“I am doing this in order for the people to see that the crisis exists. I’ve been thinking for such a long time that if you look into the city you can’t see the crisis anywhere”

 These words belong to a former executive of   an American company that is now one from the millions that were fired all around the world. He is trying to explain his decision “to wear” a big sign, that informs the people around him of the rise of unemployment and poverty and to do so standing every day in a central street of New York, just in front of the offices of his previous employers. It is also the phrase which is quoted in the end of a Greek documentary that was recently broadcasted in the television and reported of the economic crisis that is rising in our days.

 This phrase stirred our attention because it places a very vital question. Does the crisis have a reflection and, more considerably, can the crisis be translated into space and its transformations. Furthermore in what way can we understand in the shape of the cities, changes in the level of economy and production, periods of capitalistic growth and recession, policies of overcoming problems and maintaining of profitability?

 In this paper we will follow the course of such cities in relevance with the development of the capitalistic system. The capitalistic system, since the end of the 18th century, has passed through different phases and stages, periods of growth and crisis, having suffered important changes. In each of these different periods the cities were converted in a way corresponding to the historical turning-point. In the same time the cities were not only the reflection but also the protagonist, if not the source, of social changes, they caused critical changes in the way our functions and is shaped.

 The main points of research are: Firstly the changes that were brought upon the cities by the growth of the capitalistic economy. The industrial production and the concentration of capital and as a result the working force constitutes of a main element of the research. The industrial growth, the arrangements of accumulation, the development of the technology, and the forms of organisation of the production constitute key elements which are connected and leave a distinct mark upon the city. (For example increase of the population, economic force, territorial forms of enterprises, unemployment, suburbs etc). The second main point of the research, which is connected with the previously mentioned, is the effect that the choices made by the bourgeoisieand the state have on the planning and designing of the city. The preservation of the power of the bourgeoisieis based on one hand on the preservation and increase of the profitability of the capital and on the other hand on the political reign over the rest of the classes (mainly on the working class), which is a process that can take on many forms of integration, subjugation and repression. The ruling policy on the city sought the achievement of both, with the intervention or not of the state.