Measures and Meanings of Spatial Capital

How the built environment, understood as spatial capital, governs both everyday life in cities and urban systems more generally.

In an age of social and environmental crises, we need to critically rethink the role of the built environment and how best to put it to work. Measures and Meanings of Spatial Capital presents a new theory of spatial capital, arguing that spatial form is essential for building resilience into highly complex urban systems. Lars Marcus argues that the built environment constitutes a form of capital that enhances other forms of capital in cities (such as social, economic, and ecological capital), if designed with those goals in mind. This represents an important and necessary shift in how we approach urban space in the numerous studies of cities that are conducted in a range of disciplines today, such as urban sociology, urban economics, and urban ecology.

In contemporary urban studies, land has oddly lost its position alongside labor and capital as one of the three fundamental production factors in economic theory, but as Marcus shows, misconceptions of land are at the root of social and environmental crises worldwide. By defining the challenges and modeling our use of spatial form to enhance/improve land, and then synthesizing data into a unified theory of spatial capital, Marcus provides a crucial reframing of how we can best plan and design our cities for the global challenges we are facing.Preface
Introduction: Towards a Theory on Second Nature
Part I: Challenges—Definition of Spatial Urban Form
1 The Normative Challenge: An Operational Manual for Spaceship Earth
2 The Epistemological Challenge: The Sciences of the Artificial
3 The Ontological Challenge: Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Conclusion Part I
Part II: Measures—A Model of Spatial Urban Form
4 Modeling Space: Urban Space as Relative Location
5 Modeling Distance: Urban Space as Cognitive Distance
6 Modeling Attraction: Urban Space as Potential Density and Diversity
Conclusion Part II
Part III: Meanings—The Spatial Form of Urban Systems
7 Social Capital: Cities as Landscapes of Varied Copresence
8 Economic Capital: Cities as Landscapes of Varied Markets
9 Ecological Capital: Cities as Landscapes of Varied Biotopes
Conclusion Part III
Part IV: Synthesis—Spatial Form and Urban Complexity
10 Urban Systems: Cities as Complexity
11 Urban Processes: Cities as Space
12 Urban Form: Cities as Capital
Conclusion: A Theory of Spatial Capital
Afterword: The Order of Things
Bibliography
Notes
Index“Lars Marcus's groundbreaking work bridges urbanism and economics, identifying spatial configuration—the product of design—as a crucial form of capital to foster resilience and sustainability. Marcus’s new approach to land as capital provides essential insights into today’s complex social and environmental challenges.”
—Alan Penn, Professor of Architectural and Urban Computing, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College LondonLars Marcus is Professor in Urban Design at Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden, and Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.