Space and Symbols in an Age of Decline

Abstract

There are two schools of critical thought about the city’s built environment. One, identified with political economy, emphasizes investment shifts among different circuits of capital that transfer the ownership and uses of land from one social class to another. Its basic terms are land, labor and capital. The other school of thought, identified with a symbolic economy, focuses on representations of social groups and visual means of excluding or including them in public and private spaces. From this view, the endless negotiation of cultural meanings in built forms — in buildings, streets, parks, interiors — contributes to the construction of social identities. Few urban scholars at this point would defend using only one of these ways of looking at the city. The most productive analyses of cities in recent years are based on interpretations and interpenetrations of culture and power.