More than a decade ago, in an article entitled The Theory of Land Rent at the Crossroads', Anne Haila (1990) posed the question of which direction land rent theory would further develop along. Two of the central lines of-development analysed by Haila, namely the nomothetic and ideographic traditions, have made only very limited progress since then. What are the reasons for this? Firstly, theorizing in a political-economic tradition has diminished considerably since the 1970s and 1980s. Secondly, and more importantly, both traditions show severe theoretical shortcomings. This holds particularly true for,the weak conceptualization of the role of political agency and its relation to the structural 'logic' of land rent, as well as for the political-economic process of development in general. Hence, what is offered here is an innovative way out of this relative stagnation through attempting to systematically develop an integrated view on structure and agency in the context of urban land. The aim of the article is to reassess the results of the debate and to show how land rent theory may still provide fruitful insights into central aspects of urban processes and developments. Besides a coherent treatment of land rent and its interrelation with urban space, a mid-range contextualization within a modified regulationist conceptualization' is undertaken. This enables us to systematically connect phenomena around urban space to processes of broader political-economic development and should bring a systematic treatment of politics back into land rent theory. In so doing, land rent theory proves to be a very useful tool for providing an integrated political-economic perspective for analysis of urban phenomena. This is illustrated briefly in the cases of Vienna, Austria, and Montevideo.
