Social Justice and the City

Citation

Harvey, D. (2009). Social Justice and the City (rev. ed.). University of Georgia Press. (Originally published 1973.)

Chapter Summary

The book first appeared in 1973; the University of Georgia Press edition (series Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation, about 370 pages) reprints it with a later essay, "The Right to the City" (2008), added at the end. The text is divided into an introduction and three parts: "Liberal Formulations", "Socialist Formulations" and "Synthesis". The publisher describes the argument as a move away from liberal, technocratic treatments of urban problems toward what Harvey calls a "revolutionary geography". Core issues of city planning and policy (employment and housing location, zoning, transport costs and concentrations of poverty) are examined in each case for their relationship to social justice and space.

Introduction

A short opening (pp. 9–19 in this edition). The publisher's description of the book as a whole says it lays out Harvey's position that geography could not remain objective in the face of urban poverty and its associated ills.

Part I, Liberal Formulations: Chapters 1–3

Chapter 1, "Social Processes and Spatial Form: The Conceptual Problems of Urban Planning", and Chapter 2, "Social Processes and Spatial Form: The Redistribution of Real Income in an Urban System", form a pair: the first addresses the conceptual problems of urban planning in linking social processes to spatial form, and the second the redistribution of real income within an urban system. Chapter 3, "Social Justice and Spatial Systems", brings the concept of social justice to bear on spatial organisation. Together they occupy about 100 pages and work within liberal analysis.

Part II, Socialist Formulations: Chapters 4–6

Chapter 4, "Revolutionary and Counterrevolutionary Theory in Geography and the Problem of Ghetto Formation", takes up revolutionary and counterrevolutionary theory in geography, with the problem of ghetto formation as its subject. Chapter 5, "Use Value, Exchange Value and the Theory of Urban Land Use", turns to the economic categories of use value and exchange value and applies them to the theory of urban land use. Chapter 6, "Urbanism and the City: An Interpretive Essay", is the longest chapter, about 90 pages, an interpretive essay on urbanism.

Part III, Synthesis: Chapter 7 and the added essay

Chapter 7, "Conclusions and Reflections", gathers the argument and reflects on the earlier chapters. The added essay, "The Right to the City" (2008, pp. 315–332), is a later essay by Harvey, added in this edition. Bibliography and indexes follow.

Key Concepts

Part I: Liberal Formulations

• Social processes and spatial form: the problem of relating the way society works to the physical and spatial arrangement of cities.
• Redistribution of real income: how urban systems shift real income between groups.
• Social justice and spatial systems: justice treated as a question about space as well as about persons.

Parts II–III: Socialist formulations and synthesis

• Revolutionary and counterrevolutionary theory: the terms in the title of Chapter 4 for geographical theory that challenges, or fails to challenge, existing conditions.
• Use value and exchange value: Marx's categories, applied to land and its uses.
• Urbanism: the subject of the long interpretive essay in Chapter 6.
• The right to the city: the concept named in the title of the added 2008 essay.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• The argument is visible in the structure. The three parts show Harvey testing liberal approaches, then turning to Marxist ones, then drawing the two together. A reviewer for Ethics quoted by the publisher admires the way the essays map a paradigm change and insist on a comprehensive view.
• Specific urban problems as the starting point. Employment and housing location, zoning, transport costs and poverty give the abstract argument concrete subject matter, and each is treated in terms of justice.
• A later statement from the author. The added 2008 essay, "The Right to the City", extends the book beyond 1973.
• Contemporary reception on record. The publisher reproduces reviews from the Geographical Review, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Urban Studies, the Times Literary Supplement and other journals, giving readers a way to see how the argument was received.

Limitations

• A 1973 text. The main text dates from 1973 and the 2008 essay is the only later material, so recent urban research needs other books.
• Demanding and partisan. The Marxist formulation is central to the argument. A Times Literary Supplement reviewer, quoted by the publisher, expected that some of the author's colleagues might find the dose of theoretical Marxism too undiluted, and Richard Morrill in the Annals found both convincing and unconvincing ideas.
• Uneven chapter lengths. Chapter 6 is about 90 pages and Chapter 2 about 46, against about 23 for Chapter 3; readers should expect a long middle.
• Economic vocabulary assumed. Real income, land rent, use and exchange value appear in the chapter titles; readers new to them need a short economics or Marx primer.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the course's reading list, this is the classic theoretical text rather than an introduction. Latham and colleagues' Key Concepts in Urban Geography and Archer's The City: The Basics give concise overviews, and Hall and Barrett's Urban Geography and Pacione's Urban Geography: A Global Perspective are systematic textbooks; read one of these first so that Harvey's argument has a map of the field to land on.

Levy and colleagues' Contemporary Urban Planning is an introduction to planning practice, centred on the United States; Harvey's first part is a critique of the assumptions of planning and reads naturally against it. Harvey is a good companion to a textbook chapter on urban theory: use the textbook for the survey, and Harvey for the argument it summarises.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in geography, urban studies, planning and related social sciences who have had a course in urban geography or urban studies and some familiarity with concepts such as rent and markets.

A practical plan:

• Core: the Introduction, Chapter 3 (which takes social justice as its direct subject), Chapter 6, and Chapter 7.
• Also valuable: Chapters 1–2 if you want the liberal argument Harvey starts from, and Chapters 4–5 for the move to Marxist theory.
• Last: "The Right to the City" as a short, later restatement of the theme.

Read the publisher-reproduced reviews alongside the chapters to see where the book was challenged, and write a one-page statement of how the liberal and the socialist formulations answer the same question about a housing or transport policy.