Formulation of Place Criticism in Terms of Political Economy; Scrutinizing the "Urban-Relational"

Place is an intermediate layer or level as the urban-relational. This ontological conception of place which has a capacity for encountering complicated relationships and and contentions requires critical scrutiny for more elaboration. That aspect of critical urbanism is needed that embeds the redefined ontology in political and socioeconomic realities and explain place as a concrete abstraction.. Political economy is an approach to this achievement through a critique of the mode of place production and also related productive forces and relations.  In this way, lessons in Critical Theory could be as contributions to better understanding.  Based on this and the examination of the evolution of the political economy concept, some essential ideas can be proposed in the critique's framework of the political economy of urban places. An effort will be made to analyze the spatial manifestation of the main productive forces in eight sectors under the capitalist mode of production and to investigate the relationships between them, which have specific consequences on urban places.

The research paradigm focuses on an integrative post-positivist and interpretations schemata and analyses social realities, following normative values of the place and mediating political and socioeconomic relations.The current study adopts a normative-critical epistemology and applies a deductive strategy and a qualitative method to peruse a coherent critical formation of place concept through the review of library documents and the description, analysis, and extension of various theoretical ideas and approaches.

Critique of political economy within  an urban context includes eight rubrics: place as commodity and use value versus exchange value; consumption, spectacle, and commodity fetishism (a two-way conflict between use value and exchange value and the conquest of the latter over the former that occurred because of  the commodification of the city's real estate and collective consumption); private property versus the commons in urban places (a place that has a balanced content as an intermediary layer, and the micro level has a balanced role against the pressures from the macro level, can be a place for the establishment of shared ownership); capital accumulation, right to the city and inequality (The role-playing of the place as the urban-relational between the macro and micro levels leads to a conflict between the stronger and weaker subjects of these two levels. The balance or imbalance between these two levels of role-playing is directly related to the right to the city, the increase or decrease of inequality, and the stratification of the urban society.); state versus private sector; academy and market; and finally, dialectical nature of the place (Place as the urban-relational is in its essence a synthetic phenomenon and a product of the dialectical relationship between distant and close order).

The scrutinizing of place as the "urban-relational " is the main goal of this research, and in this direction, the main challenge is to examine the most important concepts arising from the previous efforts of the authors by passing through the sieve of political economy as a critical approach. For this purpose, an effort is made to calculate the intersection of various and multiple aspects in view of the most advanced thinkers and commentators on political economy and its urbanized version. The review of the literature in political economy in order to find out what this concept is and then the examination of its evolution from the time of its creation in the late 18th century until today revealed its content orientations and trends in different periods. Then, with the help of the formed theoretical framework, and by taking advantage of a comprehensive review of the opinions of some of the most prominent urban scientists, an attempt is made to establish a connection between the theoretical framework and urban issues and to provide a relatively comprehensive analysis of the issues affecting urban places from the perspective of political economy in the sections emerging from the theoretical framework.

It should be acknowledged that the "urban-relational" can only have an active mediation in order to improve the level of placeness in cities when it can have an effective function in the production method that governs it, which is associated with specific production forces and relationships. Place as the urban-relational rests on productive forces and relations by which a mode of production is explained and elaborated. The efficient function of place as the urban-relational within the influential mode of production is conditioned by some potentialities and impotentialities interfering in the scrutinization of place.