The Built Environment and the Urban Question

Abstract

Debates over the content of urban studies flowered in the early 1970s and died in the 1980s. The rise and fall was closely mirrored by the fashionable status of the urban theories of certain Marxists. This paper is a look at the reasons why this urban debate, like its predecessors, failed to incorporate an adequate analysis of the provision of the built environment, the physical framework of cities. The work of Castells, Lojkine, amd Harvey is examined in this respect and the concept of collective consumption questioned. An approach to studying the built environment is then suggested which hopefully will help to get Marxist urban analysis off its functionalist petard.