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Creative destruction
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=== David Harvey === Geographer and historian [[David Harvey (geographer)|David Harvey]] in a series of works from the 1970s onwards (''Social Justice and the City'', 1973;<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VCwLi2nVmooC |isbn=978-0-8203-3403-5 |title=Social Justice and the City |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=2009 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |orig-year=1973}}</ref> ''The Limits to Capital'', 1982;<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/limitstocapital00davi |url-access=registration |isbn=978-1-84467-095-6 |title=The Limits to Capital |publisher=Verso |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=2006 |orig-year=1982}}</ref> ''The Urbanization of Capital'', 1985;<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5lvaAAAAMAAJ |isbn=978-0-8018-3144-7 |title=The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=1985|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press }}</ref> ''Spaces of Hope'', 2000;<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W00VHZg3u2MC |isbn=978-0-520-22578-7 |title=Spaces of Hope |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=2000|publisher=University of California Press }}</ref> ''Spaces of Capital'', 2001;<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415932417 |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-415-93241-7 |title=Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography |publisher=Routledge |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=2001}}</ref> ''Spaces of Neoliberalization'', 2005;<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z7sS53uqTJoC |isbn=978-3-515-08746-9 |title=Spaces of Neoliberalization: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=2005|publisher=Franz Steiner Verlag }}</ref> ''The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism'', 2010<ref>{{cite book |author=Harvey, David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |title=The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism |publisher=Profile Books |location=London |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-84668-308-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ww1dPgAACAAJ |access-date=2010-11-10 }}{{Dead link|date=December 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>), elaborated Marx's thought on the systemic contradictions of capitalism, particularly in relation to the production of the urban environment (and to the production of space more broadly). He developed the notion that capitalism finds a "[[spatial fix]]"<ref>See in particular "The Spatial Fix: Hegel, Von ThΓΌnen and Marx", in {{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415932417 |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-415-93241-7 |title=Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography |publisher=Routledge |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=2001 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780415932417/page/284 284]β311}}</ref> for its periodic crises of overaccumulation through investment in fixed assets of infrastructure, buildings, etc.: "The built environment that constitutes a vast field of collective means of production and consumption absorbs huge amounts of capital in both its construction and its maintenance. Urbanization is one way to absorb the capital surplus".<ref>{{cite book |author=Harvey, David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |title=The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism |publisher=Profile Books |page=85 |location=London |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-84668-308-4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ww1dPgAACAAJ |access-date=2010-11-10 }}{{Dead link|date=December 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> While the creation of the built environment can act as a form of crisis displacement, it can also constitute a limit in its own right, as it tends to freeze productive forces into a fixed spatial form. As capital cannot abide a limit to profitability, ever more frantic forms of "[[time-space compression]]"<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RAGeva8_ElMC |isbn=978-0-631-16294-0 |pages=240β323 |title=The Condition of Postmodernity: an Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=1995|publisher=Wiley }}</ref> (increased speed of turnover, innovation of ever faster transport and communications' infrastructure, "flexible accumulation"<ref>{{cite book |isbn=978-0-631-16294-0 |page=147 |title=The Condition of Postmodernity |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=1995|publisher=Wiley }}</ref>) ensue, often impelling technological innovation. Such innovation, however, is a double-edged sword: {{Blockquote|The effect of continuous innovation ... is to devalue, if not destroy, past investments and labour skills. ''Creative destruction'' is embedded within the circulation of capital itself. Innovation exacerbates instability, insecurity, and in the end, becomes the prime force pushing capitalism into periodic paroxysms of crisis. ... The struggle to maintain profitability sends capitalists racing off to explore all kinds of other possibilities. New product lines are opened up, and that means the creation of new wants and needs. Capitalists are forced to redouble their efforts to create new needs in others .... The result is to exacerbate insecurity and instability, as masses of capital and workers shift from one line of production to another, leaving whole sectors devastated .... The drive to relocate to more advantageous places (the geographical movement of both capital and labour) periodically revolutionizes the international and territorial division of labour, adding a vital geographical dimension to the insecurity. The resultant transformation in the experience of space and place is matched by revolutions in the time dimension, as capitalists strive to reduce the turnover time of their capital to "the twinkling of an eye".<ref>{{cite book |isbn=978-0-631-16294-0 |pages=105β06 |title=The Condition of Postmodernity |last=Harvey |first=David |author-link=David Harvey (geographer) |year=1995|publisher=Wiley }}</ref>}} Globalization can be viewed as some ultimate form of time-space compression, allowing capital investment to move almost instantaneously from one corner of the globe to another, devaluing fixed assets and laying off labour in one urban conglomeration while opening up new centres of manufacture in more profitable sites for production operations. Hence, in this continual process of creative destruction, capitalism does not resolve its contradictions and crises, but merely "moves them around geographically".<ref>{{Cite video |people=David Harvey |title=Crises of Capitalism |medium=Webcast |publisher=RSA Animates |location=Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, London |date=28 June 2010 |url=http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/06/28/rsa-animate-crisis-capitalism/}} </ref>
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