ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the elements of the method, a synthetic view of various rent systems and of the specificity of capitalist urban rent. During the second half of the nineteenth century, urbanisation developed on an effectively capitalist basis with industrialisation and the emergence of joint-stock companies. Foodstuffs were not bought at their real production cost, and urban labour did not produce on a strictly capitalist basis even though a wage-earning class had already emerged. Commercial urban rent was thus related to the main urban activity and to prevailing feudal methods of production. Most formal research on urban rent remains at an early stage and so far it affords no real understanding of the phenomena involved. In fact each economic and social system is defined first by a system of ownership, both of the land and of the means of production, and then by the supportive production relationships which sustain it.
