Introduction: Capitalism and Urban Development Essay

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Chapter 1







Recent millennium was a major watershed in the evolution of human settlement, for it marked the period when the location of the world’s people became more urban than rural
More than 6 billion inhabitants of the globe now live in towns and cities rather than villages and hamlets
No longer are towns and cities exceptional settlement forms in predominately rural societies --- the world is an urban place







Cities are economic and social systems of space. They are a product of deep-seated and persistent processes, which enable and encourage people to amass in large numbers in small areas
The urban world is distinctive in socioeconomic as well as in spatial terms
Patterns of demand converge as consumerism absorbs ever more of the world’s population







Irrespective of continent or country, many urban residents live their lives in broadly similar ways, with common concerns over home, children, school, and work
Although towns and cities have existed for over eight millennia, the wholesale transition to urban location and urban living is very recent in origin
Many highly successful urban civilizations existed in the past, but their impacts were both limited and localized







In 1700, fewer than 2 per cent of the world’s population lived in urban places and these were concentrated in a small number of city states Major and rapid changes began in Britain in the late 18th Century in response to industrial capitalism By the beginning of the 20th Century about 15 percent of the world’s population was living in urban places



The adoption of a world perspective on cities and urban society is a recent development, which was foreshadowed nearly 100 years ago in the formative work of Adna Ferin Weber
(1899) on the Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth
Century


The urban world Weber analyzed consisted of 50 countries in which there was significant urban development 



Within urbanized countries, statistics on employment patterns, family structures and demography pointed to the existence of pronounced urban-rural contrasts
Cities were places with particular socioeconomic characteristics that sustained and perpetuated distinctive patterns of social and economic behavior





The world economy is capitalist in formation in that is it based upon principles of private rather than state ownership of the means of production and seeks to generate profits through the manipulation of land, labor, finance, and entrepreneurship
The world economy is distinguished by the ways in which it is organized and operates.
Structure and function are key defining features, rather than the worldwide scale of supply and demand, and of production and consumption 







The world economy is dominated by powerful transnational corporations (TNCs) and is regulated through global institutions TNCs are large complex companies that make and sell many products in many countries around the world.
TNCs dominate and control production and consumption in key economic sectors
They have disproportionate influence over supplies of raw materials and manufacturing capacity, and determine/direct patterns of spending through advertising and promotional activities TNCs are supported by banking and investment houses that manage and manipulate global finance, and a range of organizations that provide producer services in the form of management consultancy and legal, personnel, and marketing advice on an international basis







The world economy is organized around and through cities. Implicit in the global approach is the view that cities must increasingly be seen as interacting and interrelated elements within an urban hierarchy that underpins and makes possible processes of capitalist accumulation and reproduction
The accumulation of wealth through
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