What's Left of Philosophy
What's Left of Philosophy
81 TEASER | David Harvey: Capitalist Urbanization and the Right to the City
In this episode, we talk about David Harvey’s analysis of the urbanization process as a form of accumulated surplus capital expenditure and consider the built environment as a crucial site of class struggle. The physical constitution of the built environment in which we live mediates our forms of sociality and political dispositions, not to mention how important it is for making mass action and organization possible. So it sure sucks that the shape of its development has been determined by the needs of capital rather than those of human flourishing for a few hundred years now! Oh, and we’re really mean to the suburbs, too.
This is just a short clip from the full episode, which is available to our subscribers on Patreon:
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References:
David Harvey, “The urban process under capitalism: a framework for analysis.” In Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society, eds. Michael Dear and Allen Scott (London: Routledge, 1981).
David Harvey, “The Right to the City.” New Left Review 53 (Sept/Oct 2008). https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii53/articles/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city
Music:
“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com
“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN
I think you're right that it's not inherently reactionary. You're not inherently turned into a reactionary by not being in a big city, but it depends on what even the built environment of a small place is like. I mean, if you are in like a totally car dependent place, that is immediately, like, I think, massively lowering the I don't know, lowering the character of your, of your like, sociality. You have to spend all this time like in a pod, like by yourself, going to places that require parking, and so they're going to have to be really low density too. Yeah, they're going to be really low density, I mean, unless you're listening to what's left of philosophy in the car, then we're like we, like you.
Speaker 4:You're cool yeah.
Speaker 3:See, this is sociality. Now you're in a car by yourself, listening to your not friends on a podcast.
Speaker 1:You didn't have to do like that.
Speaker 3:I'm your friend. You don't know me, I'm your friend, you don't.
Speaker 2:But like even the cities themselves, though. Are you know, like even the ones that do have transit like by, by national standards, like Boston, for example, has, I think you'd say like pretty good mass transit, but like all other American cities really, I mean even New York. But there's some parts of New York that interconnect a little more. They're just these lines that carry you in from exerbs or outer suburbs like into the center and carry you back out. There's no connection between look at any American like transit map. There's no connection between any of the neighborhoods, like between one of the. They're only meant to just bring workers in, like they fulfill the needs of capital, not the needs of people, right? So there are jobs to like bring workers into the city to work, service, industrial or office jobs and to then bring them back out. And yeah, that also doesn't Like. Yeah, there's so much in the built character, even the more dense cities, that prevents a more cohesive body politic.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like Houston and LA Right, yeah, exactly, houston has one. What do they have?
Speaker 2:Like one. I love it when you look at a city like Houston with like a metro region how many people? Six or seven million or whatever and there's one like light rail line that like runs through the city. And then you look at like the city of Rennes in France, which has like 200,000 people and multiple subway lines. It's like half the size of Madison. Wisconsin has got multiple subway lines.
Speaker 4:This is what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm going.
Speaker 1:This is the one nice thing I'm about to say about Britain, and please don't cancel me over this. I was there recently the trains so many trains and they were threatening to go on strike right before I left and all of that. And I was just like this how did this happen? All of these trains? And I know there's a rich history of the railways being nationalized and all of that, but I was just like you know what? Y'all should have exported? This Focus on building more trains. This is, this is.
Speaker 2:I hate to burst their bubble, though it is sadly in decline. It's being privatized, like everything else. Bro, you don't guys help me. I become exorbitantly expensive and Look.
Speaker 1:I was riding those trains and yeah that they are insanely expensive. But you know, I see the utopian idea. No, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:I don't say really quick intentionally. I love that they like privatized these rail networks and then the state rails of France and Germany like bought up a bunch of like stock in them and they just make money. Like when you get on a train in Britain you're paying the French state rail service. Great, that's true, yeah, that's true. The SNCF. My friend works for the SNCF.
Speaker 1:I'm so happy to have.
Speaker 2:They're the engineer for the SNCF in France. Yeah, and he's like yeah, we just get, we just get paid by British train riders Because they fucking privatize it Because they privatize it.
Speaker 3:Idiots Fucking idiots. Well, I think so. Okay, so, coming back, I think you're right, lillian, like there's not an automatic direct connection either from, like urbanization, living in a city, to progressive class politics or community per se, nor is there an automatic or direct line from suburbs and exorbs to, like you know, being a reactionary. I think you're absolutely right about that no.
Speaker 4:suburbs, I agree. Suburbs, I agree.
Speaker 3:Suburbs yes.
Speaker 1:Media. Fuck.
Speaker 4:I meant like 200, like, listen, you should be able to live my point was you should be able to live in a town with 50,000 people or 100,000 people and like your quality of life should like be good enough, and you should be able to have a fucking bowling club and so on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, agreed, no, I agree.
Speaker 3:I think what's helpful, then, about Harvey's intervention is, yeah, to demand the right to the city is to recognize the potentiality for, you know, new kinds of social life and political enculturation that is represented by what happens when you bring so many people together into a close proximity with one another.
Speaker 3:Because clearly, capital recognizes the danger here.
Speaker 3:Right, like this is like there's like a double-edged he likes using phrases like a there's like a knife edge that it needs, that capital needs to walk, or like you know that there's like a two-sided, double-edged sword character to phenomena like urbanization, where, you know, starting in the 1800s, you get these cities that start arising basically because of factory systems, and like industrialization, and this is the ferment right out of which revolutionary working class politics grows for the first time.
Speaker 3:So thereupon follows these projects of disaggregation, dissipating it, right, and then the moral reform of the suburbs. Right, like you know, if you're really giving a fuck about, like your lawn mowing and you're not thinking too much about, like the people you work with, right, or if you spend all of your time in a pod, like Owen described, it's much harder to get class consciousness off the ground, and that's intentional, right. I think this is clear, that this is an intentional thing. The other side, so this is just all that is to say, that, like the shape of our, of our built environment is a locus of class struggle, like I believe that I think Harvey's completely right about this and, as with most things, I think we have to say whoops, we've been losing that battle in the class war for quite a while.
Speaker 1:What are you talking about, Gil? Whenever I see a photo of LA and all that traffic from 8am to 8pm. I think, no, we've won. They're sociality. They're all there together. He's not going anywhere.
Speaker 3:There was a really funny line in, I think, the rate to the city piece, where he quotes Haussmann in like 1840s or 1850s maybe who's like been given a design for one of the boulevards by one of his lieutenants and he's just like wrong, you've given me a boulevard that's 40 meters wide. I'm talking 120, right like this is like the scale of the drawing board. And yeah, try again. Go back to the drawing board. And then Robert Moses does the same thing in.
Speaker 2:New.
Speaker 3:York in the 40s and 50s right where, like again, the scale, the size of the surplus capital investment in fixed capital. Because the surplus is so much larger, the scale of urbanization needs to be larger to absorb the surplus. By the way, this, like I just wanted to say, like this helped make sense for me of like these fucking projects that you see in China where they're like building cities where nobody lives, yet they're just building cities that could house like 30 million people, but like it's just like a farm land where nobody lives yet.
Speaker 2:They built a Paris, they built a Replicant they built a. Paris, yeah, in China they built a replica of Paris with an Eiffel Tower and everything, and buildings that looked like they could be yeah, dude, and it's like there's some people living there now, but it's basically been a ghost town since they built it.
Speaker 4:Look up. When did they build this? Hold on back up Like 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like they've been going on for 10 years, dude, I can't wait for you to look at a picture of this.
Speaker 4:It is like staggering, like it's Okay, I'm going to look this up. Paris, china yeah, look that up.
Speaker 3:Paris China, not Paris Texas. Fake Paris this also helps me make sense though.
Speaker 4:Tian Du Cheng Like the fucking Burj Kud. I don't have the fuck. Do I pronounce anything?
Speaker 3:I was just going to say. This also helps make sense of like these, like massive building projects in like in like the Middle East, like in the. Arab Emirates right Like Dubai and like the Burj Khalifa. Like yeah for a long time I was like why the fuck are they doing that? What?
Speaker 2:are they doing? There's no use value.
Speaker 3:There's no utility to it.
Speaker 1:But, I think Harvey's right People don't live in them.
Speaker 3:There's just because you need to absorb the surplus somehow. Yeah, and this is like one way to do it, by the way.
Speaker 2:Just what Robert Moses? He's the guy you have to thank for all the cities that you come from having just gigantic freeways running through the middle of them, and all the neighborhoods that got totally decimated. Thanks Bob.
Speaker 3:Are you seeing it? Lilian looks terrified right now.
Speaker 4:There's something really. I'm like really I'm like kind of I'm getting, I'm getting the Staring to the uncanny.
Speaker 1:I'm staring to the uncanny. Why is?
Speaker 4:this happening? Why are they doing this?
Speaker 2:Dude, absorbing mass, mass amounts of capital.
Speaker 4:But like what.
Speaker 2:You didn't believe you didn't believe me, did you I, when I meant it? I mean, I thought you meant just like they built like a little.
Speaker 4:Eiffel Tower situation, but, like you're, it's a whole.
Speaker 3:No, it's the entirety of Paris. They built a Versailles. They built a new Versailles in Paris.
Speaker 4:I'm freaking out Out.
Speaker 1:Just look, look what capital does to an MF.
Speaker 3:Just look, look, you find yourself doing.
Speaker 1:You leave people alone and they just start building replicas of Paris under capitalism.
Speaker 4:They just built iron parishes. And a Jackson Hole Wyoming.
Speaker 2:Wait why?
Speaker 1:is this happening?
Speaker 2:What the fuck would they build a Jackson Hole Wyoming Jackson Hole? Wait, isn't that where a bunch of billionaires love to go. But but the Jesus, there's a German. They don't wait. There's a replica of the German Village and inside.
Speaker 4:look at China's fake Paris, London and Jackson Hole Wyoming. Honestly, this is, this is nuts. This can't be real, this can't, this cannot.
Speaker 2:Okay, honestly, we have. Where is the? Where is?
Speaker 1:Baudrillard when we need him. Yo, he's just rising from the grave, did you say?
Speaker 2:Simulacra For the meantime, on this, for the Boji art coming out of there. Right, we should stop fuck. Now we might have to do an app on Boji art just because of this development, just because of Jackson.
Speaker 3:Hole China.
Speaker 2:Just because of the Champs-Élysées, in the middle of China.
Speaker 3:Hey there, thanks so much for listening. This is just a small sample of the full episode, so listen to it. And to access other premium content we're putting out, please subscribe to us on Patreon at patreoncom. Slash left of philosophy. See you next time.