‘There is a strong likelihood we will have a major economic crisis in the next 5 years, and it will hit poor and vulnerable populations hardest’
Cities today are like checkerboards, with patches of wealth and squalor. Shantytowns and skyscrapers, humble dwellings and villas coexist, not always in harmony, says geographer David Harvey.
What kind of issues does geography tackle nowadays? What is your own philosophy?
My teachers at Cambridge came from a military background or the colonial experience — spheres that were very important for geography. But after World War II geography began to withdraw into regional planning and development. I tried to give a theoretical basis to what had been an empirical approach.
Later on, when I taught at the University of Baltimore in the US, I began to study Marx. His theories helped me put my work on a full theoretical basis. And as Marx was not a geographer, I had to make the connection. Marxists didn’t deal with geographical inequalities, urbanization or the environment. I had to bring Marxism into geography and geography into Marxism, which was much more difficult.
You often speak of unequal geographical development. What exactly is it and how is it created?
It is the differences between one place and another in terms of the built-up environment and the social structures that accompany it. The distribution of capital creates uneven geographical development. We often see funds taken away from areas where people are starving, so as to upgrade the life of people who already have a very high standard of living. That is not at all just.
The landscape changes, sometimes very rapidly. What alters it?
Ceaseless development by private investors or the state.
Checkerboard cities
A lot of your work concerns cities...
We build cities without taking fundamental needs and processes into account. The city is the outcome of investors’ decisions. For a people-friendly and environment-friendly city, decisions have to be made more democratically and the uncontrolled expansion of urban centers checked. Cities now expand beyond their bounds, beyond the suburbs even, making a chaotic, complex web. The idea of the city as a center for social interaction is dissolving.
Town planners used to say that cities evolved like donuts, that families and businesses tended to move away from the hole in the center toward the edges. I think that cities nowadays, the center and the suburbs, are like checkerboards with oases of affluence amid patches of squalor. Walls (both physical and figurative) separate these diverse sections of the geographical checkerboard.
What creates these chaotic cities?
The constant accumulation of capital — the geographical expansion of cities is linked with the dynamics of capitalism for development; the technology and organizational systems that allowed cities to expand. In the old days it was difficult to have cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, but networks are organized so that we can have ever larger cities.
What are the dangers of urbanization?
First, great inequalities. We live in fragmented cities — cities for the rich and cities for the poor. Cities that sprawl endlessly, chaotically, dissolving any sense of cohesion and breeding tensions.
Then there are the environmental hazards of urbanization — automobiles, pollution and the greenhouse effect. One solution would be to redesign our cities so as to limit pollution and the depletion of natural resources.
There are dangers inherent in the highly complex, specialized infrastructure of the city. We had a blackout a while ago in New York, and it caused huge problems. Cities are vulnerable.
Is there public debate on these issues?
I don’t know what’s happening in Greece, but in the US it is very difficult to have a serious public debate on these issues. Specialists, analysts and commentators go on television just to shout at each other. It’s tragic. We have many serious issues to discuss from many different viewpoints. If we don’t address them publicly we won’t find solutions.
What creates the sense of insecurity and danger?
Fluidity in the economy and in personal life. For the past 20-30 years it has not been clear which part of the world is prospering. Sometimes it is Japan, sometimes Germany or the US. Now it’s China. But there is a personal insecurity. Forty years ago, if you had a job you were secure. Now you have to retrain continuously. You don’t know how long you’ll be working. That is linked to the emergence of the neoliberal form of capitalism, which is heavily based on the constant movement of capital. If you were in Argentina in 1998, you would have have thought it was a flourishing economy. Three years later, all the money had gone abroad and the country’s economy collapsed.
What worries you most at the moment?
I think there is a strong likelihood that we will have a major economic crisis in the next five years, a crisis that will hit poor and vulnerable populations hardest and that will come from the US. The US is a debtor country. On one hand there are large deficits and on the other a daily revenue of $2.3 billion to serve American consumers. This imbalance is recognized by the international community and serious observers of various political viewpoints and they are worried. But I cannot see American policy changing. The dollar may collapse. That would create problems in Europe and in China, because consumption would collapse.
What is the cause?
In the past 20-30 years, inequalities have become much more extreme. If you look back, we have had economic crises after long periods of income inequality. In 1920 we had great inequality, followed by 1930. In the ’60s we had the same kind of inequalities, and the crisis of the ’70s followed. I believe that the intensification of social inequalities creates the conditions that lead to economic crisis. These inequalities must be corrected. But if nobody does so, the system will impose its own correction.
This article was translated from the Greek text.
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