ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a purely descriptive account of contemporary urban land problems and policies, and summarizes, and subsequently criticizes, the theoretical/analytical underpinnings which seem to sustain those policies. The chapter explores the foundations of a formal and critical alternative theory of urban land. It presents some assertions and hypotheses about the urban land development process. In the twentieth century, the urban problem in North America has been, par excellence, the problem of urban expansion consequent upon general economic growth. Urban land theory in North America seems to fall largely into two opposing approaches. On the one hand, there is a clearly dominant approach that is rooted in conventional North American social science, and especially in marginalist neoclassical economics. On the other hand, there is a minor approach, highly critical of the former, and growing out of it by a sort of mechanical negation.
