In this work, Katznelson critically analyzes the development of Marxist scholarship on cities in the last quarter century. He demonstrates how some of the most important weaknesses in Marxism as a social theory can be remedied by forcing it to seriously engage with cities and spatial concerns, and explains the significant shortcomings even of this "improved" Marxism. Katznelson explores how a Marxism that is open to engagement with other social-theoretical traditions can help illuminate our understanding of cities and the patterns of class and group formation that have characterized urban life in the West.

"Metromarxism" discusses Marxism's relationship with the city from the 1850s to the present by way of biographical chapters on figures from the Marxist tradition, including Marx, Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, and David Harvey. Each chapter combines interesting biographical anecdotes with an accessible analysis of each individual's contribution to an always-transforming Marxist theory of the city. He suggests that the interplay between the city as center of economic and social life and its potential for progressive change generated a major corpus of work. That work has been key in advancing progressive political and social transformations.

Marxism and Urban Culture is the first volume to reconcile social science and humanities perspectives on culture. Covering a range of global cities—Bologna, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mahalla al-Kubra, Mexico City, Montreal, Osaka, Strasbourg, Vienna—the contributions fuse political and theoretical concerns with analyses of urban cultural practices and historical movements, as well as urban-themed literary and filmic art. Conceived as a response to the persistent rift between disciplinary Marxist approaches to culture, this book prioritizes the urban problematic and builds implicitly and explicitly on work by numerous thinkers: not only Karl Marx but also David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Friedrich Engels and Antonio Gramsci, among others. Rather than reanimate reductive views either of Marx or of urban theory, the chapters in Marxism and Urban Culture speak broadly to the interdisciplinary connections that are increasingly the concern of cultural scholars working across and beyond the boundaries of geography, sociology, history, political science, language and literature fields, film studies, and more. A foreword written by Andy Merrifield (the author of Metromarxism) and an introduction by Benjamin Fraser (the author of Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience) situate the book’s chapters firmly in interdisciplinary terrain.

Manifesto on the urban commons from the acclaimed theorist.

Prologue -- The visualisation of capital as value in motion -- Capital, the book -- Money as the representation of value -- Anti-value: the theory of devaluation -- Prices without values -- The question of technology -- The space and time of value -- The production of value regimes -- The madness of economic reason -- Coda

Throughout his distinguished and influential career, David Harvey has defined and redefined the relationship between politics, capitalism, and the social aspects of geographical theory. Laying out Harvey's position that geography could not remain objective in the face of urban poverty and associated ills, Social Justice and the City is perhaps the most widely cited work in the field. Harvey analyzes core issues in city planning and policy--employment and housing location, zoning, transport costs, concentrations of poverty--asking in each case about the relationship between social justice and space. How, for example, do built-in assumptions about planning reinforce existing distributions of income? Rather than leading him to liberal, technocratic solutions, Harvey's line of inquiry pushes him in the direction of a "revolutionary geography," one that transcends the structural limitations of existing approaches to space. Harvey's emphasis on rigorous thought and theoretical innovation gives the volume an enduring appeal. This is a book that raises big questions, and for that reason geographers and other social scientists regularly return to it.