ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by outlining concepts and assumptions fundamental to the framework of an urban political economy. It analyzes how two laws of motion of capitalist development have structured the dynamics of the contemporary urbanization process in the United States. The chapter illustrates how contradictions emanating from the dynamics of contemporary capitalist development are expressed through the urbanization process. Capital accumulation, the production of surplus value, is the driving force of a capitalist society. Capital accumulation necessitates expansion of the means of production, expansion of the size of the wage labor force, expansion of circulation activity as more products become commodities, and expansion of the realm of control of the capitalist class. In a capitalist society, urbanization and the structure and functioning of cities are rooted in the production, reproduction, circulation and overall organization of the capital accumulation process.
