ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the structure, logic and historical manifestations of urban land use and space as outcomes of private and political decision-making within capitalism. A first theme concerns the organization of urban form and structure as the tangible expression of the private locational decisions of firms and households. A second theme, therefore, concerns the genesis and character of urban planning as the capitalist State confronts the problems and predicaments of the urban system. The chapter provides a brief, much-simplified description of the form, dynamics and imperatives of capitalist civil society and the capitalist State. The inner core of capitalist society consists of the institution of commodity production. Initially, cities in capitalism emerge out of the economic imperatives of commodity production and exchange. The foundations of a viable conception of an urban political sphere in general, and of urban planning activity in particular, have been essentially established in the discussion.
