Towards an Analysis of Planning in Late Capitalism

Abstract

The breaking of the feudal chains of absolutism gave rise to the modem capitalist city in which the bourgeoisie, risen to the ruling class, causes a confluence of population, centralizes the means of production and concentrates the ownership thereof in the hands of a few. A necessary consequence is that the city is also the centre of political power. The industrial capitalist mode of production is unquestionably bound up with cities, which, as areas of working class concentration, as locations of places of production increasing both in number and size, as nodal points of the systems of transportation and as the seat of political, scientific and cultural institutions, are magnets attracting additional manpower, factories, routes of transportation and institutions. In the course of this process individual cities grow together to form conurbations in which monopolies, as the controlling fraction of capital, penetrate all domains of social life.