Urban Class Warfare: Are Cities Built for the Rich?

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/marxist-and-geographer-david-harvey-on-urban-development-and-power-a-900976.html


According to Gerull, the trend in cities is to increasing commercialization, with the result that market forces determine how they develop.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why should a Marxist be concerned about major cities instead of the working class these days?

Harvey : Traditional Marxists admittedly see the avant-garde of the revolution in the industrial working class. However, since this is disappearing in the wake of Western deindustrialization, people are starting to grasp that urban conflicts will probably be decisive.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Over the course of the debt crisis, wages have decreased and social benefits have been slashed in Greece. Meanwhile, general strikes haven't generated enough pressure to reverse the changes. Can this be viewed as evidence to support your theory that the traditional proletariat can no longer paralyze a state?

Harvey : Yes. Today's working class is part of a wider configuration of classes in which the struggle centers on the city itself. I replace the traditional concept of class struggle with the struggle of all those who produce and reproduce urban life. Unions must look at the urban everyday existence -- a key for the social conflicts to come. In the United States, for example, this has prompted the AFL-CIO federation of labor organizations to start collaborating with domestic workers and migrants.

[flamingdem]

1. Yes. New York with the 85 story building for the 1%

Santa Monica California with several huge tower buildings with luxury condos for the 1% in planning stages. Rents show no signs of going down in the big cities.

It's a trend for sure.

[gopiscrap]

2. It's becoming more and more like that

my family couldn't afford to live in the place I was born downtown Frankfurt, Germany) under today's economic conditions.

[olddots]

3. This is not a trend it started in the 60s

manufacturing left cities so fast that buildings stood empty till the Trumpudites did their tape worm moves.

Remember that loft was once a place where people worked .

[FarCenter]

4. City living requires wealth, cooperation, discipline and organization

Otherwise you get a slum.

[HiPointDem]

5. it requires only money. the difference between a slum and a regular neighborhood is money.

[FarCenter]

8. How do you explain the ability of an equally poor immigrant group to turn around slum neighborhood?

[HiPointDem]

9. i explain it by the fact that they are not 'equally poor'. and if you look into the details of

those supposed 'turnarounds,' you'll find that is the case.

behind the little horatio alger stories is *capital*.

[HiPointDem]

6. cities are being deliberately ethnic & class-cleansed.

[closeupready]

7. +1. It's growing increasingly impossible to live well

on a typical income in every major US city.

Wasn't it just yesterday someone posted the story that suburbs have more poor people as a percentage of population than inner cities today?