L'urbanisation du capital

Abstract

This article analyses the creation of capitalist urban space during the socalled « Keynesian », or « Fordist », epoch and the transition from this epoch to the era of so-called « post-Fordism » which we are currently experiencing. The production of a spatial fix which is specific to each phase of development is, for capitalism, both a means of managing its internal contradictions, thus ensuring its survival, and of displacing these contradictions onto a new terrain. This terrain is the result notably of the tensions and constraints inherent in the spatial fix inherited from the previous period and remodelled by the constant transformation of the mode of production. The Keynesian urban space, constituted by cities oriented towards demand, and moulded by the joint intervention of state planning and credit-based finance, is succeeded by the post-Fordist city, which is reshaped by intensified interurban and interregional competition, and by the exacerbation of the polarisation of, and separation between, social classes. The reproduction of social relations by and through space poses new problems, at the same time that it opens new possibilities, for class struggles and alternative socialist projects.