The remodeling of Paris in the 19th century can be interpreted in various ways. David Harvey, a remarkable Professor of Geography and Anthropology, details his theory on why the city of Paris was rebuilt from the ground up in his writing of "Paris, Capital of Modernity . Within the reading, Harvey examines several different reasons as to why the city needed change. The dawn of the Second Empire, with the election of Louis Napoleon, was a period of time in which the city of Paris was struggling in various aspects of urban life, especially with respect to the city's economic state. The economic struggle, as Harvey suggests, can be directly correlated with the city's inability to adapt to a rapidly changing economic landscape. This inability to adapt, as Harvey suggests, stems from the outdated urban infrastructure in the city. As an economic crisis swept Europe, the city of Paris was hit especially hard. This was due to the fact that the city itself was extremely outdated, with Harvey describing the social state of the city as being cornered by "medieval constraints. 2 Harvey referring to the city Harvey describes the crisis of "capitalist over-accumulation, in which massive surpluses of capital and labor power lay side by side with apparently no way open to reunite them in profitable union. With these surpluses of labor and capital, the economy was stalling. At the dawn of the Second Empire, with Louis Napoleon declaring himself Emperor and seizing authoritarian power across the country, Harvey details the Second Empire's task, essentially, to recover the economy. To do this, Harvey argues, Napoleon enlisted Baron Haussmann to oversee the redevelopment of the city as a whole as a means to implement the surplus of resources and effectively jumpstart the stalling economy. Harvey writes that "Haussman well understood his limited role [ ¦] he had to mobilize the circulation of capital. 2 With the extensive, attention-focused redev