Social Production of Space

There has been a renewed interest in space among urban scholars, planners, practitioners, and activists. The watershed of such a “spatial turn” can be traced back to the publication of Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space ([1974] 1991) and his other, related writings. Inspired by Lefebvre, both his critics and followers have tried to go beyond the limited horizons of urban ecology, political economy, or postmodern urbanism in understanding the nature of urban reality. The development of a new urban sociology, a critical political economy, or a sociospatial perspective illustrates such endeavors. The legacy of Lefebvre now reaches far beyond the disciplinary boundaries of sociology, geography, anthropology, architecture, and urban planning. A growing number of theoretical, empirical, and practical projects elaborate on his ideas and apply them to emerging issues, including globalization, the state, and postmodern culture.

For Lefebvre, space is a social product that shapes and is shaped by the social practices of individual and collective agents in particular historical conditions. Urban spatial form and its contents, and urban spatial structure and its functions as well, are the outcome of sociospatial practices that take place in political, economic, and cultural spheres. However, space as a social product is inseparable from the process of its production. Knowledge, technology, and technical expertise play a part in the production of space, as do the means of production in the process of commodity production. Like any other production process, in addition, the production of space proceeds in accordance with the specific social relations dictated by political, economic, and social power.

A critical understanding of space calls for attention to the process in which space is actually produced. To capture the dynamics behind the historical transformations of space, Lefebvre develops a conceptual triad in which the three moments of space—spatial practices (perceived space), representations of space (conceived space), and spaces of representation (lived space)—are dialectically interconnected. The spatial practices of various actors structure the relationship between the representations of space and the spaces of representation.

[Page 743]A representation of space is constructed by capitalistic developers and utilizers with the help of knowledge and technical expertise. In contrast, a space of representation is directly experienced by community users and inhabitants through symbols and images. These two moments of social space are in tension with one another: Whereas the former is a mental, abstract space revealed in strategies, plans, or programs oriented toward exchange value, the latter is a concrete, lived space of everyday life and routine activities oriented toward use value.