Elden insists that Lefebvre’s spatial theory must be read as a philosophical and political project at once. Its iconic proposition is that space is political not merely because conflicts occur within it, but because its production already embodies power, abstraction and historical struggle. The theoretical contribution arises from holding together the Marxian problem of production and a broader ontology of space that exceeds conventional political economy. Lefebvre’s synthesis of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger allows material practices, conceptual representations and lived experience to be treated as internally related dimensions rather than separate domains. Methodologically, Elden reconstructs this genealogy to prevent the spatial triad from becoming a simplified analytical template. The conceptual operation is politicisation at the level of ontology: space is neither neutral container nor passive effect, but an active medium through which social relations acquire durability. The wider bridge reaches political theory, geography, philosophy and historiography by demonstrating that a politics of space requires analysis of how histories, categories and material arrangements become spatially instituted.
URBANISM MEETS ART