Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Growth, Sprawl, And The Contradictions Of Capitalism: San Diego Suburbs And The Speculative Frenzy, 1970-1991, Richard Hogan

Purdue GIS Day

San Diego has become the most beautiful place where nobody can afford to live because speculative growth drives housing prices regardless of the level of supply or demand. How this happened in San Diego County is fairly clear. Marx explained that ground rents (and thereby land prices) increase when capital and labor are invested in the most valuable land and when investment is intensive, with vast amounts of labor and capital focused on the high yield properties to the virtual exclusion of less productive or less valuable lands. In fact, speculative growth between 1960 and 1980 conformed to what Marx …