The Games Behind the Giant City and Express Railway

In this article, Lau Yu-fan analyses the relationship between the logic of capital and urbanization.  The logic of capital is to maximize the accumulation. Capital has to accumulate through spatial carriers, "city" is one of those, in which economic activities are highly centralized.  According to David Harvey’s “Notes Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development”, capitalists have a strong motivation to minimize the turnover time of capital, and urbanization helps to achieve this goal.  When a city is developed, it attracts more investments, and the land prices go up as a result. Even though the workers are the ones who build, they usually cannot afford a house in the city. This is the most unjust aspect of capitalism.  Under the same logic of capital, urbanization also destroys the cultural life of the workers and their community networks.