Well, my politics at that time were closer to a Fabian progressivism, which is why I was very taken with the ideas
of planning, efficiency and rationality . . . there was no real conflict between a rational scientific approach to
geographical issues [which Harvey sought to elucidate in Explanation in Geography], and an efficient application
of planning to political issues. But I was so absorbed in writing the book that I didn’t notice how much was
collapsing around me. I turned in my magnum opus to the publishers in May 1968, only to find myself acutely
embarrassed by the change of political temperature at large . . . Just at that moment, I got a job in the US, arriving
in Baltimore a year after much of the city had burnt down in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King.
In the States, the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement were really fired up; and here was I, having
written this neutral tome that seemed somehow or other just not to fit. I realized I had to rethink a lot of things
I had taken for granted in the sixties.
(NLR, 2000)