Underlying causal explanations of uneven urban spatial development: normative ideas versus empirical evidence

Uneven urban spatial development is approached in this paper from three schools of thought, i.e. neo-Marxism, neo-liberalism and neo-institutionalism that emphasize capital monopoly and manipulation, market competition and space differentiation, externality and land rights, respectively. Urban spatial development based on land markets has three intrinsic attributes that are real estate as both asset and space, location monopoly, and spatial governance as collective action. We use real world evidence to pinpoint demerits and merits of those normative conceptualizations. Successful Guangzhou's suburbanization and disastrous Tianjin Yujiapu ‘ghost town’ demonstrate that location making is not necessarily always manipulated by capital as neo-Marxist scholars believe. The cases of Baltimore inner city and Jakarta central city highlight that the market mechanism emphasized by neo-liberalism cannot explain spatial injustice caused by uneven land rent dissipation that is the concept championed by neo-institutionalism. Neo-liberalism and neo-institutionalism are complementary to each other, while neo-Marxism could be a powerful tool when capital is in short supply or in the making of monopolistically prestigious locations, and thus dominates demand-supply equilibrium.