Urban development by dispossession: planetary urbanization and primitive accumulation

Abstract Structural changes in capitalism over the last four decades have facilitated the emergence of globalized sociospatial processes such as urbanization. Meanwhile, the scale of uneven sociospatial development has also been dramatically accentuated. We explore these issues by conceptualizing contemporary urbanization as a “planetary” process, but we also add mediating concepts to study changes on the ground. We illustrate how linkages between dispossession and urbanization can be discerned in countries of both the global North and South. We also show that the oft-made claims to overall efficiency gains from urbanization are a myth. Capitalist urbanization has two dialectically interrelated dimensions: “development” and “dispossession,” and this process cannot be adequately grasped to be an outcome of rural–urban migration leading to efficiency gains.