This document provides a summary of David Harvey's views on globalization based on research into four of his books and two articles. It discusses Harvey's biography and academic background. Key points made in Harvey's writings are summarized, including his perspective that globalization is an extension of global capitalism that leads to issues like polarization and economic crises. The document also outlines Harvey's skeptical view of globalization and critique of capitalism. In three sentences, the document summarizes David Harvey's Marxist perspective on globalization as a natural outgrowth of capitalism that exacerbates inequality and economic instability through processes like uneven development and spatial fixes.

1. David Harvey on Global Capitalism
URP 6930
Globalizaton and Urban Restructuring
Dr. Asli Oner
John-Mark Palacios

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Table of Contents
Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................. 3
Biography................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Writings...................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Impacts of Globalization...................................................................................................................................... 9
Perspective on Globalization........................................................................................................................... 12
Thoughts on His Writings................................................................................................................................. 13
Conclusion............................................................................................................................................................... 14
Bibliography........................................................................................................................................................... 15

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Introducton
This semester we have studied globalization from an urban planning perspective, but many
scholars outside of the planning discipline study globalization. David Harvey, a professor of
geography, has written on the subject of globalization; and we will endeavor to examine his
stance on the issues. We have researched four books and two articles written by Harvey in
order to see how he discusses globalization's impact, what perspective he takes on
globalization, and which ideas seemed most interesting.
Biography
When geography studies cities, it naturally overlaps with some of the same areas studied by
urban planners. Since geography examines the whole world, it also seems logical that a
geographer might touch on the subject of more interconnectivity between cities around the
world. David Harvey touches on the topic of globalization through his critiques of global
capitalism. He is a student of Marx, and integrates Marx's ideas into his critiques of the
problems with capitalism. Wikipedia labels him as “the world's most cited academic
geographer,”1
and he is widely respected among many academic disciplines. Warf suggests
he might be the world's most famous geographer, in part because he is read widely outside
the discipline of geography.2
1 “David Harvey (social theorist and geographer),” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, July 23, 2010,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey_(social_theorist_and_geographer).
2 Barney Warf, “Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, by
David Harvey,” Journal of Regional Science 47, no. 2 (5, 2007): 395.

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Harvey shared in Spaces of Hope how he taught a course on Marx's Capital for so many
years, even in the midst of the Cold War when communism was unpopular in the United
States.3
Today communism is slightly more accepted, and other great thinkers such as Noam
Chomsky do not hesitate to criticize capitalism and put forth socialist and communist
alternatives. Harvey seems to shy away slightly from trying to put forth his comprehensive
vision of utopia and focuses on the problems with the current system.
Harvey received his bachelor's degree in 1957 as well as his doctoral degree in 1961, both
from the University of Cambridge. He did some post-doctoral studies at University of
Uppsala in Sweden, where he also received one of many honorary doctorates. He has taught
at the University of Bristol, John Hopkins University, and University of Oxford. Since 2001
he has held the position of Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of
New York (CUNY).
Writngs
Harvey has written many books, but we will focus on a sampling of his books and his
articles. Table 1 lists all his books in chronological order.
3 David Harvey, Spaces of hope (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 3-5.

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Table 1: Works of David Harvey. Compiled from listing on Wikipedia4
4 “David Harvey (social theorist and geographer).”

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The Urban Experience
In 1985 Harvey published two books, Urbanization of Capital and Consciousness and the
Urban Experience. He abridged and condensed these two into The Urban Experience in
1989. The Urban Experience basically gives a Marxist interpretation of the whole urban
process. Harvey had begun this concept in his 1973 Social Justice and the City, a series of
essays which outlined the urban problems in capitalist society and analyzed these
problems through the glasses of Marxism.5
In the preface to The Urbanization of Capital,
Harvey states his goal of providing “a more definitive Marxian interpretation” of the urban
problems than he had presented in Social Justice.6
Abu-Lughod points out in her review of
Urbanization of Capital and the Urban Experience that Harvey continued the interpretation
in his 1982 Limits to Capital.7
Harvey says in his introduction to The Urban Experience that
he wrote Limits to fill in some of the areas where the Marxian framework was lacking, in
order to make it easier to interpret the urban experience through a more complete
framework in later writings.8
Essentially, each successive book through this time period
refined his ideas, and The Urban Experience was just another iteration of this refinement
process.
5 Charles F. Levine, “Social Justice and the City,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology (Brill
Academic Publishers) 17, no. 1/2 (March 1976): 119-120.
6 David Harvey, The urbanization of capital : studies in the history and theory of capitalist urbanization
(Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1985), x.
7 Janet L. Abu-Lughod, “The Urbanization of Capital/Consciousness and the Urban Experience (Book),”
Economic Development & Cultural Change 36, no. 2 (January 1988): 411.
8 David Harvey, The urban experience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 4.

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“The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap”
This article was published in Harvard Design Magazine in 1997, and later incorporated into
William Saunder's Sprawl and Suburbia. In it, Harvey criticizes New Urbanism for only
seeking to solve the problems of suburban sprawl within the same framework of capitalism.
He implies that the solution lies not simply in a better designed city, but in a change in the
political and social process from capitalism to something else.
Spaces of Hope
Harvey begins by presenting some of the issues with the city, including a concept he calls
“uneven geographical development.”9
This is more often known as polarization. Instead of
merely building on previous critiques, Harvey presents some of his ideas to fix things, a
vision for what might be instead of capitalism.10
He briefly mentions a few thoughts on his
vision for what might be in an interview on BBC HARDtalk in 2010. He advocates for
socialism, decentralization and diversity, without delving too deeply into some of his ideas
that would break drastically from the capitalist mold.11
“Globalizaton and the 'Spatal Fix'”
This article published in 2001 touches on the concept of a “Spatial Fix” that was also
presented in Spaces of Hope. He clarifies his meaning by the term “fix” as being similar to
9 Harvey, Spaces of hope.
10 Margaret Crawford, “Spaces of Hope (Book Review),” Architecture 89, no. 10 (October 2000): 80.
11 David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010 (2/3), vol. 2, 3 vols., BBC Hardtalk (BBC, 2010),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4amK0zFskAk#t=6m26s.

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the usage for a drug addict. Just as a drug addict needs his next “fix,” capitalism needs a “fix”
using space. Each fix is only a temporary improvement and does nothing to provide a
permanent solution. Harvey discusses the cycle of development and redevelopment that
could be in the same space or shifting from one place to another, pointing out how it is a
waste of resources.12
This cycle is something we see quite frequently here in South Florida,
where the economy has been driven by development. The fact that we are currently in a
recession with South Florida's real estate market seems to prove how the “fix” of
development was only temporary. Harvey seems to say this as well in his lecture on Crises
of Capitalism.13
The New Imperialism
This text, written when the United States was beginning to go back to war with Iraq,
postulates that we are again in an age of imperialism. Harvey suggests that many aspects of
globalization are actually imperialism by the United States. The chief example he uses to
prove his point is the war in Iraq and how the Bush administration manipulated us into
going there for control of the oil.
Spaces of Global Capitalism
Harvey once again builds on the ideas presented in his other works relating capitalism and
geography, especially the concept of the “spatial fix” that he brought up in his earlier article.
He points out that capitalism creates the problems of polarization. The uneven
12 David Harvey, “Globalization and the "Spatial Fix",” geographische revue 3, no. 2 (2001): 23-30.
13 RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism (London: RSA, 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=qOP2V_np2c0#t=4m57s.

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development is created due to accumulation by dispossession. Gain in one place results in
loss in another.14
Another concept that Harvey discusses in Global Capitalism is absolute, relative, and
relational space. Absolute space is basically real, physical space. Any movement in absolute
space is simply movement from one location to another. Relative space consists of things
like communication and transactions.15
Relational space is a bit more abstract, dealing with
relations between people or potential energy. These three spaces are reminiscent of some
of the concepts discussed in this globalization class, such as Castell's three layers to his
Spaces of Flows.
Impacts of Globalizaton
Harvey does not examine the built environment or metropolitan form so much as the social,
political, and economic aspects of globalization. He doesn't focus as much on globalization
as he does the larger concept of “global capitalism.” For him, globalization is merely a
natural part of the capitalist ambition, so it gets analyzed and critiqued right alongside the
whole system. Since capitalism is by its nature an economic system, Harvey naturally
touches on the economic aspects of globalization. The economic system is also tied to
government control, necessitating a political discussion as well. From the very title of his
14 Warf, “Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, by David
Harvey.”
15 Warf, “Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, by David
Harvey,” 396; David Harvey, Spaces of global capitalism : [towards a theory of uneven geographical
development] (London ; New York, NY: Verso, 2006), 134-136.

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first book, Social Justice and the City, it is clear that Harvey analyzes and critiques the
system out of a concern for the well being of society.
One of the key topics that Harvey emphasizes is polarization. The income gap between the
majority of the population and the few who control the majority of the capital troubles him.
The uneven geographical developments do as well, as so many of his writings touch on the
subject. Through his “spatial fix” concept, he points out how we have deindustrialization in
some geographical areas at the same time as we have industrialization in others. A current
example of this would be the trend to offshoring and outsourcing prevalent in the United
States. We used to have a large manufacturing industry at home, but the manufacturing has
shifted overseas to places like China. One of the reasons for this shift is that the wages are
much lower in these other countries, saving manufacturing costs and increasing profits.
Wages are higher in the West, of course, because of our labor laws and our desire for a
higher standard of living. Developing nations have lower wages as well as lower standards
of living and fewer labor laws.
Lately, Chinese technology factories such as Foxconn have been pressured into raising
wages for their assembly line workers. Laborers have gone on strike and expressed their
discontentment in many ways, as they seek to improve their standards of living in the same
way that Western nations did years ago. As these wage increases take effect, several
companies have made decisions to move to other areas of China where labor costs are
lower, or decided to move to other countries with even lower wages such as Vietnam or
Mexico. Some US companies even relocated their factories back to the United States.16
16 Elaine Kurtenbach, “Cheap-labor era in China is disappearing,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 2010,
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/homepage/20100710_Cheap-

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Having exploited all they could out of one space, capitalists will move to the next space to
get their next “fix.” As a result, it would seem that the areas where current manufacturing
costs are rising significantly may become less and less industrial, and new areas will be
industrialized.
Harvey also gives considerable attention to the crises to which capitalism leads. In his
lecture on Crises of Capitalism, he discusses how the present-day recession came about
through capitalization on things like the sub-prime real estate market and derivatives. He
argues that crises like this one are an inevitable result of capitalism's tendencies to squeeze
as much as it can out of a market. He says that these crises are not enough to shut down
capitalism, as it merely recovers and then limps along until the next crisis. The crises force
some sort of redistribution of capital investment, and this redistribution can be and often is
a spatial redistribution. In this lecture and in the BBC Hardtalk interview, he even compares
today's crisis with the 1973 crisis and the dot-com bubble crisis at the beginning of the
millennium.17
The Great Depression would also seem to fit in the crisis cycle. These
examples serve to prove his point that we are just going from one crisis to the next. What is
interesting is that the latest two crises are so close together. It makes one wonder if the next
crisis will come even sooner.
labor_era_in_China_is_disappearing.html.
17 David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010 (2/3), vol. 2, 3 vols., BBC Hardtalk (BBC, 2010),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4amK0zFskAk; RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism (London: RSA,
2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0; David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010
(1/3), vol. 1, 3 vols., BBC Hardtalk (BBC, 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=YtyZY9sKv2w&feature=youtube_gdata; David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010 (3/3), vol. 3, 3 vols.,
BBC Hardtalk (BBC, 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zARceZS50ps&feature=youtube_gdata.

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Harvey would, of course, prefer to see some sort of socialist or communist system take
capitalism's place in order to avoid these cycles of up and down. He recognizes that where
communism has been tried so far it has failed miserably and done significant damage to
society, so he suggests development of a new form of communism that corrects both the
shortcomings from the previous attempts and the shortcomings of capitalism. While he
endeavored to present some suggestions towards that new system, he admits that we have
not yet developed it.
Perspectve on Globalizaton
David Harvey takes a skeptic or a traditionalist view on globalization. He appears to agree
with most of the points that were made in class describing how skeptics view globalization.
While he doesn't deny that globalization exists, he considers globalization as a natural
extension of a capitalist system which he dislikes. That falls basically inline with the
thought that globalization exists “for ideological reasons of capitalist accumulation,” as well
as being part of market liberalism. He would tend to agree that the world was globalized
before. He suggests that globalization has been happening since 1492 or earlier.18
Because
he ties it to capitalism, the assumption would be that globalization started about the same
time as capitalism. Harvey seems pretty consistent with his traditionalist stance through all
his writings.
Since capitalism tends to discourage welfare systems and encourage privatization of
anything from health care to education, Harvey implicitly agrees (by supporting
socialism/communism and opposing capitalism) that globalization, or at least global
18 Harvey, “Globalization and the "Spatial Fix",” 25.

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capitalism, is a way of dismantling those systems. His solution to global capitalism is to
support revolutionary change, so he would support resistance movements like most other
skeptics.
One area that Harvey may differ slightly from some skeptics is in whether local and national
cultures will remain unaffected. He suggests that capitalism has created diversity, but he
does not focus extensively on the cultural aspects of globalization. If The New Imperialism is
viewed as an effect on culture, then it would appear that he suggests that local and national
culture is being influenced by the United States. Imperialism in the past has had significant
influence on the local cultures, so the assumption would be that his label of imperialism
includes a strong affect on local cultures around the world. This is only an assumption,
though, and really nothing more than speculation. Because Harvey has not discussed
culture extensively, it would be unfair to put words in his mouth on the subject.
Thoughts on His Writngs
Since we have been educated thoroughly in the capitalist system, it is rather refreshing to
hear a voice such as Harvey's that critiques the system from a different perspective. While
at first the tendency for a good capitalist might be to dismiss his ideas as too off the wall
and too similar to Lenin's or Mao's applications of communism, they are worth a second
look. His application of Marxian methods provided some good insight into why we suffer
some of the issues and crises that we do. Since he looks at it from outside the capitalist box,
he provides a much “bigger picture” view than we can get looking at the pieces. Since we
are struggling through an economic recession right now, it is hard to disagree with Harvey's

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point about capitalism going from crisis to crisis. The reality of the current crisis bears his
point home effectively.
While it is tempting to follow Harvey's suggestion that we need to create a better system
and set off to create a utopia, the reality of this world does not lend itself to that. This is a
naturally corrupt and base world that tends to disorder and chaos when left to its natural
course. The capitalist system operates largely on greed, which most people agree is not a
virtue. It endeavors to provide some good by leveraging these human flaws, but at the same
time those human flaws hurt some people. Communism seems more idealistic and fair. In
practice, has suffered extensively from corruption from leaders abusing their power as well
as low production due to laziness. So both systems are fraught with human vice. Any
attempt to create a new system will inevitably run into these or some other human
imperfections. Therefore, while I agree with Harvey's criticisms of capitalism, I cannot
agree with his call to come up a magical utopian economic system.
Conclusion
Harvey is a well-written scholar who has spent years polishing and perfecting his ideas. It is
not surprising that he is so widely respected in academia, given the thoroughness of his
critiques and the depth of his arguments. Through his general critiques of global capitalism,
he discusses the social, economic, and political aspects of globalization. Some of his key
themes include polarization and the economic crises caused by capitalism. His stance on
globalization is generally that of a traditionalist. Harvey's arguments are quite convincing,

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but his desire for some kind of utopian economic system fails to account for the imperfect
reality of this world.

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Bibliography
Abu-Lughod, Janet L. “The Urbanization of Capital/Consciousness and the Urban
Experience (Book).” Economic Development & Cultural Change 36, no. 2 (January
1988): 411.
Crawford, Margaret. “Spaces of Hope (Book Review).” Architecture 89, no. 10 (October
2000): 80.
“David Harvey (social theorist and geographer).” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, July 23,
2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey_(social_theorist_and_geographer).
David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010 (1/3). Vol. 1. 3 vols. BBC Hardtalk. BBC, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtyZY9sKv2w&feature=youtube_gdata.
David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010 (2/3). Vol. 2. 3 vols. BBC Hardtalk. BBC, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4amK0zFskAk#t=6m26s.
David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010 (2/3). Vol. 2. 3 vols. BBC Hardtalk. BBC, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4amK0zFskAk.
David Harvey BBC HARDtalk interview, 2010 (3/3). Vol. 3. 3 vols. BBC Hardtalk. BBC, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zARceZS50ps&feature=youtube_gdata.
Harvey, David. Consciousness and the urban experience : studies in the history and theory of
capitalist urbanization. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1985.

17. Palacios 17
———. “Globalization and the 'Spatial Fix'.” geographische revue 3, no. 2 (2001): 23-30.
———. Spaces of global capitalism : [towards a theory of uneven geographical development].
London ; New York, NY: Verso, 2006.
———. Spaces of hope. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.
———. The new imperialism. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
———. “The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap.” In Sprawl and Suburbia : A
Harvard Design Magazine Reader, edited by William Saunders. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
———. The urban experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
———. The urbanization of capital : studies in the history and theory of capitalist
urbanization. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Kurtenbach, Elaine. “Cheap-labor era in China is disappearing.” Philadelphia Inquirer, July
10, 2010. http://www.philly.com/philly/business/homepage/20100710_Cheap-
labor_era_in_China_is_disappearing.html.
Levine, Charles F. “Social Justice and the City.” International Journal of Comparative
Sociology (Brill Academic Publishers) 17, no. 1/2 (March 1976): 119-120.
RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism. London: RSA, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=qOP2V_np2c0#t=4m57s.

18. Palacios 18
RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism. London: RSA, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=qOP2V_np2c0.
Warf, Barney. “Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical
Development, by David Harvey.” Journal of Regional Science 47, no. 2 (5, 2007): 394-
396.