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Unequal partnerships: The political economy of urban redevelopment in postwar America
Book reviews Unequal Partnershps: Urban
Redevelopment
77x Political Economy in
Postwar
of
America,
Gregory D. Squires (ed.), Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick and London, 1989. This book is a collection of papers dealing with an important aspect of American urban politics. Most of the authors are sociologists or associated with urban studies programs. The book consists of 15 chapters, 12 of which focus on specific cities, The three other chapters deal with the topic in a more general fashion. It falls into a genre of work, therefore, that has become increasingly prevalent in recent writings on American urban politics, not to say locality studies in general. It can be usefully evaluated from that standpoint. The various contributions provide examples of, occasionally exceptions to, an ideal type of urban politics. The focus of the ideal type in this instance is the public-private partnership. An important condition for their emergence in central cities, it is argued, is the post-war suburbanization of population and economic activity and, more recently, deindustrialization. There are two types of public-private part nership. The earlier vintage used federal urban renewal programs, More recent efforts are notably more entrepreneurial in character and are aimed at reconstructing the central city as a corporate center specializing in advanced services-corporate headquarters functions, legal and business services, finance, occasionally higher education and medicine-and tourism. It is with these more recent initiatives that the book is primarily concerned. The public-private partnership represents a decidedly unequal relationship between business in general, and local business elites in particular, on the one hand; and residents on the other; and also between the white, often suburban, middle class and the urban poor. Most of the benefits have flowed to business in the form of tax breaks, public finance packages, the use of public powers for land clearance and the administration of grants. Payoffs to the urban poor have been severely limited: indeed, they
are the ones who commonly bear the burden of residential dislocation or of reduced services as a result of a fiscal constraint induced by tax giveaways. To the extent that jobs have been created they have gone primarily to the suburban, white middle class. And when central city neighborhoods have ‘benefited’ it has been in the perverse form of gentrification. All this has been underpinned by decidedly undemocratic political arrangements: the quasi-public redevelopment corporation. There is, however, the argument continues, another side to the coin. Just as the earlier wave of public-private partnerships in the 1950s and 1960s produced their own popular reaction in the form of community opposition to urban renewal so the more recent wave is generating a new urban populism. This has been symbolized by the programs of such maverick mayors as Harold Washington in Chicago and Raymond Flynn in Boston, Programs have focussed on linkage, neighborhood revitalization, the creation of community development corporations, and enhanced public participation in the planning process. Ideal types of this nature raise a lot of questions. Not the least is the status of the relations out of which they are constructed. Are they necessary relations or are they contingent? Are neighborhood groups necessarily opposed to local power elites or can they be sometimes co-opted? Does fiscal constraint necessitate downtown redevelopment or might there be alternative strategies? Some cities, after all, have been able to pursue more of an annexation strategy and have accordingly been less affected by the problem of suburbanization. Likewise, is it true to say that in the local balance of political forces business always has the upper hand? The usual argument is in terms of me ability of business to threaten relocation. But in some instances a particular city may be so attractive to investors that significant concessions can be wrung from them (see, in particular, DiGaetano, 1989). There is also evidence in the case-studies of the contingent nature of many of the relations implied by the ideal type. The study of Cleveland
Book reviews
nicely demonstrates how neighborhood community development corporations can be coopted and tranquillized. The studies of Sacramento and Boston show what is possible in local real estate markets that are relatively ‘hot’. But the structure of books like this means that these references remain mere allusions and are never creatively used in critically addressing the fundamental premise, the unifying idea, behind the book. Even accepting the ideal type on its own terms there remains a fundamental tension in collections of this nature between more general issues and more specific accounts. The task of the studies of individual cities presumably is to put empirical flesh on the ideal type. The result in all the instances under review is a highly concrete, blow-by-blow, account of what happened in a particular place. This is not to say that this is all without value. A lot of very useful material is turned up by people who obviously know a lot about their respective cities: the details of local power structure, the significance of timing for the peculiarities of cities-though, amazingly, there is not one map in the whole book, despite the concern of many of the studies with the where-ness of specific projects, events and so forth. But one cannot help feeling that these accounts are ill-served by failures to address more abstract issues, for inevitably, in these concrete accounts, reference will be made to concepts whose status is far from settled. A discussion of urban renewal in Chicago has to make reference to Richard Daley just as no historical account of urban renewal in New York would be complete without assigning a place to Robert Moses. But this raises the important issue of personality, and the conceptualization of its effects: an issue which is uncertain and about which there have been and continue to be pertinent debates. Weber’s concept of ‘charismatic authority’ is surely relevant. This is not to criticize the individual authors, They do what they have to do within the constraints set forth by the book’s basic premise. Within the tasks assigned to them there is not scope for addressing the status of such concepts as: the (spatial) division of labor, uneven development, instrumentalist versus structuralist accounts of the (local) state. These are all ideas important to grasping the politics of publicprivate partnerships and reference, sometimes explicit, is indeed made to them. But the
191
structure of the book forbids the careful interrogation they clearly deserve. My conclusion is that, in studies of urban politics, collections of this nature are now showing rapidly diminishing returns. There is, of course, much to be said for harnessing the expertise of people on particular cities. But new vehicles need to be explored for accomplishing that purpose: individual studies which combine abstract and concrete research in more of a reciprocally informing fashion or, possibly, explicit comparison of the experience of different cities by the same investigator or investigative team. Kevin R. Cox Depa?tment
of Geographv
7he Ohio State LJniueni~
Reference DIGAETXNO, A. (1989). Urban political regime formation: a study in contrast. Journal of Urban A&airs 1l(3), 261-281.
Urban Innovation and Autonomy, S. Clarke (ed.), 1989, Sage, Beverly Hills, 288 pp., Al3.95 paper.
This book provides some of the results from a highly ambitious data gathering, analysis and interpretation project that has involved, for the most part, political scientists. This is the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, otherwise known as FAUI. As perhaps the title conveys, the focus of attention has been local government strategies with respect to urban fiscal crises of the 1970s and early 1980s. Three primary strategies are identified: increase resources, reduce expenditures, or increase the productiviv of the local public sector. Variation occurs around these different approaches. The intent then becomes one of explaining their relative prevalence over different cities in different countries and their political effects. The present collection brings together material from the US and five Western European countries. All the case-studies reflect a common approach: standardized collection of data on strategies employed through a survey of local officials; the presentation of contextual material from each country against which to set the
Redevelopment
77x Political Economy in
Postwar
of
America,
Gregory D. Squires (ed.), Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick and London, 1989. This book is a collection of papers dealing with an important aspect of American urban politics. Most of the authors are sociologists or associated with urban studies programs. The book consists of 15 chapters, 12 of which focus on specific cities, The three other chapters deal with the topic in a more general fashion. It falls into a genre of work, therefore, that has become increasingly prevalent in recent writings on American urban politics, not to say locality studies in general. It can be usefully evaluated from that standpoint. The various contributions provide examples of, occasionally exceptions to, an ideal type of urban politics. The focus of the ideal type in this instance is the public-private partnership. An important condition for their emergence in central cities, it is argued, is the post-war suburbanization of population and economic activity and, more recently, deindustrialization. There are two types of public-private part nership. The earlier vintage used federal urban renewal programs, More recent efforts are notably more entrepreneurial in character and are aimed at reconstructing the central city as a corporate center specializing in advanced services-corporate headquarters functions, legal and business services, finance, occasionally higher education and medicine-and tourism. It is with these more recent initiatives that the book is primarily concerned. The public-private partnership represents a decidedly unequal relationship between business in general, and local business elites in particular, on the one hand; and residents on the other; and also between the white, often suburban, middle class and the urban poor. Most of the benefits have flowed to business in the form of tax breaks, public finance packages, the use of public powers for land clearance and the administration of grants. Payoffs to the urban poor have been severely limited: indeed, they
are the ones who commonly bear the burden of residential dislocation or of reduced services as a result of a fiscal constraint induced by tax giveaways. To the extent that jobs have been created they have gone primarily to the suburban, white middle class. And when central city neighborhoods have ‘benefited’ it has been in the perverse form of gentrification. All this has been underpinned by decidedly undemocratic political arrangements: the quasi-public redevelopment corporation. There is, however, the argument continues, another side to the coin. Just as the earlier wave of public-private partnerships in the 1950s and 1960s produced their own popular reaction in the form of community opposition to urban renewal so the more recent wave is generating a new urban populism. This has been symbolized by the programs of such maverick mayors as Harold Washington in Chicago and Raymond Flynn in Boston, Programs have focussed on linkage, neighborhood revitalization, the creation of community development corporations, and enhanced public participation in the planning process. Ideal types of this nature raise a lot of questions. Not the least is the status of the relations out of which they are constructed. Are they necessary relations or are they contingent? Are neighborhood groups necessarily opposed to local power elites or can they be sometimes co-opted? Does fiscal constraint necessitate downtown redevelopment or might there be alternative strategies? Some cities, after all, have been able to pursue more of an annexation strategy and have accordingly been less affected by the problem of suburbanization. Likewise, is it true to say that in the local balance of political forces business always has the upper hand? The usual argument is in terms of me ability of business to threaten relocation. But in some instances a particular city may be so attractive to investors that significant concessions can be wrung from them (see, in particular, DiGaetano, 1989). There is also evidence in the case-studies of the contingent nature of many of the relations implied by the ideal type. The study of Cleveland
Book reviews
nicely demonstrates how neighborhood community development corporations can be coopted and tranquillized. The studies of Sacramento and Boston show what is possible in local real estate markets that are relatively ‘hot’. But the structure of books like this means that these references remain mere allusions and are never creatively used in critically addressing the fundamental premise, the unifying idea, behind the book. Even accepting the ideal type on its own terms there remains a fundamental tension in collections of this nature between more general issues and more specific accounts. The task of the studies of individual cities presumably is to put empirical flesh on the ideal type. The result in all the instances under review is a highly concrete, blow-by-blow, account of what happened in a particular place. This is not to say that this is all without value. A lot of very useful material is turned up by people who obviously know a lot about their respective cities: the details of local power structure, the significance of timing for the peculiarities of cities-though, amazingly, there is not one map in the whole book, despite the concern of many of the studies with the where-ness of specific projects, events and so forth. But one cannot help feeling that these accounts are ill-served by failures to address more abstract issues, for inevitably, in these concrete accounts, reference will be made to concepts whose status is far from settled. A discussion of urban renewal in Chicago has to make reference to Richard Daley just as no historical account of urban renewal in New York would be complete without assigning a place to Robert Moses. But this raises the important issue of personality, and the conceptualization of its effects: an issue which is uncertain and about which there have been and continue to be pertinent debates. Weber’s concept of ‘charismatic authority’ is surely relevant. This is not to criticize the individual authors, They do what they have to do within the constraints set forth by the book’s basic premise. Within the tasks assigned to them there is not scope for addressing the status of such concepts as: the (spatial) division of labor, uneven development, instrumentalist versus structuralist accounts of the (local) state. These are all ideas important to grasping the politics of publicprivate partnerships and reference, sometimes explicit, is indeed made to them. But the
191
structure of the book forbids the careful interrogation they clearly deserve. My conclusion is that, in studies of urban politics, collections of this nature are now showing rapidly diminishing returns. There is, of course, much to be said for harnessing the expertise of people on particular cities. But new vehicles need to be explored for accomplishing that purpose: individual studies which combine abstract and concrete research in more of a reciprocally informing fashion or, possibly, explicit comparison of the experience of different cities by the same investigator or investigative team. Kevin R. Cox Depa?tment
of Geographv
7he Ohio State LJniueni~
Reference DIGAETXNO, A. (1989). Urban political regime formation: a study in contrast. Journal of Urban A&airs 1l(3), 261-281.
Urban Innovation and Autonomy, S. Clarke (ed.), 1989, Sage, Beverly Hills, 288 pp., Al3.95 paper.
This book provides some of the results from a highly ambitious data gathering, analysis and interpretation project that has involved, for the most part, political scientists. This is the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project, otherwise known as FAUI. As perhaps the title conveys, the focus of attention has been local government strategies with respect to urban fiscal crises of the 1970s and early 1980s. Three primary strategies are identified: increase resources, reduce expenditures, or increase the productiviv of the local public sector. Variation occurs around these different approaches. The intent then becomes one of explaining their relative prevalence over different cities in different countries and their political effects. The present collection brings together material from the US and five Western European countries. All the case-studies reflect a common approach: standardized collection of data on strategies employed through a survey of local officials; the presentation of contextual material from each country against which to set the