Neil Smith’s legacy and his militant commitment
[espais crítics] is a university-based research group that emerged with the aim of disseminating the potential of critical spatial thinking for understanding and transforming the world.1 More than ten years ago, we decided it was necessary to bring together and spread the thinking of various authors who have analysed inequality and social injustice from a spatial perspective. We proposed translating these ideas into Spanish, publishing them and interpreting them in the light of the context in which they were elaborated, so that this thinking could be put to good use in other contexts. This is how the Espacios críticos series was born, with the close support of our publisher, Icaria Editorial. The series already comprises several volumes dedicated to leading authors of this critical spatial perspective, including Edward Soja, Doreen Massey, Richard Peet, Francesco Indovina, Franco Farinelli, Horacio Capel, Neil Brenner, Jean-Pierre Garnier, David Harvey, William Bunge, Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon and Claude Raffestin,2 and several other volumes are currently being prepared (including Milton Santos, Yi-Fu Tuan, Jordi Borja, Denis Cosgrove, José Manuel Naredo and Colin Ward).
From the outset, it was clear that Neil Smith had to occupy a prominent place in this series: our analyses of urban processes and of the tremendously harsh spatial nature of neoliberal capitalism would not be the same without Neil’s inspiring and provocative texts, words and actions. Indeed, without the stimulation of Neil’s work, any thinking about how to put our ideas into practice, any self-criticism about our inability to work together more effectively, and any self-belief that our very survival depends on our own doggedness would not be present in the way that it most assuredly is in our work. In our own very specific case, as well as in that of hundreds of other academics and people on the street, without Neil, geography would not be what it is today.
The friendship offered by Neil (in particular, his enormous generosity and candour) smoothed the way for us: Luz Marina García Herrera and Fernando Sabaté Bel, experts on Neil’s work, agreeing to take responsibility for preparing the corresponding book. The message that Neil sent in response to our proposal is highly eloquent: ‘This is a little stunning. I don’t really feel worthy of a book. But, of course, I would be delighted to have something in the Espacios Críticos series. Luz Marina, I can’t believe you would do this! I very gratefully agree and we can talk details later, can’t we? I travel so much that an interview could happen whenever and wherever you like. I have to be in Paris in September, Poland and Bulgaria in October, London in … Thanks again for your warm appreciation’. Sadly, the trip Neil made to Paris was to be his last; he died in New York on 29 September 2012. His death left us in a state of shock, and the numerous obituaries and events in his memory (above all, those organised during the meeting of the Association of American Geographers held in Los Angeles the following year) showed how well-loved and influential he had become. Luz Marina and Fernando both felt that, despite everything, they owed Neil the book that they had started together, even if this now meant that it would have would have to be written with a mix of grief, fondness and recognition (Figure 1.1).
This book3 (García Herrera and Sabaté Bel 2015) was presented between 14 and 16 September 2015 at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)4 as part of the International Conference entitled ‘Global Capitalism and Processes of Urban Regeneration. A Tribute to Neil Smith’. The event was organised by [espais crítics] and was dedicated specifically to disseminating the thinking of Neil Smith and to appreciating his work. Experts were invited to discuss his ideas in a theoretical frame and in terms of their practical application, and the occasion served to bring together those of us who were fortunate to know him well and those who have benefited enormously from his proposals and contributions.
Eric Clark, Deborah Cowen, Luz Marina García Herrera, Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon, Don Mitchell, Fernando Sabaté Bel and Tom Slater were the guest speakers invited at the conference. In addition, around fifty proposals for papers were received from over twenty countries on three continents. Of these, thirty were selected and presented during the event in Barcelona. The long and intense discussions generated among the more than 200 participants bore testimony not only to the quality of the keynote addresses and papers but also to the significance of Neil Smith’s ideas across the disciplines. Three days were spent in appraising the value of Neil Smith’s work and his influence in fields such as urban gentrification, the rent gap theory, revanchism, appropriation and exploitation of nature, uneven development, the financialisation of the economy, the politics of scale, contemporary politics, political geography and the geopolitics of imperialism, Marxist theory, the limitations of geography and the need for revolution, among others (Figure 1.2).
One of the three days of the conference was held in the streets of the Raval, the neighbourhood in which the MACBA stands, and which is characterised by the harshness of its social marginalisation and the forces of the processes of gentrification to which it is now being exposed.
Several organised routes highlighted the real estate operations that have been transforming this Barcelona neighbourhood since the 1980s. All the routes came together at the Ágora Juan Andrés Benítez, a squatted plot of land managed by various groups that defend the right of people who live in this part of the city to remain here. At the same time, they are trying to halt the advance of real estate capital and tourism in this area, and to promote the public use of this plot. Conversations with members of these movements focused on their understanding of the dynamics evident in the Raval today, including gentrification, the persecution of prostitution and relations with the immigrants that have settled there. The graffiti in the Ágora Juan Andrés Benítez were witness to this building of a common critical understanding of the effects, struggles, resistance and creativity of citizens, in the face of the devastating action of tourism gentrification in Barcelona. During this long session, the Associació de Veïns del Casc Antic, the Associació Cultural El Raval, El Lokal, Putas Indignadas and a range of other citizen movements raised their voices in protest, with enormous clarity, courage and honesty: Neil would most certainly have enjoyed their ideas and their hospitality (Figure 1.3).
Neil Smith: the importance of his ideas and commitments
This book brings together the keynote presentations and a selection of the rest of the papers presented at the event.
In the foreword, David Harvey reminds us of Neil Smith, the person. Harvey considered Smith one of his most notable followers, and they enjoyed a very close intellectual relationship and friendship.
The first part re-covers that part of the conference dedicated to remembering the work and figure of Neil Smith. In the other parts of the book, some of the texts recognise the theoretical contributions of Neil Smith as an intellectual, who was interested in understanding the strategies capitalism employs to ensure its dominion and reproduction in the neoliberal setting both globally and in the urban environment. Other texts focus more directly on a wide range of cases and specific situations that are often not well known in the English-speaking world. In this respect, the book seeks to recall and recognise the remarkable repercussions and influence that Neil Smith’s ideas had, and continue to have, in our universities and in professional, institutional and public life. Although we are reluctant to quantify this influence based on citations and references to his work, it is true that Neil Smith’s texts are always, necessarily present in any rigorous study, in any professional debate and in any journalistic analysis of urban gentrification.
The book also seeks to take up a position regarding the true value of theoretical work; in short, such work should have diverse applications in many, often unexpected contexts; the theoretical concepts developed in a specific context should be fully valid and useful beyond the geographical and disciplinary area in which they were initially formulated; and after a reconsideration and modification of the concepts, they should continue to have crucial repercussions. Neil Smith himself provides a perfect example of a scholar interested in ‘other contexts’ beyond those of both the academic and English-speaking worlds: he held strong political commitments and was involved in many forms of social activism, and he was interested in European, Asian and Latin American experiences, as was clear during his many visits to Spain. Thus, many of the chapters that follow are focused on analysing the relationships between capitalism and gentrification, and stressing the impact of these processes on the daily lives of the inhabitants of European and Latin American cities. The interest lies not only in stressing the enormous impact of Neil Smith’s ideas but also in highlighting the multiple applications of these ideas, which, while often not very well known (particularly if they arise outside the English-speaking world), can have great repercussions.
Contents of the book
The chapter by Luz Marina García Herrera and Fernando Sabaté Bel (‘A political-geographic project against capitalism: an essay on the work of Neil Smith’) examines the continuity of the intellectual career of Neil Smith, his lifelong defence of Marxism as a political and intellectual project and the importance he permanently attributed to space in the dynamics of capitalism. His work is analysed here through a review of the main fields of investigation – discussions of capitalism, the production of nature, the city and imperialism – that produced his most significant contributions including ideas firmly embedded today in the discourse of various social disciplines. Fernando Sabaté Bel is also the author of a supposed apocryphal diary of Neil Smith: Sabaté allows himself the liberty of imagining such diary written by Neil throughout his life, composed by fragments which reflect key moments of his life and significant aspects of his thinking and personality. The ‘diary’ was conceived after reading Smith’s academic work in great detail and enriched with memories of direct dealings with him.
The second part of the book (‘On gentrification and the rent gap theory’) is devoted to analyse the close relations between gentrification and the rent gap theory, being Neil Smith’s most substantial contribution to the field of urban political economy. The rent gap theory helps to explain where, when and to what extent certain neighbourhoods can be transformed by the concerted interests of the capitalist state, private developers and property owners, and what the effects are in terms of gentrification, ground rent dispossession and displacement. The rent gap theory, initially forwarded to only explain gentrification, is increasingly seen to cast light on land use change, capital flows into built environments and uneven development more broadly.
In his chapter ‘The state of gentrification has always been extra-economic’, Hamish Kallin turns to an ambitious and ill-fated regeneration project in north Edinburgh (Scotland) to foreground the necessity of theorising gentrification not as a standalone, purely economic process, but as part of a wider analysis of capitalism. The state has been central to gentrification scholarship for over thirty years, in particular through the work of Neil Smith, and in the current era of ‘state-led gentrification’, the use of extra-economic force is increasingly normalised. According to Kallin, gentrification should not be seen as a static, uniform process in ‘the West’, but just as dynamic, changing and crisis-prone as it is elsewhere.
These ideas are somehow confirmed by the following chapters. Francesco Indovina and Oriol Neŀlo offer a critical overview of gentrification in southern European countries (‘Gentrification: disaster, necessity, opportunity? Notes for a critical use of the concept’). From the standpoint that gentrification processes are in this area highly specific and distinctive, the authors consider that the use of imported models of analysis can lead to distorted scientific conclusions and misguided political attitudes. Five issues are essential in order to understand how urban segregation and gentrification are currently operating in these countries: the importance of tourism, the prevailing tenancy regime, the role of transnational political agents, the action of urban social movements and the aims of public policies.
Antonis Vradis (‘Toward a theory of gentrination: global capital flows and the reshaping of the global semi-periphery. The cases of Greece and Brazil’) puts the question on what happens to the countries of the semi-periphery when global capital flows return inward, when – much in the style of urban gentrification – they hollow out national territories in order to be reused and reintegrated in the global capitalist core. Vradis uses the cases of Greece and Brazil to discuss what a new theory fit for this restructuring could potentially look like and he proposed the idea of gentri-nation. That is, one that utilises Neil Smith’s urban gentrification theory in order to try to grasp what is now happening at the global scale, to the populations living at the ever-drifting semi-peripheries of the global neoliberal core.
In ‘Making rent gap theory not true’, Eric Clark argues that four processes are constitutive of rent gap formation: commodification of space/land/nature, polarizing inequalities, exchange-value-driven decision-making (financialisation) and the ideology of market fundamentalism. Consequently, making rent gap theory not true requires de-commodification of space (social practices of commoning), effective floors and ceilings on income and wealth, use-value-oriented decision-making (deepening democracy) and ideology rooted in solidarity with full recognition of our interdependence.
Closing this part, Ernesto López-Morales (‘Rent gap theory is a political resource’) states that, despite its criticism during the 1980s and 1990s as being excessively determinist, the rent gap theory has evolved not only to be applicable to cities experiencing neoliberal redevelopment-induced gentrification in both the global south and north, but it has also become politico-economic knowledge useful to urban social organisations and neighbourhood activists. His chapter discusses the basic Marxist grounds of the theory and some of its recent applications.
The third part (‘Dispossession and class struggle’) focuses on different types of dispossession as examples of present-day class struggle. Don Mitchell examines, ...
