ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the outcome of research which started in the early 70s in the context of the French Housing Ministry. At that time and for a 20 year period, France had experienced unprecedented industrial and urban growth and the urban question became a major issue. The tools of main-stream economics were proving themselves ineffective and even deceitful. Hence a tolerance developed for non-orthodox and even Marxist theories. The economic crisis has moved the urban land question to the background, as the oil rent problem has become a burning issue. The land tribute can grow because the total profit increases in the production related to the ground, or because the average profit rate decreases. While it is easy to measure the quantitative differences between harvests on different pieces of land, the difference between two housing products in two different points of the social division of space is qualitative.
