From Utopia To The City

David Harvey is a distinguished British geographer,and a world-famous Marxist.Harvey’s creativity combines Marxist critical analysis with the tradition of geography which has created a new branch of critical geography.The Spaces of Hope,published in 2000,is a unique one of his books.In this book,Harvey critically analyzes the utopian ideas which are widely found in Western philosophy and literature and he draws the conclusion of dialectical utopia,which is not a specialized plan,but a suggestion for the global anti-capitalist revolution.Broadly,it not only insists on anti-capitalist and global class struggle,but also notices the relationship between the different forms of organization and the solutions in these struggles.All these are based on the new form of capitalist contemporary development: neo-liberalism.The consequences of the neo-liberalism at macro-scale is the imbalance of global geography and at micro-scale is the shaping of the body as a variable capital cycle.Besides the preface and the epilogue,this paper is divided into three parts.The introduction introduces David Harvey’s life and the development of his theory.The main text,based on the Hope of Space,introduces the background and logic of Harvey’s dialectical utopian theory.The first chapter is mainly about the background of Harvey’s dialectical utopia theory.The second chapter follows Harvey’s critique of two different types of utopianism in the Western tradition,and further analyzes based on the interpretation of Harvey’s critique.The key to the analysis lies in how to understand the logical inevitability that the totalitarianism emerging from the practice of “space game utopia”,and to understand why the city can be the performer of utopia.The third chapter is about the theoretic projection of Harvey’s dialectical utopia and the realization forms of his revolutionary road.Finally,the conclusion part criticizes Harvey’s revolutionary plan,and proposes that any revolutionary plan,based on the logic of "human nature",...