ABSTRACT
The analysis of the influence of ‘great properties’ in the European city-making process has been conducted on the interrelation between the great properties intended as capital in land, urban development patterns, and the agents involved in the urban and territorial planning. The chapter shows that urban planning is not the decisive factor influencing the city-making process, but instead the power held by the capital in land. Great properties play a particular role in the city-making process over time as they trigger the creation of new ‘areas of centrality’ intended as large areas for consumerism and, more generally, profit-driven spaces. Through the in-depth study of each of the life-time phases of great properties (materialization, dismantling and regeneration), one may develop an original path to interpret the capitalist city-making process from the late 19th century onward being strictly linked to the real estate market and driven by rents demands. This kind of analysis may also demonstrate how the management of the great property expresses the considerable contradictions of the capitalist city, i.e., the conflict between the ‘city as oeuvre’ and the ‘city as product’.
