How the bourgeoisie solves the housing question. Section III (1873)

Abstract

This section of Engels' The Housing Question dissects the recurrent processes of creative destruction by which capitalist urbanism adapts cities to its needs of accumulation. In the process, these urbanistic operations are unable to solve social problems that in the nineteenth century took on forms of extreme urban indignity. To the extent that such conditions are the necessary result of capitalist dynamics, the urbanism that serves it is unable to resolve them. Instead, these operations merely displace problems and populations through successive processes of socio-spatial segregation. To this end, Engels uses the case of the renovation of Paris designed by Baron Haussmann, as well as the persistence of degraded spaces in the case of the industrial Manchester in which he lived. This section concludes the second chapter of the book and synthesises much of Engels' argument by linking some of the most brilliant lines ever written on capitalist cities.