The city—site of high human accomplishment and of squalid human failure—embodies the inner contradictions of capitalism. In this pioneering study David Harvey offers a definitive Marxist interpretation of the urban process under capitalism.

Originally published in two volumes as Consciousness and the Urban Experience and The Urbanization of Capital, Harvey's work is now available in an abridged one-volume paperback edition. Sppaning geography, sociology, economics, and politics, it offers a solid theoretical basis for understanding—and participating in—social change. The Urban Experience, write's Harvey, "is about ways of seeing the city, of reading its text and finding an interpretive frame in which to locate the million and one surprises that confront us on the street."