Lefebvre’s decisive proposition is that space is not a neutral container within which social life unfolds but a social product generated through relations of power, labour, representation and everyday practice. His conceptual triad—spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces—displaces architecture from the isolated object toward the conflictual production of lived environments. The methodological force of the book lies in refusing the separation of material space from symbolic and institutional operations: plans, routines, property relations and bodily practices participate in the same spatial process. Abstract space emerges as the homogenizing medium of capitalism and state administration, yet it remains internally contradictory because lived differences resist complete codification. Lefebvre provides urban theory with an ontology of production in which space is simultaneously instrument, result and field of struggle. His work establishes the foundational bridge between critical geography, political economy, architecture and the study of everyday life.
