Plans are still in formation for a public memorial service at the Graduate Center. Further details will be available in the near future and posted to our mailing list.

Thank you to everyone who shared their memories of and messages for Neil Smith over the past several days. A number of blogs and other media outlets have posted their own tributes to Neil so we wanted to compile some of these in a single place. These posts, like the comments posted on this website, offer a small glimpse into the breadth and reach of Neil’s work. They are in no way exhaustive of Neil’s work, but they hint at the impacts of his work on the world of social theory and political activism.

Photo credit Sabine Bitter via themainlander.com

• A trove of articles written over the years and published in the journal Environment and Planning A&D were made open access by the editors: http://societyandspace.com/2012/10/02/neil-smith-1954-2012/
• An interview with Neil titled “The Military Planks of Capital Accumulation” about militarism, (neo-)liberalism, and “World Bank Cities.” Shared by namhenderson.wordpress.com
• An article written for the Nation (subscribers only, but also available here) about the German government’s use of outdated anti-gang legislation for the purpose of fighting the “Global War on Terror (GWOT).” Shared (In German!) by gentrificationblog.wordpress.com
• Notes on a walking tour given in the spirit of those led by Neil. Neil regularly led walking tours of the Lower East Side to introduce people to the urban frontier of what he described as The Revanchist City, but also to show off bits of the rich history of leftist organizers and intellectuals who congregated in the areas around St. Marks Place.
• A podcast dedicated to Neil and video of a lecture given at Harvard in 2010 shared by thecityfm.org
• Two pieces showcasing Neil’s engagement with the humanities: an article in response to a large-scale image produced by Stan Douglas of the 100 block of West Hastings Street in Vancouver and A Manifesto for the Poetry of the Future shared by themainlander.com
• An obituary posted by the University of St. Andrews, where Neil graduated with “outstanding first class honours” in 1977
• A beautiful tribute written by fellow Geographer and critical gentrification scholar, Tom Slater

David Harvey, the Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, had his recent book, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (Oxford Univ. Press, 2010) selected as one of The Guardian’s “Best Economics Books for Giving, 2011” (read the article). The Guardian journalist Paul Mason had this to say about The Enigma of Capital:

… the debate on post-crisis economics is approaching the fundamental question: the dark, deep, Orc-filled dungeon of economics, namely what is capital and why does it exist?

This was of course the question Karl Marx asked. This year David Harvey, the influential Marxist and renowned geographer, produced a revised and updated edition of The Enigma of Capital (Profile, £8.99). It remains the most complete Marxist attempt to situate the global crisis in the context of the irresolvable tensions of a system based on “self-expanding money”: “The troubles that have beset the world this last 30 years,” Harvey writes, “signal that a limit is looming to continuous capital accumulation that cannot be transcended except by creating fictions that cannot last.”

Congratulations to David Harvey for making this Best-of list, particularly since he was up against a slew of economics-themed books published in the past few years since the extent of the current crisis of capitalism first started to become apparent.