Life Space and Economic Space

John Friedmann is internationally known for his pathbreaking work in urban and regional development planning theory. Life Space and Economic Space contains some of his most original and controversial essays on spatial and territorial development in the low-income countries of the world. The essays focus on a conflict he considers fundamental to human existence: that conflict between life space and economic space. By life space Friedmann means the bounded territories over which we strive to exert some degree of self-governance and which constitute the human habitat. By economic space he means the ubiquitous global space of market relations.Friedman demonstrates the implications of his theoretical position in a number of ways: he examines development in Southeast Asia, introduces the notion of world cities, and presents a politico-territorial model of rural development which he calls agropolitan. The analysis extends in wide-ranging fashion from the space of global relations to the most intimate space of the household economy which, when linked to other households, constitutes the economy of the barrio or neighborhood. In a chapter proposing a dual-track model of development, he sketches a model of the barrio economy drawn from Latin American experience and based on social mobilization, collective self-empowerment and political action.Friedmann perceives a global crisis which he traces to the dissolution of territorial relations. This he believes results from penetration of the global system of markets into the remotest corners of the world, undermining traditional cultures and ways of life. The consequence is incipient breakdown, he asserts, and we need to repoliticize spaceand subordinate the power of capital to the collective will of people organized to work toward common ends. This deliberately provocative collection of essays includes an autobiographical fragment providing contextual information about the author.