Protected from direct antagonistic competition and with large quantities of surplus value at its disposal, the large corporation faces an acute problem of finding a market to absorb expanding output as well as to help expand the rate of circulation of surplus value. The corporation must therefore create, maintain and expand the effective demand for its products. There are various strategems available. Perhaps the most successful is to create a need while eliminating the possibility for that need to be met by a substitution of product. The effective demand for automobiles (as well as oil products, highway construction, suburban construction, etc.) has been created and expanded through the total reconfiguration of the metropolitan built form so that it is all but impossible to live a "normal" social life without a car [...] A need has been created out of a luxury.

David Harvey: Social Justice and the City