"Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form" - David Harvey (1997)

The following is a review of David Harvey's work entitled "Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form"

Throughout this text Harvey carries a 'dialectic' standpoint which is the art of arriving at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments (The Free Dictionary, 2014).

Throughout the introduction Harvey urges planners and policy makers to design flexible, adjustable cities and encourage fluid social processes that can be altered. He notes 'community' is not created through immaculate design, but "militant particular-ism in which a group coheres around a value" - e.g. environmental conservation.

• Harvey starts off by expressing the increasing urbanisation of the world, but hr questions why it is not discussed in political-economic processes and social trends. He goes on to state that continual urbanisation would lead to a 'dystopic' setting. 
• "Gas and water socialism" achieved a great deal in cleaning up cities throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, although it focused on social control it did allow living conditions for many to rise 
• Capital is not concerned with cities - it needs less workers and can move all over the world - this can lead to segregation of class within cities
• He highlights some fundamental questions and beliefs about the role of the city in political, economic, social and ecological life
• Relationships between process and form? Harvey believes process takes priority over 'things' - but often the 'things' shape the process and this is typically evident within the 'palimpsest' urban environment
• He suggests reducing urban (referring to the city as a minor feature of social organisation) - this can only occur when 3 assumptions are made about space and time:
• 1. They're passive and neutral containers of social action
• 2. They're containers of social action, but not neutral - space and time vary depending on the process
• 3. Relational view - space and time do not exist outside processes - the process determines space and time
• Therefore space and time are not simply constituted by but are also constituted by social processes
• Also true in the urban - urban and city are not simply constituted by but are also constitutive of them
• The process of urbanisation creates the thing-like structures of cities
• Social processes, in not giving rise to things, create the things which enhance the nature of those particular social pressures
• Aim should be to liberate processes of social change, however, we must understand politics will continue to be constrained to 'things' created in the past
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• Major points he makes:
• 1. Re-conceptualise the urban as a production of space and spatio-temporality to a dialectical relationship between process and time
• 2. Assumption that the 'community will save current city's mess - again, power with the thing not the process
• 3. No mention of cities in ecological literature - therefore failure to account for over 50% of the world's population
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• "Urbanisation is an ecological process and we desperately need creative ways to think and act on that relation
• We have to move urbanisation in a more central position to be debated, but before this occurs the following myths must be contested:
• 1. When we have the economic power, we then spend money of cities to support them
• 2. Political revolution sparks social relations - Harvey believes community mobilisation and transformation of militant particular-ism is vital - this enables us to find universal concerns that exist within a realm of difference
• 3. Cities are anti-ecological - however, they're ecological features themselves

'"Contested Cities" - the issue is not simply about contesting inside cities but more importantly concerns contests over the construction and framing of cities - especially into the future.'