Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields.
The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy.
This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.

在批判社会理论中，人们过去往往偏重于对人类历史的研究，沉湎于历史的想像；由此带来的直接后果，是对地理、空间的漠视。本书对这种倾向提出质疑。作者严厉批判“历史决定论”及其对地理学想像的限制作用。在论述福科、伯杰、吉登斯、贝尔曼、杰姆逊，特别是亨利・勒菲弗等“后现代地理学先驱者”的研究成果的基础上，力主一种历史的和地理的唯物主义，即对空间、时间和社会存在的辩证关系作根本性的再思考。