Between Accumulation and Concentration of Capital: Toward a Framework for Comparing Long-Term Trajectories of Urban Systems

In this article, we first seek to develop a more general framework to understand differences in long-term trajectories of urban systems. We use a model that has two dimensions: the level of accumulation of capital and the level of concentration of capital. We then use the model, very much in a heuristic way, to see what insights can be gained when applied to the concrete cases of the urban systems of London and the Dutch Randstad. As the data, especially for the pre-industrial and the industrial era, are still very scarce, this mapping of the long-term trajectories is still highly conjectural. What emerges quite clearly from this novel way of looking at urban development trajectories, though, is the divergence between the two global city regions. This divergence can be explained by the differences in the (pre-industrial) points of departure between London and the Randstad, but also by the difference of insertion in the global economy. A more detailed analysis of the Randstad in the post-industrial era shows that changes in the level of concentration of capital are clearly scale-sensitive; within the Randstad a clear tendency toward deconcentration while relative to the country as a whole the Randstad has maintained its position.