ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the urban planning in the concrete economic, social, and political context of capitalism. It deals with questions like: is urban planning exclusively a domain of activity of urban planners? Urban landowners in the nineteenth century, given the institution of private property in land, and given the leasehold system would seek to develop their land in 'building estates'. They would lease the land to a contractor/capitalist who would, in turn, build working-class houses and rent them. The internal logic of early capitalist society carried in it the necessary and sufficient conditions for a qualitative transformation of laissez-faire into monopoly/welfare state capitalism. The contradictions between urban planning theory and practice diminish considerably during periods of territorial instability and social turmoil. The problems, predicaments, and contradictions in urban planning, not unlike those in capitalism itself, are pregnant with their own resolutions. There are two interrelated dimensions to the assertion: an objective and a subjective dimension.
