Research On Neil Smith's Urban Space Theor

Neil Smith is an important representative of the British and American Marxist urban school.In view of the unbalanced development of urban space,Neil Smith adheres to the Marxist position,inherits the theoretical views of Henry Lefebvre and David Harvey,enriches the historical materialism proposed by David Harvey,combines geography with Marxism,and explains the changes and status quo of capitalism from a new perspective.While fully absorbing the production theory of space,Neil Smith extended the concept of "natural production" in his view of nature and traced the powerful driving force that led to capital’s spatial production by discussing the relationship between nature and space.Furthermore,he proposed that there will inevitably be a trend of differentiation and equalization in capitalist spatial production,and the contradictory movement of these two trends constitutes a unique spatial logic of imbalanced development.This kind of contradictory movement is manifested in the unbalanced development of urban space on the urban scale,and its typical representative is the gentrification movement of the city.Neil Smith has explained the main connotation,development status and formation reasons of "gentrification" in detail.The root cause of urban spatial imbalanced development lies in the seesaw movement of capital,which elucidates the inherent logic of urban spatial imbalanced development and deeply reveals that the expansion,transfer,and restructuring of geographical space are spatial valves to solve the crisis of excessive capital accumulation.Neil Smith’s theory of urban space is an important component of Marxist space criticism.His concept of natural production enriched the foundation of historical materialism and promoted the development of space research in depth;The geographical dialectics of differentiation and equalization proposed by him explains the specific mechanism of the unbalanced development of capitalist urban space,enriches and improves the theoretical system of Marxist criticism of urban space.In practice,Neil Smith’s urban spatial theory can also provide new theoretical guidance for contemporary spatial research and urbanization construction.