es coetáneo para sobrevivir en el presente. Esta enorme
miopía que niega a los otros y al entorno a la hora de destacar su “crecimiento personal”
(individual) supone un peligro que nos aboca a la extinción de nuestra especie.
Para enmarcar la economía y mi modo de entenderla acostumbro a exponer la siguiente
hipótesis (a mi juicio más comprometida con la verdad científica que la hipótesis de
imaginar a un empresario británico naufragando en una isla desierta). Esta trata sobre
una población alienígena que llega a una Tierra deshabitada de humanos en donde lo
primero que llamaría la atención sería la posibilidad única de producir y reproducir la
vida en la corteza terrestre. De esta manera, el siguiente paso a dar por parte de esta
población visitante sería el de organizarse, de modo que tal espacio físico y la especies
que lo habitan no entrasen en peligro bajo ninguna circunstancia. Necesitaran aire
limpio, agua potable, tierra fértil y condiciones de vida digna para mantener la
existencia. Estas poderosas necesidades caerían por su propio peso a la hora de pensar la
distribución e infraestructura que necesitara la nueva población.
No sé en qué momento se dejó de pensar la economía como el cuidado de la vida y de
todo lo que implica para que ésta se mantenga. El enfoque a la hora de abordar la
disciplina es crucial para no caer en pensamientos utópicos, como el de asegurar que el
crecimiento económico monetario (exclusivamente basado en la maximización de los
excedentes del capital) es una realidad sostenible a largo plazo en un planeta con límites
finitos sobre los recursos disponibles. ¿Crecer hacia dónde? ¿Y quién verdaderamente
crece cuando nos dicen que el PIB está creciendo?
Ante los problemas colectivos no caben las respuestas individuales. Cuidar la vida,
gestionarla y reproducirla es tarea de toda la sociedad, en mayor o menor medida. Cabe
señalar que las recetas de austeridad del gasto público son palos en la rueda de la
sostenibilidad de la convivencia sana. Y seamos honestos, al sector privado nunca le
preocupó extremadamente (o le incentivaron a que no se preocupara) el tamaño de su
deuda. Cada año su deuda crece a niveles y a ritmos nunca registrados con anterioridad.
Gran parte de esas deudas privadas, las correspondientes a los sectores o empresas que
están bajo la ficción compartida de ser «Too Big to Fail», son absorbidas por los entes
públicos de cada territorio. Existen enormes contradicciones propias de sistemas
complejos y dinámicos donde no caben soluciones sencillas ni inmediatas.
El aumento del gasto (también podría denominarse “inversión”) público no es garantía
en sí de mejoras sostenidas para la población. Máxime cuando este tipo de inyecciones
de dinero real van a hacia instituciones privadas o proyectos privados, bien para
rescatarlos de la quiebra o bien para que persigan la acumulación cortoplacista del
excedente de capital. Esta ley, de nuevo ficticia, de la necesidad de acumulación y multiplicación del excedente de capital por encima de cualquier otra consideración y
necesidad más realista está suponiendo un gran freno en el progreso humano.
Detengámonos de nuevo en dicha ley. Es crucial no perderla de vista a la hora de ver
cómo están diseñadas nuestras ciudades. Se construye y se reordena bajo tal ley nunca
escrita. Esto trae consigo faraónicas inversiones inmobiliarias que no responden a la
necesidad de la gente que habita la ciudad sino a la necesidad del capital inversionista
en tener un mayor retorno de lo aportado. Inversiones en la construcción de centros
comerciales, edificios para uso turístico, oficinas, edificios gubernamentales, el
ensanchamiento de las avenidas en favor de los coches y del transporte de mercancías o
la prohibición de alguna actividad social llevada en espacio público en favor de los
negocios cercanos son las barreras que debemos saltar si queremos decidir en qué tipo
de ciudad queremos vivir. La situación es ya dramática en el sector de la vivienda
particular. Su construcción ya no está pensada para darle techo a los humanos, sino para
alquilarla y obtener una renta extractiva de la fuerza de trabajo de otros humanos (en
peores condiciones de partida) que permita al propietario de la vivienda seguir
acumulando y multiplicando su inversión inicial. Es dramático saber que la vivienda es
un bien de primera necesidad por lo que siempre va existir su demanda. Esto la hace
foco de inversiones especulativas que no buscan la convivencia o solucionar los
problemas de las necesidades reales de la población. Todo lo contrario, buscarán el
modo de exprimir y traer la máxima rentabilidad de los inmuebles con cualquier método
de borrosa legalidad civil.
Debemos afirmar ser ciudadanos y no clientes de un parque de atracciones
tremendamente hostil con aquellos que carecen de capacidad de ahorro y, por tanto, de
consumo.

El apunte es que la vida en la ciudad no debe pasar exclusivamente por soluciones de
mercado o del Estado. Que nos compete a todos decidir y actuar sobre el lugar que nos
ve crecer si queremos seguir desarrollando la vida en él. No es algo fácil, ni inmediato
ni individual. Se trata de priorizar también a donde van las inversiones del excedente
colectivo del capital simbólico que emerge de cada ciudad. Insisto en que la vida en la
ciudad la hacen los ciudadanos y no los consumidores o los burócratas. No obstante no
niego la existencia de éstos ni la obligación de negociar y ponerse de acuerdo con tales
agentes sociales. El turismo y la construcción de viviendas, ¿a quién está beneficiando
verdaderamente? ¿Si hay más negocios y edificios, por qué mi café para llevar esta más
caro y mi alquiler más elevado?
Debemos exigir a las instituciones, autoridades y tejido social competente que cargamos
con la obligación de hacer nuestra la ciudad que habitamos. Que las asociaciones de
vecinos tienen peticiones incumplidas al igual que los colectivos de barrio o las
familias, o la población en riesgo de exclusión social. Nadie queda exento del derecho
de habitar de formar saludable, para la vida humana y el medio ambiente, nuestras
ciudades. Queda mucho por hacer y si no nos implicamos los ciudadanos serán otros
agentes, con otros fines distintos a los de la convivencia humana, los que tomarán las
decisiones que condicionarán el modo en que vivimos en la ciudad

[آمنة · Rating 4 out of 5]

لغة الكتاب متخصصة، ربما تحتاج دارساً للاقتصاد لكن سيدفعك هذا للبحث عن عدة مصطلحات وفي طريقك ستجد أفلاماً وثائقية عن عدة مواضيع تمسك وتمس حياتك بشكل مباشر.
من سيخوض رحلة هذا الكتاب أرشح له inside job, وسلسة الانهيار وكلاهما أفلام وثائقية تناقش الأزمة المالية العالمية لعام 2008 والمذكورة تفصيلاً في الكتاب.

[csillagkohó · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book about cities, how the city is used as a battle ground by capital (real estate developers, financial institutions...) and how it can be reclaimed for progressive struggles. By trying to appropriate cultural practices and urban landmarks for their own purposes, capital also opens a new space for progressive politics to operate in. David Harvey's analysis is anti-dogmatic in the good sense of the word. While not denying that primary exploitation under capitalism happens through wage labour, he points out that financial elites don't really care whether they accumulate their profits directly through labour or through rent. So we need to take in account both working and living as spaces of capitalist accumulation.

Harvey highlights the role of excessive investments in the built environment in the formation of many financial crises throughout the 20th and 21st century, due to their dependence on fictitious capital that makes these constructions inherently unstable. He also notes how urban capital is more and more dependent on a concept of "symbolic capital" to legitimize its monopoly positions, and provides some strong criticisms of utopian/anarchist/commune-based forms of organization that fail to break with the logic of capitalist economy in a consistent way. It is pretty obvious that the book is a collection of different articles put together, but that doesn't make it worse. The 3rd and 4th chapter, about the urban commons and the creation of monopoly rent respectively, were the ones I found most interesting overall.

I had my doubts about some of the supposed re-readings of Marxism put forward, such as "focusing on the city instead of the factory as a prime site of value production". Didn't Marx already point out that the city is the main place where the modern industrial working class originated? More importantly, are we not again neglecting other segments of the working class by putting too much emphasis on urban areas? Harvey's criticism that many leftist groups still only focus on factory workers in the current year seems like a bit of a strawman, at least outside of the most sectarian communist parties. He is also rather quick to dismiss all earlier movements and revolutions that were historically led by a working class vanguard, as if none of these ever knew any successes. (Not one mention of Cuba in a book about alternative urban politics?) At the same time it is not entirely clear to me what exact strategies and modes of organization he himself is defending.

Finally - as a non-native speaker without a deep knowledge of financial concepts - I did find some parts could have been expanded upon in a clearer way. This especially counts for the 2nd chapter. I would not say the whole book suffers from intellectualism or that it is unnecessarily verbose, but it isn't 100% accessible to someone with scarce theoretical background either. Still, the positive in "Rebel Cities" easily outweighs the negative, and it makes for a very relevant read.

[PRKP · Rating 2 out of 5]

Taka sobie praca. Harvey kluczy między banałem, ciekawymi wątkami w heterodoksji marksistowskiej, a dygresjami. Widać też że książka ta była pisana w określonych okolicznościach historycznych, kiedy kryzys w 2008 roku narodził nowe, dziwne ruchy w miastach, które ostatecznie okazały się, z perspektywy czasu, mieszczańskimi ruchami opartymi o symbole i emocje ("JESTEŚMY WKURWIENI", "MAMY DOŚĆ"), a nie, jak próbuje on tu wskazywać, alternatywne pomysły na budowanie relacji społecznych w miastach i wyjście poza kapitalizm.

Zabrakło mi w tej pracy również głębszej analizy tego czym jest miasto w ujęciu marksistowskim. Zupełnie nie poruszono dynamiki miasto-wieś, poza wskazaniem na to że istnieje, a przecież dla duetu Marks & Engels ten podział ma istotne znaczenie.

To co mi zostaje z lektury tej książki, co uważam za plus, to wskazanie na miasto jako przestrzeń absorpcji nadwyżki w kapitalizmie, co pozwala na ustabilizowanie kapitalizmu, jednocześnie w dłuższym terminie spowodowanie jeszcze większego kryzysu.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The city is a perplexing thing; it is getting close to the time when most of us on this planet live in one yet many of us have a very poor sense of what they are and what they do. In the early 1990s, drawing on ideas most lucidly expressed by Henri Lefebvre, the postmodern geographer Edward Soja argued, compellingly, that critical and radical social theories prioritise history/time and denigrate space; as rich as some of his work turned out to be, Soja never really seemed to get systemic economic analyses. David Harvey starts from a similar concern, drawing also on Lefebvre, but has such a compelling and sophisticated grasp of Marxist economic theory that he is able to do systemic economics convincingly.

There are three strands to the argument in this short, exciting and critically inspiring text. The first strand explores the place and role of the city in the development of capitalism and the current crisis. The second explores the political economy of living in and being of the city. The third analyses anti systemic, anti-capitalist struggles, with a pair of brief essays at the end looking at the London ‘riots’ of 2011 and Occupy Wall Street. Most of the book has been published in various forms elsewhere – The New Left Review or The Socialist Register – but these previous three essays are woven together here into a re-edited, updated and compelling overall case making sense of urbanity and current crisis of capitalism.

Harvey mounts a vigorous critique of several strands of left analysis of the crisis, in particular some of the ‘lazy’ (my word, not his) analyses that reduce the crisis solely to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, one of classical Marxism’s three typical forms crisis inducing state in capitalism. Instead, Harvey focuses his critique on the power of fictitious capital, a element of capital he explores so convincingly in The Limits to Capital, as the force that underpins the urban driven capitalist crisis based in the fictitiousness of mortgage finance based wealth. This emphasis then allows him to open up invigorating arguments in favour the development of urban commons, not just as spaces we occupy in quotidian experience but as a defining trope of urban design and form. His critical evaluation of the commons of culture is then unsettled by his discussion of rent in cultural and urban practice.

Rent is perhaps one of capitalism’s least understood forms; it is income based in the monopoly power of private owners over certain unique or otherwise non-replicable assets. Harvey, as we’d expect of a geographer, spatialises this by looking at rent in urban environments – the way a hotel owner can charge more if their hotel is near other economically powerful or significant sites that attract visitors, for work or leisure. The discussion of rent in this book, if nothing else, merits our attention and revisiting.

For many however, the power of the book lies in its shift from Lefebvre’s important work on the right to the city (although much of his work goes much further than simple ‘rights’) to consider the city as a site of rebellion – which is where his critique of urban commons and cultural spaces as space of rent becomes vital. He argues here for multiple forms of urban association – sectoral, spatial, identity politics based – as essential to city based activism. He also raises, through his discussion of the commons, a vital question of management and organisation that has become a source of critique from some sectors of the left. Harvey, invoking the geographical notion of scale, challenges some of the romanticism associated with contemporary versions of ‘horizontalism’, concerned that without rigorous attention to how to ensure social justice based forms of organisation in complex societies we may in the end develop new and equally unjust hierarchies or spatial inequalities. This is, perhaps, the basic problem that remains to be addressed by the horizontalist left.

Many, almost most, of us live in cities yet we remain isolated from them. For many in London, for instance, The City is the small area of finance capital intensive practice with its satellite in Canary Wharf while London itself remains conceived of as a series of joined up villages each with its own tone. Harvey demands that we look differently while also wondering about the rapid growth of urban spaces across the world – Chinese cities of millions that 10 years ago were little more than farming villages, especially in the south east. The city needs to be seen as a force in and of itself.

My major gripe is that the two final essays – London’s ‘riots’ and OWS – that is, the really new content – add up to less than ten pages while hinting at rich and exciting issues associated with urban/spatial injustice, the right to the city and rebellion. Despite that, this is a vital book the demands we rethink some of the ways we see the contemporary crisis and the ways we respond to it.

[andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

mucho texto.

[dead · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, a collection of essays/articles written by Harvey, articulates Harvey's call to reconsider the role reproduction of urban life and the city play within our conception of revolutionary, radical and class based politics. Harvey also produces his concerns on the notion of horizontal/localist organisation and politics, and urges with us to overcome our organisational paralysis and truly think about how to construct radical politics in order to present a threat to capital.

Harvey provides a collection of politically useful and insightful articles ranging on the rent, urban organisation and Occupy Wall Street which provides much needed emphasis on areas often overlooked, marginalised or dismissed

[M L Delshad · Rating 3 out of 5]

هاروی فرآیند توسعه شهری و زاد و رشد آن را پروژه ای از ابتدا طبقاتی می داند. دو مکانیزم بسیار مهم برای او در این تحلیل نقش سرمایه مالی و دولت است. به عقیده او موسسات مالی و بانکها با پشتوانه هزینه های عمومی دولت، فضای شهری را هرچه بیشتر به سمت کالایی شدن و خارج شدن از اختیارات شهروندان عادی می برد.
او امیداوار است با خلق کمونهای اجتماعی و استفاده از سرمایه نمادین بومی نبرد با این زاد و رشد طبقاتی را از زندگی رزمره شهری آغاز نمود.
...
ترجمه کتاب بسیار روان بود.

[C.E.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro que, aún habiendo sido escrito/publicado en el año 2013, en un contexto específico y desde la óptica se un estudioso británico, es absolutamente relevante en el contexto del Chile actual (2019-2020).
Conjugando historia, política, economía y urbanismo, Harvey articula, de manera sencilla y casi pedagógica, un análisis, una crítica y una propuesta de la ciudad como espacio político y revolucionario, todo con (lo que parece ser) un tono esperanzador.

[Mishari · Rating 3 out of 5]

عن الحق في المدينة ، وتقاطعات ظاهرة المدينة ما بعد الحداثية ، مع الرأسمالية والمصالح والصراعات الطبقية واللامساواة والسلطوية .
بيان ماركسي ماتع ومفعم بالحيوية ، هادف لإبراز اللامساواة في الحق في المدينة ، ولمركزة النضال الحضري كأداة للتغيير الثوري والطبقي .

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

David is being a bit fanciful here. It definitely reads more as a collection of a few big essays coupled with a few opinion pieces. For sure, all geared towards conceptualizo y a revolutionary urbanism, but you know… Don’t expect a super linear narrative.

The essays are fantastic, a decent amount still goes over my head, but he does a good job reiterating enough examples to elucidate his points. When he does delve into figurative language, the roasts are simply splendid.

He also engages quite a bit with various strands of leftism/anarchism. While I’d ordinarily find such asides to be rather tedious, they are only included in relevant areas (particularly ones that have prevalence online) or major questions where it’s clear David is just as stumped as all of us and is trying to browse for answers.

The book’s most stunning success though is justifying and articulating a “Right to the City, and to urbanize in our own image generally. The chapter on rents and culture are interesting takes on concepts traditional Marxists either get wrong or conspicuously ignore. Finally, I enjoyed the discussion of El Alto, a nuanced (and rather sober) take on a revolutionary urban context I had no idea about, but can easily see how certain aspects may be extrapolated for broader geographic successes.

The Right to the City is an extremely handy concept, and this is certainly the book to turn to for fully grasping it.

[Rob M · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of two halves. The first half is a jargon-tastic, hard-to-follow analysis of how power over making and remaking the urban environment has been handed to financial institutions, whose sole interest is the absorption of excess capital. Written in the shadow of the 2008 financial crash, this analysis still feels fresh as a daisy for those of us still struggling in a highly financialised society.

The second half is a more qualitative discussion on the politics of the city, who benefits from it, and how can it shape or confound radical political organisation. To me, this section feels a little dated.

Written during the nadir of organised working class politics, it feels as the though the book is searching around for a radical/revolutionary subject. Rebel Cities explicitly tries to shift away from the traditional socialist emphasis on organised industrial workers and onto a broader, community based conception of worker, encompassing informal workers, the unpaid labour of women in the home, etc.

To demonstrate the value of this perspective in concrete terms, it looks at some examples from Latin America, but not very systematically, with a whole section dedicated to Bolivia, but - strangely - nothing on Venezuela or Brazil.

To his credit, David Harvey, old marxist that he is, is instinctively cautious about reinventing the working class from a geographical, rather than industrial, perspective. Yet this is what he tries to do. A decade, and one big resurgence in trade union activity later, and I don't really buy it.

[Alberto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly focuses on the idea of the "Right to the City" - a collective right to have a voice in shaping the city by those who "make" the city, and provides some examples towards the end.

The main economic argument is that urbanization happens as a result of the absorption of surplus capital into the economy - real estate investing (and the multiple financial layers involved) is necessary in capitalism but often dispossesses the working class from its voice in the city (the process of "creative destruction").

A big part of the book was focused on the economic rationale behind these ideas and critiques to the capitalist model, but did so in a way that felt distracting as it shifted often between economic, political and social arguments (not enough time was spent on the idea of the right to the city, I felt, and how it can be articulated).

The examples were also written at a strange time of optimism (2011), would be interesting to see the updated thinking in 2020.

[Andy Carlisle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harvey is a Marxist and the author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism which I read and which impressed me. Rebel Cities is equally impressive.

In 'Rebel Cities', David Harvey re-examines and interprets the basis of capitalist accumulation to show its essentially urban roots. This is certainly a wide and sweeping project and it is largely convincing.

Harvey builds on the work of Henri Lefebvre, a French Marxist who wrote in the 1960s. Lefebvre coined or popularized the phrase “right to the city.” Some left wing groups gather under this banner today.

The right to the city means city dwellers’ “unalienated right to make a city more after their own heart’s desire” (p. xvi). The right to the city includes the right to the wealth urban dwellers generate. (When Harvey discusses urban dwellers he is obviously not talking about people like Donald Trump.) Harvey points out that the right to the city is a collective, not an individual right.

There’s a chapter in Michael Harrington’s Socialism (1972) called “The Substitute Proletariats.” Mao, for instance, based revolution on the peasants rather than the industrial workers. Harvey believes revolution should be based not on the Marxian proletariat but on what Lefebvre called the urban based “working class.” Why? For one thing, owing to deindustrialization there is no longer a proletariat in the West: today the proletariat is in the Third World (p. xv).

The urban “working class” is a much broader category than the proletariat. The proletariat consists of the workers who produce goods. The urban working class includes all who labor in the city--not just producers, but also workers who distribute the goods. Not just factory workers, but also taxi drivers, restaurant workers, sanitation personnel, small shopowners, etc., etc. Many of these workers live a precarious existence marked by high unemployment and poverty which has led to them being dubbed the "precariat."

As a group, the urban working class is much more diffuse, fragmented, and divided than the Marxian proletariat. This can pose a problem. Harvey is concerned about the working class pursuing a lot of small scale reformist projects which leave capitalism unchallenged. Harvey doesn’t believe that socialism in a single city is possible: at some point all this urban political activity has to catch fire and overthrow capitalism. (But will it? Harvey himself notes that the promising urban agitations of 1968 in the end came to nothing.)

Harvey’s second reason for basing revolution on the urban based working class: most revolutionary movements have been urban based. Most radicals, he says, overlook this. Harvey's prime example is the Paris Commune which he discusses at length.

That’s the political part of the book. Here’s the economic part.

Relation of the city to capitalism: cities answer capitalism’s need/imperative to “dispose of overaccumulating capital” (pp. xv-xvi). “Capitalist urbanization” “absorb[s] the surplus product that capitalists are perpetually producing in their search for surplus value” (pp. 6-7).

Harvey describes Haussman’s redesign of Paris under Napoleon III. In the process, many of Paris’ poor were callously uprooted. Robert Moses derived a lot from Hausman, even publishing an essay on the Frenchman. Haussman’s work kept Paris booming for about twenty years until the inevitable crash.

Cause of economic crashes: there is a causal link between housing bubbles and crashes in the macro economy. This connection is overlooked by both conventional and Marxist economists. (Harvey includes an approving mention of the followers of Henry George.) Real estate values and construction peak shortly before major depressions. Harvey illustrates this point with a series of historical charts and graphs. Much of the book is taken up with a discussion of the economic crisis which began in 2008 with the implosion of the sub-prime mortgage market.

Harvey discusses how the government has historically contributed to housing bubbles. Starting in the 1930s the government fostered initiatives to encourage home ownership among the masses. This was not pure altruism. Debt-encumbered workers don’t strike. Also, there was a need to pacify American soldiers returning from World War Two. Later, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created.

Harvey places some of the blame for the most recent housing bubble on the Community Development Act. I found this interesting coming from a Marxist because conservatives blame the 2008 crisis on the Community Development Act (but not on any of the other factors Harvey names).

Banks’ predatory practices leading up to 2008, Harvey notes, were made possible by the dismantling of regulatory mechanisms under neoliberalism. In the Keynesian era after World War Two, running roughly from 1945 to the early 1970s the US economy had been free of major crises. Which makes me wonder: why not restore Keynesianism? That would be difficult, but easier than a socialist revolution.

Back to politics and a look toward the future: some problems, like global warming, cannot be solved at the urban level. There has to be coordination among cities while at the same time keeping most power at the lower levels closest to the people. Also, Harvey does not want the creation of a patchwork of warring cities. He doesn’t want a reintroduction of inequality with some cities being rich, others poor. Harvey believes some sort of federation will have to be created among cities, but power should flow from the bottom up.

I cannot possibly adequately convey everything worthwhile in this incredibly rich book. I have said nothing of Harvey’s discussion of the fading of the urban-rural divide; the suburbs; South American favelas and other impoverished metastasizing shanty cities in the Third World; or Harvey’s discussion of China.

I cannot recommend Rebel Cities too highly.

[vos]

Veeel te ingewikkeld voor mij. Hoe de woningmarkt de boom en bust cycles van de economie absorbeert vond ik wel vet om te lezen, en zn hele verhaal over hoe de urban uprising ook revolutionary potential heeft vond ik ook sterk. maar voor de rest werd het een beetje te veel theory,, hier en daar wel dingen kunnen begrijpen omdat ik Lenin had gelezen maar voor een groot deel ook gwn geen idee waar hij het over had. Harvey heeft ook een gewoonte om de hele tijd te refereren aan hele specifieke gebeurtenissen als "verduidelijkend voorbeeld" maar als je die gebeurtenissen niet kent blijft het alleen maar een onduidelijke woordenbrij. Jammer! Misschien dat ik over 5 jaar een ubermarxist ben en denk wauw gaaf boek ik begrijp alles maar nu iig nog niet

[Ezra Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this rate I will have read 180 books by the end of the year. Good book, honestly more as a prompt for questions than a source for answers. What does spatial politics look like? How do you manage the local in a society which is increasingly globalized and dependent on international linkages and flows? Clearly very influenced by the occupy/post 2008 wave of movement politics which has been shown to pan out to nothing. It warrants a new edition that is more pessimistic, a little bit more third-worldist, and even more radical in its vision for geographic transformation.