- Email: [email protected]
Urban fortunes
Book
article, is the degree to which governments are willing to become involved financially. In many instances the answer involves a public commitment of resources, just at the time when a continual erosion is taking place in the funding of programmes important to old cities. In other words, despite new ideas for declining industrial cities and the development of a new language of change and renewal (‘public-private cooper.ltion’ and ‘public entrepreneurialism’), the problem still boils down to spending tax dollars to resuscitatr, aging urban areas in the face of man:4 other demands on limited public resources. Administrations on both sides of the Atlantic do not seem to be inclined in this direction. If anythink., there appears to be a tacit policy (3’ ignoring decline in the hope that economic growth elsewhere will divert attention. This i:, the frustrating aspect of the book. The comparative analysis is fascinating, the topic is highly relevant and challenging, and the data are well presented. But, many of the programmes and proposals discussed by the authors seem to require the sort of
commitment that is no longer generally available. Only those who have some sort of intellectual or political stake in the issue of revitalizing aging urban areas are willing to make the necessary investment to bring about change in this age of austerity. Perhaps a new role will be found for aging cities; as some of the authors observe, a new form and structure is clearly emerging that represents the evolving role. Judging from the outcome of the meetings held in Cleveland and Birmingham, the early stages of some long-range thinking is underway that will form the basis for further study for the future of our aging industrial cities. The success of our thinking and planning, combined with political commitment, can make the difference between the painful, traumatic transition that we have seen so far and a successful passage into the era of the post-industrial city. Bruce Krushelnicki Director of the Institute of Urban and Environmental Studies Brock University Ontario, Canada
Urban analysis URBAN FORTUNES by John Molotch
R. Logan
and
Harvey
University of California Press, keley, CA, 1987, 383 pp
L.
Ber-
Urban theory in Europe and the US is in disarray, caught up again in disputes over the very significance of the city as a meaningful analytical object. To some scholars, this furore sounds the death of local politics but to others it signifies the rebuilding of more authentic theoretical approaches to the study of contemporary urban life.
New theories Logan and Molotch belong to the latter camp. Indeed, they claim that the writing of Urban Fortunes was enhanced but continually delayed by
CITIES
November
1988
the stimulation of new theoretical developments which they wanted to incorporate into their work. Urban Fortunes will, at a minimum, contribute a new form of discourse to the fray. Logan and Molotch, however, intend more: they hope to rescue urban analysis from its enervated status in Marxist and ecological approaches and to set a research agenda for the 1990s. Not a modest wish, but one with a fair chance of success, given the rich and detailed argument they present and the dovetailing of these ideas with recent theoretical concerns in political science and geography. Logan and Molotch share the current concern with specifying the ‘real object’ of urban analysis while avoiding the determinist, reductionist and functionalist traps marring earlier theoretical initiatives. And like other analysts, they aim to do so by resolute-
reviews
ly setting out on a theoretical ‘middle course’ that embodies a number of increasingly common themes and organizing assumptions. These include a recognition of the need to look at urban life in terms of economic imperatives and local people, to focus on actual mechanisms and processes that appear to translate the ‘needs’ into action, to avoid the dualism between theoretical and concrete approaches, to explain local spatial and social relations in the context of broader processes, and to consider the potential for change and transformation through local action. Reading Urban Fortunes brings these elements of an emergent new framework into sharper focus.
Exchange
and use values
Logan and Molotch’s theoretical argument is parsimonious and provocative. As the authors acknowledge, they, like many of their contemporaries, build on geographer David Harvey’s theoretical work. They use his insights, however, in a stimulating and original way that goes beyond a strictly political economy perspective. They take Harvey’s recognition of the place-centred contradictions stemming from the increasing mobility and necessary spatial fixity of capital, together with his clarification of the Marxian distinction between use and exchange values, to construct a new ‘sociology of urban property relations’. It centres on the special and peculiar nature of land as a commodity and directs attention to the activities of place entrepreneurs working to make money from manipulating property values and social groups seeking to use places for non-economic purposes. Logan and Molotch argue that struggles between these groups over the exchange and use values of the city itself are the defining element of urban life and should be at the heart of urban analyses. Logan and Molotch amplify their concept of the city as a growth machine, used to increase aggregate rents and trap related wealth, and go on to spell out the elements of a ‘place-based analysis’ of local politics. In their view, place entrepreneurs act
381
Book
reviews
as local rentiers by linking potential development sites with external capital investors. Along with other placebased elites, they form growth coalitions that are especially important in US local politics because of the hegemony of the value-free development ideology and local autonomy over land-use decisions. Two key urban conflicts emerge from this competition over the use of the city: internal conflicts between groups with opposing views on the use and exchange values of specific parcels; and external conflicts between place elites (‘growth machines’) seeking to attract capital to their city. Logan and Molotch see the urban fortunes of people and places as shaped by the intersection of the social and spatial hierarchies emerging from these conflicts. In fact, many readers will be familiar with these basic arguments; much of this has been effectively stated in their earlier work and already shapes the content of contemporaneous work in urban studies. But Urban Fortunes extends and integrates these specific points into a compelling argument regarding variability and relativity in the form and impact of the growth machine itself. This contingent view of the city as a growth machine acknowledges that the growth machine is only one possible way to coordinate the place needs of capital investors and the material interests of local landbased elites (p 200), that its form is contingent on local circumstances, and that both form and impact vary over time and across communities.
Economic concentration Logan and Molotch see new modes of capitalist organization creating significant tensions in contemporary growth machines. These tensions stem from qualitatively distinct spatial and organizational changes in firms, not from technological or governmental change. Specifically, the growing concentration of production activities and, consequently, of critical economic and political control points, is altering both how places are used and the relationships between capital investors and local rentiers. It prompts an increasingly specialized and strati-
382
fied international hierarchy of places that alters the form of local use and exchange struggles. Within cities, these changes diminish the utility of growth for local elites, weaken the efficiency of the growth machine for capital, make the state’s role increasingly problematic, and may generate broad-based citizen opposition to value-free development efforts. Between cities, the uneven capacity to attract growth will account for distinctive, stratified roles and diverse urban futures if current trends continue. The urban research agenda for the 1990s could well begin with these concluding chapters. Logan and Molotch shore up their basic propositions with a series of hypotheses on the local political effects of increased economic concentration and place stratification. They also identify a number of penetration, cooptation, and investment strategies being adopted by corporate actors in response to these faltering growth coalitions and growing use-value opposition movements. Together with a telling reconsideration of neighbourhood and community organization issues, these observations and arguments will be thought-provoking for scholars and practitioners alike. And even though Logan and Molotch develop their ideas through an analysis of US local politics, they frame their arguments in analytical terms that invite comparative, cross-national study. Although this is essentially an interpretative analysis, this analytic framework and the remarkably comprehensive bibliography lay the foundations for further empirical research. Yet there are some important limitations in their approach that in part, stem, from this selfconsciously ‘middle course’ of theoretical argument. Ironically, their placebased analysis inadequately considers the recursive nature of urban spatial organization. They fix attention on the social construction of urban land markets but do not fully work out how the boundaries of these processes are established. This leads the authors, by default, to accept jurisdictional definitions of place as meaningful objects of study.
This is a continuing problem in urban analyses but here it leads to further difficulties in the authors’ treatment of state activities. Essentially, they speak of local governments rather than local states and tend to equate the acts of concrete institutions with the very stuff of local politics. Admittedly, it’s a relief to forego another rehash of theories of the local state but this tendency towards reified notions of place and state is troublesome. For example, do these local governments have interests independent of responding to use and exchange conflicts? Does the state’s relative autonomy stem from its role in maintaining a balance between capital and labour (p 251) or its position in the place hierarchy (p 295)? Are the interests, motivations, and resources of local elected and administrative officials the same? How does the form and organization of the local government - the state ‘apparatus’ influence the access and success of user groups and place entrepreneurs? Can these local officials have an independent effect on local political outcomes, given the pervasive effects of place hierarchies, the hegemony of growth ideologies, and the seeming immunity of growth coalitions from debilitating failures that plague other coalitions (p 51)? And is there any point in theorizing about a local state separate if not independent from national state theories? Moving back and forth between local government and state theory limits Logan terminology and Molotch’s ability to answer these important questions. It also hinders their discussion of opportunities for local reform and transformation. Since there is no systematic conceptualization of the local state, there is no way to work out how or why the local state would use its autonomy - see its interests, if you will - for challenging growth interests. To do so requires coalitions of community and neighbourhood interests that extend beyond the locality itself, but the initial failure to specify place boundary processes makes its difficult to consider this likelihood. Finally, the question of the relationship between changes in national and local social
CITIES
November
1988
Book reviews relations is not given much weight. While Logan and Molotch link international economic changes with local political struggles, they treat relations between central and local governments in programmatic rather than political terms. This ignores the many ways, bzyond the matter of home rule, in which higher levels of state authority create or constrain the conditions for local challenges to growth coalitions. In particular, it fails to consider the direction of political change, that is, whelher and how regime or coalition ch.rnges at different levels of the state arc: related.
Urban Fortunes is essential reading for those seeking a way to make sense of contemporary urban issues and to understand urban futures and fortunes. Its value lies in the questions it raises as well as those it fails to answer. Over time, it is likely that these imperfections will prove as valuable as the authors’ many insights.
Susan E. Clarke Center for Public Policy Research University of Colorado at Boulder CO, USA
Local economic development planning LOCAL ECONOMIES TRANSITION
IN
edited by Edward M. Bergman Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 1986, 386 pp Teacher:; in the urban economic field have been in search of a suitable teaching text, and this book largely fills thal need. Twenty-two authors have presented an excellent overview of the dynamic changes taking place in local economic development planning. Even though the global market is exercising increasing control over the destinies of the development process in the cities, regions and states of the US, the 14 chapters provide a sound framework for understanding the policy implications, responsibilities, problems and opportunities in local economic development.
Urban economic development In the early 1970s urban economic developrrlent was left to the local Chambers of Commerce, natural market force:;. and to a certain extent, to the Federal Government with its hundreds of ldevelopment grant and loan programmes aimed specifically at job creation. Many city policy makers and administr,itors were not trained or
CITIES November
1988
educated in the field of economic development planning. During the 1960s and early 1970s there was intense state and regional competition for new business and industry. This competitiveness was heightened with the explosion of the global market, and the resulting exodus of many businesses and industries to other countries. Several significant events occurred which sharpened the skills of those responsible for state and local economic development. One, of course, was the competition from the new global markets. Secondly, the US federal government accelerated the education of state and local governments in economic development through some policy and programme areas. The Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) programme was a pure public-private partnership process which required a clear understanding of the development process, the leveraging of private dollars and, most recently, direct equity participation in projects. Also, the cutbacks in the federal funding of domestic development programmes has demanded more creative financing and development planning b,y states and cities. Local Economies in Transition introduces and develops this theme in several chapters, along with the role of the UDAG programme. Susan Clarke
examines the corporate role in the development process, including the disappearance of the pluralist bargaining process and the vesting of an economic development authority in special agencies. The public-private partnership concept is explored in several chapters. Rolyn Phillips and Avis Vidal’s section on metropolitan economies provides an excellent historical overview of the changes and trends in these areas, and offers an insight into the implications for economic development policies. Their concluding statements indicate that even though local economies are part of a larger restructuring of the national and international economy, localities do have a responsibility to look at their strengths and weaknesses and how they fit in with the current changes and trends. Edward Bergman and Harvey Goldstein discuss in detail these structural changes which are taking place and the direction they are leading local economies. They review cyclical behaviour and measures of structural change at the local level. The following chapter (by Marie Howland) covers cyclical startups and closures in the key industries of America’s cities and suburbs. There are summaries of the methodology used, the findings and the implications for economic development. She provides some ,excellent steps in dealing and preparing for these cyclical economic changes. High technology and its implications in the local economic development process are covered adequately in two chapters by Edward J. Malecki and Candee S. Harris. The subjects covered include: definitions, looking at the global and the local context, high technology in growth policies, the high technology sectors, the conceptual framework in high technology development, branch location, entrepreneurship, and finally, conclusions and policy implications of high technology for localities. Thierry J. Noyelle discusses the focus of change as related to advanced service industries in the US. The chapter provides essential historical background and some of the forces of change which have influenced the
383
article, is the degree to which governments are willing to become involved financially. In many instances the answer involves a public commitment of resources, just at the time when a continual erosion is taking place in the funding of programmes important to old cities. In other words, despite new ideas for declining industrial cities and the development of a new language of change and renewal (‘public-private cooper.ltion’ and ‘public entrepreneurialism’), the problem still boils down to spending tax dollars to resuscitatr, aging urban areas in the face of man:4 other demands on limited public resources. Administrations on both sides of the Atlantic do not seem to be inclined in this direction. If anythink., there appears to be a tacit policy (3’ ignoring decline in the hope that economic growth elsewhere will divert attention. This i:, the frustrating aspect of the book. The comparative analysis is fascinating, the topic is highly relevant and challenging, and the data are well presented. But, many of the programmes and proposals discussed by the authors seem to require the sort of
commitment that is no longer generally available. Only those who have some sort of intellectual or political stake in the issue of revitalizing aging urban areas are willing to make the necessary investment to bring about change in this age of austerity. Perhaps a new role will be found for aging cities; as some of the authors observe, a new form and structure is clearly emerging that represents the evolving role. Judging from the outcome of the meetings held in Cleveland and Birmingham, the early stages of some long-range thinking is underway that will form the basis for further study for the future of our aging industrial cities. The success of our thinking and planning, combined with political commitment, can make the difference between the painful, traumatic transition that we have seen so far and a successful passage into the era of the post-industrial city. Bruce Krushelnicki Director of the Institute of Urban and Environmental Studies Brock University Ontario, Canada
Urban analysis URBAN FORTUNES by John Molotch
R. Logan
and
Harvey
University of California Press, keley, CA, 1987, 383 pp
L.
Ber-
Urban theory in Europe and the US is in disarray, caught up again in disputes over the very significance of the city as a meaningful analytical object. To some scholars, this furore sounds the death of local politics but to others it signifies the rebuilding of more authentic theoretical approaches to the study of contemporary urban life.
New theories Logan and Molotch belong to the latter camp. Indeed, they claim that the writing of Urban Fortunes was enhanced but continually delayed by
CITIES
November
1988
the stimulation of new theoretical developments which they wanted to incorporate into their work. Urban Fortunes will, at a minimum, contribute a new form of discourse to the fray. Logan and Molotch, however, intend more: they hope to rescue urban analysis from its enervated status in Marxist and ecological approaches and to set a research agenda for the 1990s. Not a modest wish, but one with a fair chance of success, given the rich and detailed argument they present and the dovetailing of these ideas with recent theoretical concerns in political science and geography. Logan and Molotch share the current concern with specifying the ‘real object’ of urban analysis while avoiding the determinist, reductionist and functionalist traps marring earlier theoretical initiatives. And like other analysts, they aim to do so by resolute-
reviews
ly setting out on a theoretical ‘middle course’ that embodies a number of increasingly common themes and organizing assumptions. These include a recognition of the need to look at urban life in terms of economic imperatives and local people, to focus on actual mechanisms and processes that appear to translate the ‘needs’ into action, to avoid the dualism between theoretical and concrete approaches, to explain local spatial and social relations in the context of broader processes, and to consider the potential for change and transformation through local action. Reading Urban Fortunes brings these elements of an emergent new framework into sharper focus.
Exchange
and use values
Logan and Molotch’s theoretical argument is parsimonious and provocative. As the authors acknowledge, they, like many of their contemporaries, build on geographer David Harvey’s theoretical work. They use his insights, however, in a stimulating and original way that goes beyond a strictly political economy perspective. They take Harvey’s recognition of the place-centred contradictions stemming from the increasing mobility and necessary spatial fixity of capital, together with his clarification of the Marxian distinction between use and exchange values, to construct a new ‘sociology of urban property relations’. It centres on the special and peculiar nature of land as a commodity and directs attention to the activities of place entrepreneurs working to make money from manipulating property values and social groups seeking to use places for non-economic purposes. Logan and Molotch argue that struggles between these groups over the exchange and use values of the city itself are the defining element of urban life and should be at the heart of urban analyses. Logan and Molotch amplify their concept of the city as a growth machine, used to increase aggregate rents and trap related wealth, and go on to spell out the elements of a ‘place-based analysis’ of local politics. In their view, place entrepreneurs act
381
Book
reviews
as local rentiers by linking potential development sites with external capital investors. Along with other placebased elites, they form growth coalitions that are especially important in US local politics because of the hegemony of the value-free development ideology and local autonomy over land-use decisions. Two key urban conflicts emerge from this competition over the use of the city: internal conflicts between groups with opposing views on the use and exchange values of specific parcels; and external conflicts between place elites (‘growth machines’) seeking to attract capital to their city. Logan and Molotch see the urban fortunes of people and places as shaped by the intersection of the social and spatial hierarchies emerging from these conflicts. In fact, many readers will be familiar with these basic arguments; much of this has been effectively stated in their earlier work and already shapes the content of contemporaneous work in urban studies. But Urban Fortunes extends and integrates these specific points into a compelling argument regarding variability and relativity in the form and impact of the growth machine itself. This contingent view of the city as a growth machine acknowledges that the growth machine is only one possible way to coordinate the place needs of capital investors and the material interests of local landbased elites (p 200), that its form is contingent on local circumstances, and that both form and impact vary over time and across communities.
Economic concentration Logan and Molotch see new modes of capitalist organization creating significant tensions in contemporary growth machines. These tensions stem from qualitatively distinct spatial and organizational changes in firms, not from technological or governmental change. Specifically, the growing concentration of production activities and, consequently, of critical economic and political control points, is altering both how places are used and the relationships between capital investors and local rentiers. It prompts an increasingly specialized and strati-
382
fied international hierarchy of places that alters the form of local use and exchange struggles. Within cities, these changes diminish the utility of growth for local elites, weaken the efficiency of the growth machine for capital, make the state’s role increasingly problematic, and may generate broad-based citizen opposition to value-free development efforts. Between cities, the uneven capacity to attract growth will account for distinctive, stratified roles and diverse urban futures if current trends continue. The urban research agenda for the 1990s could well begin with these concluding chapters. Logan and Molotch shore up their basic propositions with a series of hypotheses on the local political effects of increased economic concentration and place stratification. They also identify a number of penetration, cooptation, and investment strategies being adopted by corporate actors in response to these faltering growth coalitions and growing use-value opposition movements. Together with a telling reconsideration of neighbourhood and community organization issues, these observations and arguments will be thought-provoking for scholars and practitioners alike. And even though Logan and Molotch develop their ideas through an analysis of US local politics, they frame their arguments in analytical terms that invite comparative, cross-national study. Although this is essentially an interpretative analysis, this analytic framework and the remarkably comprehensive bibliography lay the foundations for further empirical research. Yet there are some important limitations in their approach that in part, stem, from this selfconsciously ‘middle course’ of theoretical argument. Ironically, their placebased analysis inadequately considers the recursive nature of urban spatial organization. They fix attention on the social construction of urban land markets but do not fully work out how the boundaries of these processes are established. This leads the authors, by default, to accept jurisdictional definitions of place as meaningful objects of study.
This is a continuing problem in urban analyses but here it leads to further difficulties in the authors’ treatment of state activities. Essentially, they speak of local governments rather than local states and tend to equate the acts of concrete institutions with the very stuff of local politics. Admittedly, it’s a relief to forego another rehash of theories of the local state but this tendency towards reified notions of place and state is troublesome. For example, do these local governments have interests independent of responding to use and exchange conflicts? Does the state’s relative autonomy stem from its role in maintaining a balance between capital and labour (p 251) or its position in the place hierarchy (p 295)? Are the interests, motivations, and resources of local elected and administrative officials the same? How does the form and organization of the local government - the state ‘apparatus’ influence the access and success of user groups and place entrepreneurs? Can these local officials have an independent effect on local political outcomes, given the pervasive effects of place hierarchies, the hegemony of growth ideologies, and the seeming immunity of growth coalitions from debilitating failures that plague other coalitions (p 51)? And is there any point in theorizing about a local state separate if not independent from national state theories? Moving back and forth between local government and state theory limits Logan terminology and Molotch’s ability to answer these important questions. It also hinders their discussion of opportunities for local reform and transformation. Since there is no systematic conceptualization of the local state, there is no way to work out how or why the local state would use its autonomy - see its interests, if you will - for challenging growth interests. To do so requires coalitions of community and neighbourhood interests that extend beyond the locality itself, but the initial failure to specify place boundary processes makes its difficult to consider this likelihood. Finally, the question of the relationship between changes in national and local social
CITIES
November
1988
Book reviews relations is not given much weight. While Logan and Molotch link international economic changes with local political struggles, they treat relations between central and local governments in programmatic rather than political terms. This ignores the many ways, bzyond the matter of home rule, in which higher levels of state authority create or constrain the conditions for local challenges to growth coalitions. In particular, it fails to consider the direction of political change, that is, whelher and how regime or coalition ch.rnges at different levels of the state arc: related.
Urban Fortunes is essential reading for those seeking a way to make sense of contemporary urban issues and to understand urban futures and fortunes. Its value lies in the questions it raises as well as those it fails to answer. Over time, it is likely that these imperfections will prove as valuable as the authors’ many insights.
Susan E. Clarke Center for Public Policy Research University of Colorado at Boulder CO, USA
Local economic development planning LOCAL ECONOMIES TRANSITION
IN
edited by Edward M. Bergman Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 1986, 386 pp Teacher:; in the urban economic field have been in search of a suitable teaching text, and this book largely fills thal need. Twenty-two authors have presented an excellent overview of the dynamic changes taking place in local economic development planning. Even though the global market is exercising increasing control over the destinies of the development process in the cities, regions and states of the US, the 14 chapters provide a sound framework for understanding the policy implications, responsibilities, problems and opportunities in local economic development.
Urban economic development In the early 1970s urban economic developrrlent was left to the local Chambers of Commerce, natural market force:;. and to a certain extent, to the Federal Government with its hundreds of ldevelopment grant and loan programmes aimed specifically at job creation. Many city policy makers and administr,itors were not trained or
CITIES November
1988
educated in the field of economic development planning. During the 1960s and early 1970s there was intense state and regional competition for new business and industry. This competitiveness was heightened with the explosion of the global market, and the resulting exodus of many businesses and industries to other countries. Several significant events occurred which sharpened the skills of those responsible for state and local economic development. One, of course, was the competition from the new global markets. Secondly, the US federal government accelerated the education of state and local governments in economic development through some policy and programme areas. The Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) programme was a pure public-private partnership process which required a clear understanding of the development process, the leveraging of private dollars and, most recently, direct equity participation in projects. Also, the cutbacks in the federal funding of domestic development programmes has demanded more creative financing and development planning b,y states and cities. Local Economies in Transition introduces and develops this theme in several chapters, along with the role of the UDAG programme. Susan Clarke
examines the corporate role in the development process, including the disappearance of the pluralist bargaining process and the vesting of an economic development authority in special agencies. The public-private partnership concept is explored in several chapters. Rolyn Phillips and Avis Vidal’s section on metropolitan economies provides an excellent historical overview of the changes and trends in these areas, and offers an insight into the implications for economic development policies. Their concluding statements indicate that even though local economies are part of a larger restructuring of the national and international economy, localities do have a responsibility to look at their strengths and weaknesses and how they fit in with the current changes and trends. Edward Bergman and Harvey Goldstein discuss in detail these structural changes which are taking place and the direction they are leading local economies. They review cyclical behaviour and measures of structural change at the local level. The following chapter (by Marie Howland) covers cyclical startups and closures in the key industries of America’s cities and suburbs. There are summaries of the methodology used, the findings and the implications for economic development. She provides some ,excellent steps in dealing and preparing for these cyclical economic changes. High technology and its implications in the local economic development process are covered adequately in two chapters by Edward J. Malecki and Candee S. Harris. The subjects covered include: definitions, looking at the global and the local context, high technology in growth policies, the high technology sectors, the conceptual framework in high technology development, branch location, entrepreneurship, and finally, conclusions and policy implications of high technology for localities. Thierry J. Noyelle discusses the focus of change as related to advanced service industries in the US. The chapter provides essential historical background and some of the forces of change which have influenced the
383