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The Sociology of Urban Political Economy Comprehensive Area Paper

By Erik Solevad Nielsen

In modern societies, there is no economics without politics and no politics without

economicsRobert Boyer, (2000)

My own taste in this consilience has been to start with the local details and build up; Im urban about itHarvey Molotch, (1999)

Introduction In 2008 the Population Reference Bureau classified the majority of humanity as living in

urban areas. From the beginnings of human history until 2008 human settlement had predominantly

existed in smaller rural villages or on nomadic migratory routes. The development of a market

economy over the course of the last several centuries has enabled an increase in human population

concentrated in urban areas. The human population itself rose from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 6.7 billion

in 2008. The utilization of fossil fuels as the basic energy source for the market economy has greatly

accelerated the urban process since the middle of the nineteenth century, as new American urban

housing forms and transportation systems proliferated. As shall be shown in this literature review,

this was not an inevitable process, but has been the result of decision-making by social actors

embedded in a political economy. It is my contention that the economic and ecological problems

that face humanity must be addressed through the organizations and networks of global political

economy that manifest themselves in local experience and action. This means starting out from the

fundamental paradigm of urban political economy--that markets and governments have been

intertwined by regulation enacted by different social groups with different motives, accumulating

capital wealth for some and spatially segregating others.

Paper Overview

This paper reviews the literature on urban political economy. The sociological analysis of

urban political economy (UPE) seems to have conceded much of its theoretical ground to urban

political science over the course of the last two decades. Indeed, there has always been cross-

pollination. Still, most UPE scholarship is more likely to be published in the APSAs Urban Affairs

rather than in the ASAs City & Community. Admittedly, urban sociology empirically examines more

varied urban affairs than political scientists who focus specifically on the urban political coalitions

and electoral patterns. Yet even the UPE in political science has found itself merely developing

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different typologies of urban coalitions (Domhoff, 2006). While this work is very illuminating, it

lacks some of the more substantive proposals, statements, and contextualization that sociology

provides. Furthermore, urban areas today are facing more than political and economic crises; they

face severe ecological and infrastructural challenges.

In this paper I trace the primary scholarship on urban political economy over the last

century. The first section examines the early German and Chicago schools of classical sociological

theory. I focus on the medieval municipal corporations and early regulatory mechanisms. An

overview is given of the early public choice and community power studies debated by political

scientists and sociologists in the 1950s and early 1960s. The second section of the paper describes

the political economy perspective that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily as a Marxist

analysis of urban conditions and a response to earlier theories that did not critically examine

capitalist market processes. Theories on the circuits of capital are explored. This section also engages

with some of the worryingly scant sociological literature on real estate capitalism.

The third section explains three of the most influential theoretical frameworks that have

been predominant in UPE analysis since the 1970s: the growth machine hypothesis, urban

regime analysis, and regulation theory. The growth machine argues that every locality has land-

based urban elites who use their resources and power to steer the direction of economic growth.

While the specific coalitional members may disagree on many other issues, they remain united on

the basic commitment to growth. Urban regime analysis describes the institutional and

organizational arrangements that coalesce in the operation of the urban political economy. These

can include growth machine actors as well as community and environmental activist groups. Urban

regime analysis has become the preferred approach in UPE because of its broad scope. Finally, I

examine regulation theory, which argues that market and capital accumulation processes are

managed, or directed, by different regulatory regimes. My examination of these three theories

surveys their strengths, weaknesses, differences, and attempts at consilience.

The fourth section of the paper uses the theories and previous studies to construct a brief

historical narrative of UPE in the industrial United States. I offer a Polanyian interpretation of

Americas urban history. Specifically, the basic history exemplifies his contention that governments

and markets grew up together. This section shows the changes in federal government involvement

in the housing market from urban renewal through the subsidized development of suburbia. I also

examine the dramatic changes that are occurring in planning theory and practice, namely, Smart

Growth/New Urbanism principles that challenge the hegemony of subdivision spatial thinking.

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Smart Growth/New Urbanism planners focus on higher densities, more green space, pedestrian

friendly transport options, and greater livability. However, Environmental Justice advocates and

others have criticized these sustainable community approaches for not providing options for

affordability. New perspectives of federated and equity-oriented regionalism have emerged that

propose ways for larger metropolitan areas to recognize their interdependence and govern and

develop accordingly.

Finally, I conclude by assessing the future of the field of urban political economy and argue

for its importance for both the discipline of sociology and the world of policy. The one seminal, and

lonely, article devoted solely to the sociology of transportation is detailed. It is my hope that the

literature on this subject will grow. This section then turns to the sociological outlooks on smart

growth/new urbanism. I then describe the governmental support for new urbanism in its former

HOPE VI housing program. The paper concludes by showing the renewed attention that the federal

government is giving metropolitan regions and the pressing need for new innovative theories to

capture the transformations occurring across the urban political economy.

Origins: Brgertum, Urban Organicism, and Capital Circuitry

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century European intellectuals observed the social

change wrought by the industrial revolution occurring around them. Many of them are now

considered the classical social theorists. Early European sociologists and social thinkers wrote about

the urbanization process, though often indirectly. They explored the history of the market and

production processes. In Europe, peasants and workers from smaller villages were concentrating in

towns and cities to supply the growing factory system. Regional trade was growing and a few

European powers were colonizing the globe and creating a global market system for the worlds

materials. As markets and factories proliferated, populations and their settlements increased

dramatically, creating new historically unique social forms.

In England, feudal commons originated in the eighth century and continued until the 14th

century. Under feudalism land was held in common in a tenure system rather than in individual

ownership. Land use rights were exercised in a common fashion. Similar practices exist in parts of

the world today. Landlords and petty monarchs topped the hierarchy of feudal authority who

exacted a tribute from their subjects. The tribute usually consisted of a portion of food and fiber

produced on the land, manpower for military service, or monetary payments. The social structure of

feudalism was a pyramid with the base being the serf and the tip being the nobility. Beginning in

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1235, the English Parliament started a series of legislation that began an 800 year long process of

land privatization: It was called the enclosure movement.

Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi identified the elimination of the commons by the enclosure

movement in England as foundational to the historical development of market capitalism. Marxs

contribution to the historical UPE is found in his analysis of the transition from feudalism to

capitalism. In what he described as so-called primitive accumulation agricultural producers were

forced from their land in a process of expropriation (Capital, 2003: 667). Freed and expropriated

serfs flooded urban centers stimulating an expansion in usury (Giddens, 1971). Polanyi saw the

Tudor period as the last successful attempts by feudal authority to exercise power over the urban

merchants. After this, the self-regulating market ideas formed, which would turn land, labor and

capital into commodities, embedded in a system of political economy concentrated in urban centers.

Polanyi (1944: 58-73) stressed the importance of urban areas for the evolution of the market pattern.

In his discussion of trade, he emphasized that urbanization developed around markets. The

marketplace itself was often the location of meeting points between long-distance trade where roads

met, and at waterways where ports subsequently emerged. He pointed out that as far as organized

trade was concerned, the maps of the time should have only shown townsthe hinterland played

no role in trade. Polanyi (1944: 62) discusses the embeddedness of markets as being contained in

urban areas, in urban places:

The most significant result of marketsthe birth of towns and urban civilizationwas, in effect, the outcome of a paradoxical development. Because the towns, the offsprings of the markets, were not only their protectors, but also the means of preventing them from expanding into the countryside and thus encroaching on the prevailing economic organization of society. The two meanings of the word contain express perhaps best this double function of the towns, in respect to the markets which they both enveloped and prevented them from developing.

Polanyi (1944) described a double movement that characterized market society: It expanded

incredibly and forcefully yet was met at different times and places with counter-movements that

constrained it. Regulation and markets, in effect, grew up together, (Polanyi, 1944: 68). The

subjects of regulation were, first and foremost, the fictitious commodities. As a commodity, labour

was bought and sold as wages, while land was bought and sold as rent. Capital was invested in either

land or labour and flowed into different sections of the market economy (Polanyi, 1944: 131). The

flow of capital into different market sectors determined the production process. Theoretically these

ideas could organize the economic production and financial investment systems. However, Polanyi

believed that a self-regulating market would destroy human society and possibly lead the species into

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extinction (his main concern of nature appears to have been agriculture for food). Polanyis urban

focus is not pronounced, but it lays a theoretical foundation for understanding the development of

markets and urbanization.

Max Weber saw European cities as spatially enclosed political institutions. In one of the first

urban sociological analyses Die Stadt (1958), Weber used ideal types in a comparative attempt to

discover how European (Occidental) cities, and not cities in Asia (Oriental) gave birth to capitalism.

Most scholars do not find his comparative-analysis useful or accurate; however there is value in the

conceptualization of the rise of the Brgertum as the social origin of the municipal corporation

(Husserman and Haila, 2005; Bagnasco and Le Gales, 2000). European burghers owned land in

cities and as urban landowners they formed associations. These fraternities were aligned to protect

members property. The represented the business interests, the early bourgeoisie. The Brgertum

were able to attain revolutionary power, followed by authority, over the feudal aristocracy and the

Church landlords.

Marx, Weber, Polanyi and other political economists were keenly interested in

transformations that occurred in England. They observed that by the 1400s municipal corporations

acquired a number of legal characteristics that remain fundamental to the organization of municipal

corporations in cities across the world: power to own land and build property, power to establish

courts and litigate, power to adopt ordinances and, the right to formalize documents (Platt, 1996).

The municipal corporation utilized its power in regulation. These included the areas of morals,

health, and the well-being of the general public. Most of these regulations were not strongly, if even

then, enforced. More common were the strongly enforced regulations that dealt with offenses

against commerce such as theft, overcharging, and consciously selling low-quality goods. Crimes

against the marketplace were met with corporal punishments in public spaces; providing a different

sense of the term market discipline. Municipal corporations used their regulatory power to enforce

this marketplace discipline but generally did not regulate private building placement, height,

construction, waste disposal, noise, or other matters that municipal corporations focus on today.

By the 18th century in both England and the American colonies, the expansion of private

land property ownership had become established as a social ideal. There is a unique feature of the

commodity of land property. Its value is in part determined by adjacent properties, the effects of

which are referred to as externalities. Legal systems of regulation were developed to address

externalities (Logan and Molotch, 2007). Modern regulations were found in the weakly enforced

public nuisance laws that addressed these externalities of adjacent property owners. Nuisances

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often consisted of odors and air pollution, noise, and other disturbances. Medieval municipal

corporations did not have much power due to the public signification of streets and marketplaces as

common property. Building occurred haphazardly often creating the potential for more nuisances.

In 1580, Queen Elizabeth I made attempts to stop the spatial expansion (sprawl) of housing beyond

the old Roman walls of London. Anticipating urban growth boundaries she decreed that no new

buildings of housing structures should be built within three miles of any the city gates (Platt, 1996).

But urban sprawl was generally not as much of a medieval problem.

European theorists were interested in the macro-level historical development of European

cities which were much older and much more enclosed than the cities that developed in the new

country of the United States. Americans had adopted the ideal of private property as a fundamental

and inalienable right. The US was geographically much larger and more resource rich than any

nation-state in Europe. This combination of physical features promoted raw material and

manufacturing industries, transport innovation, and a market in real estate property. The open land

and plentiful natural resources of the newly made outward expansion a cultural ideal (Jackson, 1983).

This ideal led early American sociologists to view spatial expansion as a micro-level ecological

development.

Chicago School and Public Choice

American sociology developed in the intellectually lively environment of the University of

Chicago. Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, Louis Wirth and others moved away from the European

grand theory and toward a more rigorously positivistic search for spatial and micro-interaction

processes often referred to as human ecology (Hawley, 1950). Their research sought to understand

neighborhood social order, interaction, and immigrant integration (Park et. al., 1925; Znaniecki,

1918). They developed and promoted many of the social science methods that are still widely used

today: ethnographies, content analysis, statistical analysis, surveys, and observational research. The

Chicago School, in connection with other Chicago Schools (economics) also became the generator

of the research grant system that funded empirical research social science research. For the Chicago

School of sociology, this meant the funding of research that used spatial relations as its unit of

analysis. As Logan and Molotch (1989) acknowledge, the Chicago School had a consistent research

object accompanied by a consistent research program that other contemporary social science

endeavors lacked.

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In The City, Park, Burgess, and McKenzie (1925) developed a theory of concentric zones. They

viewed urban development as occurring through a series of zones that expanded outward from the

inner city core in a ring-like fashion. Park described (1925: 4-5) a city plan that determines the

spatial arrangements of settlement construction. The movement into these zones was deemed

spontaneous, though according to plan. The studies of urban spatial development conducted by the

Chicago School operated under the assumptions of neo-classical free market ideology. This

perspective observed that neighborhoods with certain behavioral characteristics were concentrated

in specific areas. The process of spatial settlement was seen as largely determined by forces of

worker supply and employment demand. McKenzie (Park, et. al. 1925) also included climate and

industrial organization as spatial determinates. Urban ecology theory tends to view technology and

population change as the primary forces of urban development (Berry and Kasarda, 1977).

However, they did not attempt to examine why technology changes or what populations change and

for what reasons. It was assumed that the invisible hand of the neo-classical free market directed

basic urban processes. Joe Feagin (1998: 136) calls this Adam Smith Sociology.

The market-oriented approach also pervaded studies of urban public policies. Charles

Tiebout (1956) created public choice theory to explain how voter activity determines urban layout.

Tiebout maintained that individuals and families decide where to reside in agreement with their

inclinations to publicly provided goods and services. For Tiebout, the market-mechanism must be

very efficient in order to satisfactorily provide the publics desired services. According to Tiebout,

there are two factors that condition the market: 1) the number and diversity of administrative

jurisdictions, and 2) the mobility of voters to choose to move to communities where they receive the

goods and services in the manner and form in which they please. Neoclassical markets were the

driving forces of both sociological and political science urban models until the 1950s. They have

been challenged in recent decades, but Tiebouts approach is still widely used as an explanatory

theory in public administration (Krebs and Pelissero, 2003). The Chicago Schools approach to land

use and general urban spatial form was widely influential until the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In the middle of the 1950s, the first pioneering work to challenge the entire model of

neoclassical approaches to urban land use was published. William Form (1954) conducted an

analysis of zoning decisions in Lansing, Michigan and argued that the Chicago School

misunderstood how markets and zoning processes function. They adopted the idea of the self-

regulating market (Polanyi, 1944) wholeheartedly and applied it uncritically to urban patterns that

their empirical research uncovered. Form argued that powerful social interests organized markets

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themselves and directed the spatial layout of cities. Form identified four primary groups: 1. Real

estate and construction companies; 2. Industries; 3. Homeowners; and 4. Local governments. Form

argued that a focus on powerful, land-based interests was needed to accurately assess urban affairs.

Forms arguments were not immediately adopted, but it was part of the development of urban

political economy approaches.

Community Power Studies

In the 1950s and 1960s, studies on organizational power emerged (Dahl, 1961; Mills, 1950;

Hunter, 1953). At the community level Hunter (1953) outlined the power elite in urban Atlanta,

identifying the decision-makers in the political and economic classes. Pellucci and Pilisuk (1970)

examined community power as consolidated in resource networks of inter-organizational leaders.

The social status and personal characteristics of local elite groups were scrutinized by community

power studies (Wolfinger, 1960; Rossi, 1960). Comparative community power studies were

conducted that revealed a consistent local power structure in the United States (Miller, 1958a,

1958b).

Pluralist analysis emerged in political science to challenge and refute community power

studies. Their focus is best articulated by the title of Dahls (1961) book, Who Governs? Hunter

and Dahl came to different conclusions about power and decision making in urban areas. Hunter

saw the business elite as being the primary holders of power in Atlanta, while Dahl viewed the

business community, and Yale University, as passive and benign in New Haven. Dahls analysis

pointed to social notables, the traditional upper class, and economic notables which represented

the business community. He sought to determine if they were as interconnected as power-elite

analyses suggested. Dahl concluded that it was the mayor and the political party system that exerted

the most influence over urban affairs. The political structure created the policies with which both

the business community and Yale had to be compliant with. Later research refuted Dahls methods,

sample composition, and conclusions (Domhoff, 1979, Fainstein and Fainstein, 1983; Sellers, 2000).

Still, the argument that this case study was a microcosm of American political and urban affairs

contained in Who Governs formed the basis of pluralist analysis.

The Chicago Schools ecological approach was forcefully challenged when urban

Americaexperienced a series of dramatic changes in the 1960s and 1970scivil rights, urban

renewal, the War on Poverty, deindustrialization. The cumulative effect of these processes on

academic research was to exhibit many of the shortcomings of a purely spatial neo-classical

economic approach. Urban scholars began conducting extensive research on the social changes

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occurring in cities, governments, and markets (Stone, 1976; Friedland, 1982; Mollenkopf, 1983).

Community power studies and pluralist analysis had described whom the local power elites may be,

but had not gone any further in describing how they rule. New urban political economy perspectives

emerged to determine: Who really rules? (Domhoff, 1978).

Urban Political Economy comes into being

Between 1968 and 1973 a paradigm shift occurred in urban analysis (Walton, 1993). In 1968,

Manuel Castells had asked the question, Is there an urban sociology? Castells was trying to

distinguish between urban social phenomena and presumably non-urban social phenomena.

Castells writings were not translated into English until 1975, though the British geographer David

Harvey was pursuing a similar line of inquiry. Harveys initial contribution was to argue for a Marxist

theoretical revolution in urban studies. However, he argued that modern urbanization needed to be

seen as a uniquely new form of capital accumulation. For many years Harvey was the only urban

scholar who was giving theoretical attention to real estate markets (Fainstein, 1990). Harvey and

Castells advocated a spatial understanding of Marixst philosophy. Both Castells and Harvey were

greatly influenced by the work of Henri Lefebvre.

Henri Lefebvre was a French Marxist social philosopher who is generally acknowledged as

one of the first practitioners of the new urban political economy perspective (Walton, 1993; Feagin,

1998; Gottdiener, 2000). Lefebvre (1970: 5) sought to elaborate and expand Marxs dialectical

analysis by studying what he called the urban revolution: the transformations that affect

contemporary society, ranging from the period when questions of growth and industrialization

predominate (models, plans, programs) to the period when the urban problematic becomes

predominant, when the search for solutions and modalities unique to urban society are foremost.

There are two objects of analysis that characterize Lefebvres project: time and space. In The

Production of Space Lefebvre endeavored to explain how space, with its physical, aesthetic, and agentic

attributes fit into the larger cultural economy of capitalism. The idea of space has been used by

both quantitative geographers and critical postmodern urban analysts (Soja, 1990). As Gottdiener

(2000) argues, Lefebvres use of space is much more theoretically precise, and refers to its function

in the forces of production, like labor and capital. Spatial relations are to be understood as the ways

in which the Marxist processes of accumulation manifest themselves in the built environment, labor

process, and the movements of financial capital. Lefebvre (1970) theorizes these relations by

explaining different circuits of capital.

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The first is the primary circuit, which consists of raw materials, machinery, transportation

systems, as well as laborthe human workforce. This circuit can be seen as the actual material

movement that makes up the economic action of human societies. This is the migration of labor, the

building of factories, stores, and residences, transportation routes, commodity production chains,

and other material dimensions of the economy. Lefebvre and Harvey argued that the surplus-value

that was created from the primary circuit was invested into the secondary circuit. The secondary circuit

consists of the financial capital flows into undeveloped land and investments in the already built

environment: real estate. Real estate companies, developers, banks as well as governmental monetary

organizations are the institutions within the secondary circuit (Feagin, 1998). Gotham (2006) argues

for the continued relevance and conceptual power of the capital circuitry approach, especially

considering the growth of the financial industry over the last thirty years.

Gottdiener (1985) advanced Lefebvres arguments by encouraging scholars to adopt a

sociospatial perspective, that examined how physical spaces, such as Disneyland, are themed by

the social spheres and consumptive economies. More recently he has argued that most sociologists

subsequently ignored Lefebvres capital circuitry approach focusing only on his contributions to the

conceptual study of space (Gottdiener, 2000). Furthermore, urban political economy failed to

integrate the significance of the secondary circuit for local land-use and spatial development.

However, Lefebvres (1991) analysis, and Harveys elaboration and extension, of different circuits of

capital have been the foundation of a few urban sociological analyses of the production of space

(Baueregard, 1994; Gotham, 2006). Harvey (1978) has adopted a more traditional Marxist

interpretation of these flows, and has argued that the dynamics of the secondary circuit are

contingent upon the surpluses obtained from the primary circuitonly profit can fuel further

investment. Feagin and Parker (1990) argue that the secondary circuit, especially real estate, has its

own dynamic, independent of the surpluses in the primary circuit. Gotham (2006: 232) observes:

The significance of real estate is that it is an immobile and spatially fixed commodity that is subject

to the fluid dynamics and anarchic character of capital investment.

Joe Feagin (1998) and Kevin Gotham (2006) are two sociologists who have provided capital

circuitry theories for the political economy of real estate. The real estate industry involves different

levels of the state, development companies, investment and commercial banks, transportation

agencies, and resource-based agencies and industries. Land is just another term for nature and is

incapable of becoming a commodity in the same way as other products (Polanyi, 1957). It is a

unique commodity because it is finite and when turned into private property, its value is determined

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by many things such as what is on the site as well as the effects of externalities. Yet, tremendous

fortunes can be made from the sale of land and, due to its fictitiousness, in real estate speculation.

Economic value is created from the overlapping use and exchange of the land (Molotch and Logan,

1987; Feagin, 1998). The sprawl patterned development that has marked the last 50 years of

American urban expansion was a result of speculators offering farmers on the outside of cities vast

sums of money for their land. Many farmers would sell their land, pushing up property taxes on

adjacent properties putting pressure on their owners to sell to real estate speculators.

Real estate speculation has been at the forefront of American capitalism starting in the

eighteenth century. Every parcel of land in the contemporary world is a territorial piece under the

purview of a larger nation-state. Markets developed alongside regulation, and the real estate market

is more of a rule than an exception. The price attached to places is not solely a product of supply

and demand but also reflects a process of competitive bidding on how much it is worth and what it

is calculated to be worth in the futurespeculation (Molotch and Logan, 2007). Most of the early

American revolutionaries were in conflict with King George III for engaging in large-scale real estate

speculation. Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, among others, bought many lots for

plantations, slave quarters, as well as many lands for speculative purposes. Real estate capitalism

gained steam during the westward expansion with construction of cross continental railroads. Many

of the new townships that sprawled across the west were built on foundations of bribery. The

placement of Omaha, Nebraska was the result of competing real estate and railroad speculators;

Abraham Lincoln being one of the competing speculators (Feagin, 1998: 142).

Feagin (1998: 143-144) argues that making speculation simple for commercial interests

became the basis for the fundamental design of the last two centuries of American urban spatial

form--the gridiron pattern:

The basic land unit selected was often the one best suited to business purposes in a capitalist systemindividual lots set into a grid pattern of lot and block development. Lots narrow at the front and long at the sidesuch dimensions reflected land values calculated in terms of front footage. New towns and cities could be planned into standardized lots and blocks without any special surveying skills. Such lot-block rectangularism was appropriate for the division and sale of land for profit. A real estate speculator is more often interested in the profits to be gained from property

value oscillation, and less interested in what is actually built on the land. Molotch and Logan (2007)

identify different kinds of place entrepreneurs but focus their attention on structural speculators;

real estate agents, banks, developers, etc. who try to actively change the price structure of place

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markets. Structural speculators use their specialized knowledge of property, local law, price and tax

changes, and political connections, to actively affect current and future land values (Logan and

Molotch, 2007). This type of speculation relies upon expected increases in value with the passage of

time. Structural speculators often work to conjoin their interests with those of the local growth

interests, providing the linkage between local, national, and global processes (Molotch, 1999). Pincetl

(1999) examined how real estate businessman Donald Bren and the Irvine Ranch Development

Company bought up huge tracts of land in Orange County that they held and then later built into

sprawling subdivisions. They then lobbied government officials to favor this sort of development

across the US. This sort of structural speculation encourages the capital and spatial expansion of real

estate markets:

US cities with more rapid rates of housing construction have higher, not lower, housing costs, even when demand factors are statistically controlled. New construction leads local markets to a new higher pricing structure rather than equilibrating a previous one. More money entering an areas real estate market not only results in more structures being built but also increases the price of land and, quite plausibly, the rents on previously existing buildings. Thus higher investment levels can push the entire price structure up, (Logan and Molotch, 2007:24). Structural speculation is most evident in the process of landbanking. Landbanking occurs

when a development firm buys up land and holds it, while waiting for the lands value to rise in

response to the adjacent city development (Feagin and Parker, 1990). Structural speculators are

buying land, and therefore altering what existing place market existed. Often this will influence the

subsequent development of the region. Lending institutions (banks and other financiers) have

considerable power in shaping how a community grows. It is no surprise that national or global

financial institutions and corporate firms prefer to deal with local growth machines rather than local

community citizen groups. Speculators are often more interested in buying up tracts of land outside

urban areas, subdividing them and selling to other companies to build upon. Perhaps the most

efficient way for structural speculators to get what they want from place is to take part in the growth

machineryto form coalitions, back politicians, send editorials to local news outlets, etc.

Capital circuitry approaches provide a framework for understanding the relationship

between financial flows and the built environment. Other theories focus on the structures of urban

governance. Three theories have been predominant over the last three decades: the growth machine,

urban regimes, and regulation theory. The growth machine refers to political, social, and economic

coalitions built around the ideal of profit maximization through land use. Urban regime theory is the

study of institutional arrangements of governance, encompassing governmental agencies and

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coalitions, business interests, social interests and activists. Regulation theory returns to a broader

examination of capital flows and sees the unevenness in spatial development as a process of the

regularization of capital accumulation. These theories are distinct in some ways and overlapping in

others. Their proposals and methods also make them theoretically compatible as well.

Growth Machines , Urban Regimes , and Regulat ion Theory

Growth Machines

Harvey Molotch (1976, 1993, 1999) articulated the growth machine thesis: coalitions of land-

based elites who compete with one another but maintain consensus on the general direction of local

economic growth. The growth machine thesis argues that every urban locale in the US contains

coalitions of private land-based elite interests who use government, media, and other cultural outlets

to promote agendas based on the idea of increased monetary profit (economic growth) obtained

from the intensification of private real estate and land use development (Molotch, 1976, 1993).

Molotch (1999: 248) stated that the growth machine is a combination of Mills (1956) power elite

concept and Hunters (1953) community power studies. He developed the growth machine thesis

during his early years as a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The growth

machine thesis was also informed by the predominant local growth actors of the time: oil

companies, the tourist industry, real estate companies, and their growth promoter--the local media.

The theory conceptually identified how these organizations engaged with the political arena to

influence place perception and therefore, place development. The key finding of growth coalition

studies is that the shape and form in which growth occurs may be altered, but that growth

machine powers still dictate the basic parameters of urban form. Molotch has consistently argued

that the growth machine theory represents a middle ground approach that gives credence to both

the larger political economy as well as the agency of local actors and institutions.

The growth machine apparatus is an urban structure embedded in a series of social institutions (e.g. unfettered real estate, local-national fiscal arrangements), which are all sustained through human agency, the mental frames people bring to any problem, including psychological phenomena, belief systems, and the choices contingent on these orientations, (Molotch, 1993: 47, my emphasis).

Molotch (1999) believes that there are many ways in which urban power can be studied, but

the growth machine starts from an agency rather than a structured perspective. Logan and

Molotch (1987) expanded the analysis of the growth machine dynamic to locate it in a more

encompassing political economy of place. Though analytically connecting the linkages between

national and local political economy, they still stress the importance of individual action for urban

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development. People dreaming, planning, and organizing themselves to make money from property

are the agents through which accumulation does its work at the level of the urban place (Logan and

Molotch, 1987: 12). Place entrepreneurs and structural speculators must work in accordance to

attract employment centers and income generating properties. Because all land is under the purview

of some state supervision, government becomes the arena where elite competition over growth takes

place. The growth machine model is firmly embedded in Polanyis framework of fictitious

commodities and double movements. Zoning enactments, exaction fees, tax incentives, and a range

of regulatory action manages the trajectory of growth, but rarely actually impedes the cultural ideal

of growth support (Warner and Molotch, 2000). In fact, a whole organizational and cultural

landscape is activated to promote some form of growth through the media and the sponsorship of

social spectacles (Molotch, 1993; Logan and Molotch, 1987). Economic growth, not to be mistaken

with local revenue growth, is the maximization of profits for local elite.

Its utility is its substantive simplicity. It is a fairly straightforward thesis, and as Molotch

(1999) points out, it can be used as a tool-kit that can be tested in different locales. The growth

machine follows the organizational pattern of mimicry (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and is easily

replicated across the country. The growth machine theory argues that the US national urban policy

is to create structures and ideologies that intensify competition among cities in what they will

provide investors (Molotch, 1993: 35). It also asserts that there are subtle differences in growth

machine functions under different national political regimes. For instance, Republican

administrations are more likely to push the growth machine ideology more aggressively and

withdraw federal aid from places that do not acquiesce (Molotch, 1993; Swanstrom et. al. 2002).

Based on research findings, urban sociologists outlined a series of conditions under which traditional

growth machines thrive. Most of these conditions entail local control of land-use, permissive real

estate markets, and an endearing cultural belief in markets.

As Molotch argues, (1993, 1999) the growth machine formation is uniquely American, yet

can be useful for illustrating urban development outside the US. A number of sociologists have

taken the growth machine to other nations. These studies represent the insights that may be gained

from placing the growth machine in a global comparative perspective. Broadbent (1989) has

conducted further research on growth machine politics in Japan. His findings contradicted some of

the assumptions of the growth machine thesis. In Japan, the national state has much more

centralized authority over land-use decisions. Local government officials and local land based elites

were less decisive than the ruling national political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and

15

the corporate elites. The locations that Broadbent chose as research sites (waterfront and chemical

factories) may be less subject to traditional growth machines than other more widely used

commercial properties in Japan (Molotch, 1993). Still, Broadbents study found urban growth

dynamics to be significantly different than the growth machine model would predict. Harding (1994)

took the growth machine model to Britain and also found a distinctive urban growth dynamic. After

WWII, Keynesian government policies constrained urban speculative endeavor. Private developers

were virtually non-existent as the national state took on many of these functions. Harding (1994)

argues that during the Thatcher enactment of neoliberal privatization, this situation changed. The

Thatcher regime commodified land-use and encouraged public-private partnerships, which generally

were reliant on the private portion of the partnership. Bassett (1999) agreed that the growth machine

thesis accurately portrayed the urban development changes in Bristol, England after the Thatcher

government began privatizing many previously socialized economic development functions.

In a study of a major transportation project in Milan, Italy, Molotch and Vicari (???) found

negative evidence for the growth machine model. Unlike in the US, there was an absence of

structural speculators and private sector predominance. In the US, transit projects are often

accompanied by acrimonious debate (Molotch, et. al., 2000; Schoup, 2005) between residents,

governments, and different private interests who seek to gain from increased consumer and

commodity access. Much to their surprise, the authors found that the traditional growth coalition

interests were ill informed and generally disinterested in the project. Prominent members of the

different political parties, on the other hand, were much more thoroughly informed about the

project. Molotch and Vicari found that the various political parties and officials had the most

influence over urban development in Milan. Not only was their knowledge and involvement much

greater than the business people who were interviewed, but the political officials did not see private

developers playing a significant role in the process. This is in stark competition to US growth

machine research, wherein political officials often discuss the pressure by private developers.

Elizabeth Strom (1996, 2001) took the growth machine tool-kit to Berlin during the

reunification of the German city and nation. She had expressed skepticism of growth coalition and

other neo-Marxist theories of political economy, until she began researching Berlin. She found a

very different structure of urban development in Berlin than in cities under US growth machine

research. The West German population strongly preferred the federal government maintaining a

strong interventionist approach to curtail and manage uncontrolled private US-style real estate

capitalism. The East German population did not have any direct experience with capitalism and

16

reformed local government agencies partnered with West German counterparts to integrate spatial

planning principles. West German and international real estate companies took an early interest in

the opening of Eastern Germany. However, the initial dreams of structural speculation were

dampened by a rocky transition of governments and markets and profound demographic shifts

across the region. Nonetheless, Strom (2001) argued that there is certainly a growth machine in

Berlin, but it is characterized by more public support for socially democratic government regulation

of urban land use.

Sellers (2002) conducted a comparative study of 11 cities in France, Germany, and the US,

and determined that German growth machines were supportive of environmental and social justice

goals. His work focused on political structures and planning body processes in the three countries

during the 1980s. In all three countries Sellers found evidence to support the basic premise of the

growth machine: governments that are heavily influenced by business coalitions shape urban form

accordingly. Sellers focused on how urban regimes addressed the three Es: environment, social

equity, and economic development. In France, a more centralized national government relied on

mixed-economy companies (50% publicly owned) to carry out land use development. Local

municipal officials had to coordinate with these semi-national companies. The cities in the US cases

were characterized by dynamics found in other growth machine studiesbusiness coalitions

dominated by private developers. The intensification of private profit for economic growth was the

sole guiding force in US urban development, and the other two Es came secondary.

The social market economy of Germany and its commitment to environmentalism make it a

particularly interesting place to conduct urban growth machine research. Sellers (2002) work on

Germany is similar to Stroms, however his fieldwork was conducted in much less tumultuous places

(mid-size W. German cities) during less tumultuous times (mid-1980s and mid-1990s). Unlike in

France, development firms in German cities such as Freiburg and Munster were under complete

municipal ownership guaranteeing local control. German cities also owned electric companies, gas

companies, and transit companies that could be easily coordinated around the three Es and the

management of growth. German development also managed by Sparkassen (local savings and loans)

had the most extensive banking operations in the country and also regulated private loans for

development much more effectively than national counterparts in the US and France. Sellers (2002:

330) conclusions are important for future growth machine research:

Logan and Molotch argued that in US cities the incentives of these firms to pursue development also extended to officials, institutions, and other business. Outside the US as well, private firms in the

17

construction and real estate industries shared analogous motives . . .Yet only in US and French cities did the strongest growth machines drive regimes that pursued development at the expense of environmental and distributive aims. In German cities the strongest local development industries reinforced precisely the regimes that controlled development most on behalf of other ends.

The growth machine thesis has remained one of the most widely utilized and tested ideal

types in urban studies (Schneider, 1992; Schneider and Teske, 1993; Harding, 1994; Low 1994;

Nijman, 1997; Jonas and Wilson edited volume, 1999; Alison, 2000; Delaney and Eckstein, 2007). It

refuted both the Chicago School of ecology and the strictly pluralist reading of urban governance by

building on community power critiques and adopting a neo-Marxian conceptualization of private

capital. One of the most recent of its uses has been its application to the history of ecologically

disastrous urban development policies in New Orleans. Freudenburg and Gramling (2009) have

identified how growth machine interests pushed for the publicly funded construction and

maintenance of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO). MR-GO is an industrial canal that was

built for industrial shipping traffic. However, within a few years of its completion the Louisiana

regional economy had changed enough that its use for industrial trade virtually stopped. It had to be

re-dredged repeatedly at a significant cost to taxpayers. In 2005, MR-GO became the main

thoroughfare that sent Hurricane Katrina floodwaters into the 9th Ward.

There have been alternative theories presented that give more causal power to political over

economic structures. Mollenkopf (1983) argued that the growth machine thesis, even in the US, did

not adequately address national government actors. Instead of listing growth entrepreneurs as the

key urban shapers, he argued that political entrepreneurs were the most influential social group.

He examined the role of the Democratic Party in the years of the New Deal, Urban Renewal, and

the national urban policy until the 1980s. The study captured the political machines in San Francisco

and Boston. In San Francisco he highlighted the Democratic officials and corporate leaders that

formed to create the Bay Area Council (BAC)a regional policy and planning network that would

lobby the state legislature for funding and favorable taxation. It was responsible for the Bay Area

Transit System (BART) and Mollenkopf argued that it played a significant part in making San

Francisco politically safe for Democrats. Other studies have found Mollenkopf underemphasized

the empirically observable growth coalitions (Judd and Swanstrom, 2006). Nonetheless,

Mollenkopfs early work contributed to a broader collaborative development of the political

economy of place (Swanstrom, et. al., 2002).

18

Most of the current critiques of growth coalition theory have come from urban regime

theory and globalization perspectives. In an edited volume entitled The Urban Growth Machine: Critical

Perspectives Two Decades Later urban regime theorists, British geographers, and other urban analysts

critically assess the growth coalitions utility. Urban regimes theorists look more broadly at the

different institutional arrangements that coalesce into coalitions of governance. According to some

urban regime theorists, the growth coalition thesis does not adequately address urban governance

and the complexity of political dynamics (????). Some global political economy scholars find that

theory is limited by its potentially isolated focus on the local as a unit of analysis, and that a

redefinition of the theory occurs when it is placed in other national and cultural contexts (Cochrane,

1999). Gottdiener (2000) in particular, offers a scathing indictment of growth coalition research for

not pushing scholars to examine how local coalitions are part of the broader political economy of

capital circuitry that Lefebvre described. Gottdiener goes so far as to accuse growth coalition

researchers as being intellectually lazy for running simple tests to prove whether or not a local area

has a growth machine or to discern the influence on policy outcome. He argues that disconnecting

the local urban growth processes from Lefebvres broader analysis of capital circuitry can lead to a

misleading view that lacks the context of spatial capital accumulation.

Urban Regimes

The most predominant theoretical framework used to examine UPE is the urban regime

approach. Political scientist Clarence Stone began his career studying local political power. His

analysis of urban renewal decision-making in Atlanta (1976) refuted the pluralism and public choice

theories of urban governance that were prevalent in political science at the time. The private

developers created coalitions with community groups and with officials at different levels of

government. He also examined how African American middle classes and community groups were

engaged in the urban renewal debates and how developers and government officials responded to

their engagement. Stones (1980, 1989, 2005) research argues that political coalitions of interest form

to pressure city politicians, sometimes resulting in progressive outcomes and sometimes enabling

business growth interests. Stone accounts for the broader social context with the conceptual device

that he labels systemic power. Systemic power addresses the socio-economic stratification to

which regimes respond. Regime theory provides a middle ground between the pluralist political

science and the structural Marxist political economy. According to Lauria (1997), urban regime

19

theory became predominant because it saw elite hegemony and coalitional pluralism as a false

dichotomy.

Stones urban regime and systemic power theories have been widely used to examine

coalitional politics and power in cities (Brenner, 2009; Gendrum, 2006; Pelissero, 2003; Orr and

Johnson, 2008). Urban regime theory is similar to growth machine theory in that both stress the

calculative agency of individuals. Its primary difference is that it describes a set of institutional

arrangements. It can explain how an urban regime can be a development regime (Stone, 1986;

Fainstein, 1983) or a middle-class progressive regime (DeLeon, 1992; Leo, 1998). Susan Fainstein

(2001) has extensively documented the different urban regimes responsible for construction in

London and New York. She examined a series of development projects, their financing, and the

institutional arrangements directing the process. She also incorporated capital circuitry approaches

but primarily examined the networks of institutional actors.

Urban regime analysis explores the actor-network composition of local public and private

sectors. Unlike the growth machine theory, it provides a theoretical framework to examine the

coalitional context in which growth-based interests compete or align. However, Stone acknowledges

that the most commonly found urban regimes in the US are those dominated by growth machine

interests (Stone, 2008; Domhoff, 2006). Fainstein and Fainstein (1983) identified two features of the

UPE of regimes: 1) local governments, and the infrastructure they provide in the US, are dependent

on property tax revenue; and 2) economic productivity is privately controlled. Stone (2008)

described the development regime as devoted to the maximization of profits obtained from the

intensification of land-use and investmenta growth machine. But urban regime analysis is broader

than the growth machine theory in its scope.

Stephen Elkin (1987) elaborated and expanded the urban regime thesis. Rather than using

the urban locale as the starting point for analysis, Elkin argues that modern societies need to be

understood as functioning by a division of labor between governments and markets. Three

fundamental features define urban politics in the US: public and private growth machines, electoral

politics, and structural bureaucracy. Any analysis of governance must include examination, even if

cursory, of these crucial axes. Elkin (1987) identified 3 kinds of regimes: 1) pluralist, which

dominated downtown land interests; 2) federalist, often an uneasy alliance between growth machine

coalitions and social and environmental activists; 3) entrepreneurial, unimpeded growth machines.

Regimes do not exist in a spatial or structural vacuum; there was also a strong regional dimension to

regime political formations (Elkin, 1987; Markusen, 1987).

20

DeLeon (1992) applied the urban regime theory to San Francisco. He specifically examined

land-use and development, the slow-growth movement, and the office of Mayor Art Agnos. The

work presents a grounded theory of the institutional dynamics and arrangements of a progressive

urban regime. DeLeon used a series of case studies that were fundamental for the creation of a

progressive urban regime, such as ballot measures, electoral politics, economic changes, and

coalitional populism. By using extensive social demographic, electoral voting, and party affiliation

maps of San Franciscos different districts he traced how this participatory progressivism expanded

spatially. Drawing from Mollenkopfs earlier study, DeLeon argues that the urban regime in San

Francisco evolved from the Bay Area Council to a progressive urban regime fused around three

distinct leftist tendencies: liberalism, environmentalism and populism. The progressive regime

experienced a monumental triumph with the 1986 passage of Proposition M, one of the most

restrictive growth control legislations of any major US city. Proposition M proposed strict growth

limits on office construction and also stipulated that voters at a regularly scheduled election had to

approve an exemption for any proposed office development exceeding the stated limits. In other

words, the citizenry was given the final word on development.

In contrast, Molotch (1993: 32) does not focus as intently on the political officials, but rather

on how the actions of growth entrepreneurs connect and interact with local governments as

routine. He argues that the real activists who bring radical change to urban places are real estate

developers and other growth entrepreneurs. Unlike community, social, or environmental activists,

growth entrepreneurs display their activism on a day-to-day basis. Domhoff (2006) agrees with

Molotch (1999) that Stones analysis, while acknowledging the central role of business elites, ignores

that their interests in city development are relatively fixed on making places more conducive to

capital intensive development. Domhoff (2006: 49) points out that in Stones analysis of different

coalitional interests, the most influential are still the private developerswhich leads back to the

growth machine thesis. Domhoff (2006) argues that Stones exploration of institutional coalitions

should be seen as an elaboration of the growth machine concept. Other scholars argue that both the

growth machine and broader urban regime theories fail to adequately treat the accumulative and

global processes of the capitalist market economy.

Regulation Theory

Regulation theory broadens the scope of urban analysis both spatially and theoretically. As

urban regime scholars Fainstein and Fainstein (1983) observed, urban regimes derive from two

structural characteristics of the political economy: capitalist private production and property taxes as

21

the main revenue source for local governments. Several social geographers have argued that urban

regime theories tend to focus on the local governments and do not adequately address the linkages

to the broader national and global political economy (Lauria, 1997; Goodwin and Painter, 1997).

The urban regulation theorists have attempted to examine the ways in which different urban regimes

develop across different places at different times. They view capitalism as a process of uneven spatial

development and flux, and argue that it occurs spatially and is subjectively experienced at the local

level (Feldman, 1997). Regulation theory brings the earlier work of Harvey and Lefebvre back into

urban regime and growth machine study. Its greatest contribution lies in its coupling of accumulative

and regulatory processes as fundamental for capitalist political economies.

The basic premise of regulation theory is that crises of accumulation and phases of expanded

production are not the result of Marxian abstract laws of capitalism, but reflect spatial and temporal

variation. Urban regulation theory has its roots in the French Rgulation School of economics. It is

important to note that regulation translates better into normalization or regularization

(Goodwin, 2001: 72). Regulation in this sense does not solely mean governmental intervention in the

market economy, but rather the varied institutional supports for the accumulation of capital (Boyer,

1990). In many ways Regulation theory mirrors Marxs analyses of capital accumulation and capitalist

crisis, but it goes beyond Marxian analysis by emphasizing the spatial and temporal changes in

accumulation regimes and modes of regulation. It is significant that many social and economic

geographers have adopted Regulation approaches. Geography by its nature is oriented toward the

spatial dimension of phenomena. Broader theories of political economy such as Regulation theory,

had not considered spatial effects until geographers made it their primary emphasis.

Michel Aglietta (1979) developed the analytical synthesis of the Regulation school by

describing a model of development called US Fordism. Fordism referred to a system of mass

production and consumption originating in the early operations of the Ford automobile production,

but becoming a national industrial paradigm after World War II. The paradigm was named after the

factory and consumption process developed by Henry Ford and his automobile manufacturing

company. It was characterized by higher wages for labor who in turn used that capital as purchasing

power for mass commodity consumption. Scholars now argue that the paradigm of Fordism may

hold in some places but has been replaced by flexible accumulation or other industrial paradigms in

others (Jessop, 1997). Fordism was also marked by an accumulation regime of Keynesian demand

management in Western Europe. In Fordism, higher wages and industrial expansion increased

capital accumulation while demand management served as market regularization.

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One of the important concepts of the Regulation approach is mode of regulation (MOR)

which is an ensemble of rules, norms, conventions, patterns of conduct, social networks,

organizational forms and institutions that can help stabilize an accumulation regime (Goodwin,

2001: 73). Scholars have searched for identifiable modes that determine regulation and are

reproduced in other times and places. Goodwin (2001) argues that the term mode is problematic

because Regulation is a process that is characterized by constant change. There are always modes of

regulation but they have the capability of changing rapidly in the case of matters such as

governmental action, global investments, and social upheaval. Goodwin says that the process of

regulation should be the conceptual and empirical focus, not the limited parameters of the term

mode. Spatial thinking on the process of Regulation already become standard practice in the

German Regulation scholarship. Brenner (1999) documents the many theoretical German-language

works that were published during the 1990s after reunification. Esser and Hirsch (1987) had begun

expanding the spatial potential of regulation theory and advocated its utility for understanding the

process of urban regionalization. After the country was united, the immense restructuring was seen

as part of the broader spatial processes of accumulation and regulation.

Though the Rgulation School began in French economics, the Regulation approach has

been a project driven by British geographers. Harveys earlier work on capital circuitry was re-

examined through refined spatial perspectives (Goodwin, 2001). British geographers explored the

failure of Regulationand not limited to governmental interventionduring the Thatcher years in

England. They argued that the neoliberal birth period should be seen as a failure of institutional

mechanisms to keep the capital system from becoming concentrated in the hands of elite classes.

Many British Regulation theorists examined how neoliberal policies were spatially uneven across the

different counties (Peck and Tickell, 1995; Jessop, 1997). A critical urban geography developed that

directly focused on the social and spatial implications of neoliberal economic practice.

In an important study, Peck and Tickell (1995) used Regulation theory to study the effects of

Thatcher policy on South East England. The Thatcher government selectively liberalized some

industries, practiced antipathy toward labor and trade unions, and began to privilege business and

property-owners with more generous tax policy. During most of the 1980s an economic boom

occurred in South East England as incomes and property values rose in contrast to North England

that saw declines in both. However, the deregulation had restructured the South East into a service

sector based economy that was less secure and lacked strong trade unions. By the end of the 1980s

the spatial changes of capitalism hit the South East and service sector jobs were shed. This in turn

23

led to a collapse of housing prices and left many homeowners with negative equity that was much

worse than in the rest of the country. Peck and Tickell (1995) argued that Thatchers neoliberal

policies suffered from not properly coupling accumulation and regulation. All energy was put into

capital accumulation that led to an overheated economy that could have been averted had

appropriate regulatory mechanisms been in place.

Regulation theorists began closely looking at the fluidity of capital movements across space

and the capital circuitry switch that was manifested in the built environment of place (Lipietz, 1992;

Beauregard, 1994; Peck and Tickell, 2002). Real estate, and particularly housing as a result of its

relevance to all socio-economic groups, became the focus of how geographically and historically

different types of accumulation and regulation affected urban form. Florida and Feldman (1988,

1991) adopted the spatial approach in a Regulation analysis of the role of housing and its markets in

Fordism. In Europe they see a social-democratic arrangement that has been dominant since the

end of WWII. Public housing and mass rail transit systems shaped urban growth and stimulated

demand in contrast to the dominance of the private sector in the US. They found that US Fordism

promoted a mass production system that was not limited to products that could be purchased at the

store or through catalogs, but it also was also the industrial paradigm for the spatial development of

housing markets. As Florida and Jonas (1991: 363-364) observe:

Suburbanization gave a distinctive spatial character to Fordist social relations. There was a marked spatial decentralization of elements of the production process. This decentralization was made possible by technological changes at the point of production and changes in corporate organization The post-war geography of metropolitan areas, while remaining functionally linked with corporate structures, became increasingly fragmented into a complex mosaic of industrial and commercially-oriented suburbs, and central cities.

Spatial thinking has become integral for Regulation approaches, for which the subject of

inquiry is the geographical unevenness of capital accumulation in the built environment. Regulation

is seen as a process that can be mapped temporally and spatially. Feldman (1997) argues for a

spatial structures of regulation approach that acknowledges things like housing and transport

flows of both people and materials. As Goodwin (2001: 82, emphasis in the original) states: This

leads us to thinking about the generation of regulation (or conversely, of processes which undermine

regulation) as organized in and through key sites and spaces. The term site that Goodwin uses can

be easily substituted by the sociological concept of place which has been a subject of voluminous

literature, discussion, and debate (Molotch, 1976; Pred, 1984; Logan and Molotch, 1988; Molotch,

et. a., 2000; Gieryn, 2000, 2002; Gans, 2002, 2009; Kusenbach, 2008). All social practice has its

24

physical manifestation in some sort of place and place itself often sets the parameters for social

practice (Freudenburg and Gramling, 1996; Molotch et. al., 2000).

The spatial structures dimension of the Regulation approach also corresponds with the

newly developing spatial sociology of inequality (Lobao, et. al., 2007). The convergence of these

theoretical perspectives is likely to garner more support and study from sociologists and

interdisciplinary academics in the coming years.

Consilience: Growth Machines, Urban Regimes, and Regulation

In the late 1990s two important volumes for the study of urban power and development

were published: Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory: Regulating Urban Politics in a Global

Economy, edited by Mickey Lauria, and The Urban Growth Machine: Critical Perspectives Two

Decades Later, edited by Andrew Jonas and David Wilson. The authors were primarily geographers

and attempted to critique, support, elaborate, and expand urban regime theory, growth machine

theory, and Regulation theory. Both the growth machine thesis and the urban regime models were

criticized for only using the local as the unit of analysis and ignoring regional, national, and global

influences on development. Over the years since Molotch and Stone first laid out their theories on

the growth machinery of systemic power, globalization has been recognized as a fundamental

process of modern market societies. Critics have argued that global changes in accumulation and

regulation are affecting the systemic power of local regions.

In Laurias (1997) volume, urban regime theory was subjected to a critique for not expanding

its identification of institutional arrangements to encompass other urban development powers

generated beyond the metropolitan statistical area. Regulation theory was also criticized for not

recognizing the significance of the local for a spatial understanding of accumulation processes.

Feldman (1997: 31-32) argues that urban regime studies are too local and that Regulation theories

are too abstract and that their most damaging feature is the inadequate depiction of capitalism.

Regulation theorists argue both theories can benefit from interpenetrationurban regimes can be

linked spatially to other regimes of governance and regulation found regionally and globally

(Goodwin and Painter, 1997; Feldman, 1997; Leo, 1997). Regulation theories have much to gain by

recognizing the integral role of local conditions for capital accumulation: the political economy of

place. (Logan and Molotch, 2007). Furthermore as Leo (1997) argues, a convergence of these ideas

allows for the placement of globalization into urban political economy.

The volume assessing the growth machine theory, edited by Jonas and Wilson (1999),

includes chapters by Regulation theorists (primarily geographers), but also gives space for Logan and

25

colleagues to elaborate the sociological state of growth machine research. In a final chapter, Molotch

was given a chance to respond and appreciated the commentary and maintained it utility as a

grounded linkage theory. The different authors acknowledge that the growth machine theory has

stood the test of time and remains a necessary component of any comprehensive urban political

economy study. They do not argue against its basic preposition that a local land-based elite focused

on the intensification of land-use for private development can be found in any given area. Rather the

authors in the study critique the growth machine thesis for many of the reasons that urban regime

theory has been scrutinized. The volume also gives special attention to the cultural context that, as

Molotch (1993, 1999) also acknowledges, shapes the structural contours of the growth machine.

Overall, the editors conclude that the strength of the growth machine lies in its capacity to order the

framework of the political economy of place in an agent-based localism that, as Molotchs rejoinder

argued, can serve as a down-link to the local/micro sphere of urban action and as an uplink to the

regional/global/macro spheres.

Urban Ontolog ies and Changing Epistemologies

In this section I offer a broad historical overview of the history of urban development in the

United States. Most of this paper has addressed the different epistemological approaches to urban

development, but this section tells the story of how urban planning and design have proceeded over

the last one hundred years in the US. Obviously, it has varied a great deal by time and place but

there are identifiable trends both in the theoretical practice of planning and its real world

application. I describe the role of governments and markets in the renewal of inner urban areas, the

physical expansion to and beyond metropolitan peripheries, and the more recent attempts to make

environmental sustainability and social equity the basis of urban development. I begin by describing

the larger projects that the federal government carried out in various misguided attempts to revitalize

poorer urban neighborhoods.

Urban renewal was supposed to provide the construction of public housing that would be

affordable to the veterans returning from World War II. The National Housing Act of 1949 started

the project of urban renewal. The project ended up having devastating effects on many cities, while

enriching developers and assisting the careers of politicians (Gans, 1962; Mollenkopf, 1983; Feagin

and Parker, 1990). Urban renewal planning was characterized by a very autocratic attitude toward the

communities that were being renewed. One of Stones (1976) earlier analyses was a

documentation of the urban renewal process in Atlanta, Georgia. His focus on the business elites

26

began in this work as he observed city council and other governmental officials proceed with urban

renewal plans despite the protest and alternative plans of citizens. The predominance of growth

machine interests were evidenced by the fact that less than 20% of urban renewal land went to

housing, while 80% went to commercial and industrial infrastructure (Logan and Molotch, 2007).

After the recognition of the chaos the program was creating, the Housing and Urban

Development Act was passed in 1965 and furthered in 1968 legislation, which provided more

subsidies for affordable housing and put more constraints on development corporations ability to

displace people. Following urban renewal, the Carter administration developed the Urban

Development Action Grant (UDAG) program, which became the core of the nations urban policy.

The UDAG program provided discretionary grants to economically distressed areas by using direct

capital subsidies (Bingham, 2003). UDAG had the unintended consequence of being exploited by

local governments who were taken over by growth machine interests (Molotch and Logan, 2007). It

is unclear how effective UDAG was, though it was popular with the public (Bingham, 2003). The

Reagan administration was strongly opposed to UDAG, and cut off so much funding that in 1988

Congress shut down the program. In this part of the movement we see a decades long effort by the

federal government to directly and strategically intervene to provide better outcomes for citizens

than the market had been able to thus far.

The final two decades of the twentieth century saw the zenith of the first movement

market society expanded more than at any other time in history. The dominance of market society

over government intervention was consequential for urban areas. The Reagan administration

favored Butlers (1981) concept of the enterprise zone, and HUD officials tried in vain to get the

passage of federal enterprise zone bills. Enterprise zones offered financial incentives to

neighborhoods, cities, and regions, to develop or allow less restricted private investments. Though

enterprise zone bills were not passed federally, many states adopted some version of an enterprise

zone (Bingham, 2003). From the 1980s until 2008, neoliberal market policies predominated. De-

regulation, privatization, mergers, and the curtailment of government intervention characterized the

neoliberal economic era. For American cities, this meant that there was less tax revenue and fewer

services that governments could competently provide. Work that was previously carried out by

government agencies was now also done by a proliferation of non-governmental organizations and

public-private partnerships (Elliot, et. al. 2004; Pelissero, 2003). Legislation in the early 1990s

encouraged cities to rely on private developers to help finance city revitalization.

Suburban Sprawl

27

The most prevalent form of latter twentieth century American urban development is

described as suburban sprawl. Sprawl can be defined as a type of urbanization distinguished by

leapfrog patterns of development, commercial strips, low density, single-family detached housing,

separated land uses, and automobile dominance (Ewing, 1994; Gillham, 2002). Sprawl based

development is low-density, auto-dependent, and threatens natural habitats on urban fringes

(Calthorpe, 2001; Newman, et. al., 2009; Whitelegg, 1997). This spatial arrangement of urban living

and working is dependent on petroleum-based energy. Sprawl development is a major source of

carbon dioxide emissions (Newman, et. al. 2009). It also strains local budgets with energy and

sewerage infrastructure needs. Sprawl contributes to the fragmentation of municipal governance,

and fosters regional revenue competition (Orfield, 2007; Cisneros, 1996, 2007). The infamous recent

housing bubble was manifested physically in sprawling subdivisions of low-density, single family

detached houses across the USan instance where the built environment was over-built.

Automobile dominance and dependency is the other defining feature of sprawl-based development.

Past research has found that auto-dominated transportation systems limit opportunity structures and

choices for spatial mobility (Whitelegg, 1997; Cotter, 2002). Transportation systems also shape the

economic opportunity structures that are available for communities (Cohen and Hobson, 2004). In

the US, sprawl causes severe infrastructural disadvantages for poor communities. These

disadvantages are described as a spatial mismatch, where many urban and rural poor in the US are

increasingly incapable of reaching job opportunities because of transportation and geographic

limitations (Massey and Denton, 1993; Sanchez and Wolf, 2007). One of the first critical

commentators on urban affairs was Lewis Mumford, and his summary of suburbanization described

it as an aberration:

In the mass movement into suburban areas a new kind of community was produced, which caricatured both the historic city and the archetypal suburban refuge: a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up, inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age groupconforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold, manufactured in the central metropolis. Thus, the ultimate effect of the suburban escape in our own time is, ironically, a low-grade uniform environment from which escape is impossible, (Mumford cited in Jackson, 1983: 244).

Jackson (1983) wrote the classic history of suburbanization in the United States, describing a

long history associated with the idea of unlimited lands and private homeownership. Though

suburbs can be traced back to the streetcar suburbs of the end of the nineteenth century, the

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phenomenon we now describe as suburban sprawl really began after the Second World War. Urban

renewal developed as a response to the movement of people and employment to the peripheral

edges of cities and the disinvestment and deterioration of inner cities. In both the inner cities and

suburbs, government programs fueled the economics of growth and profit maximization through

land use intensification.

The federal government had pretty much left the housing business by the 1920s as the

ideology of the self-regulated market dominated real estate development and speculation. There

were some instances of nuisance laws at the local level in some places but virtually everything

pertaining to housing was viewed as an individual problemthe location, selection, housing

construction, maintenance, and the buying of the home. There were three instances of federal

involvement in urban affairs prior to the 1930s: 1) In 1892, the federal government conducted a

survey of slum conditions in the larger industrial cities; 2) a Federal Land Bank System was

developed in 1916 to provide short-term credit to farmers who often were faced with high

machinery costs and oscillation in both agricultural production and market pricing; and 3) During

the first World War the federal government built housing and munitions depots for the military

(Jackson, 1983). However, most landed private property was viewed as a fundamental component of

a self-regulating real estate market without need for governmental interference.

The Great Depression forever changed the federal governments involvement in urban

affairs. Between 1928 and 1933 the construction of residential property fell by 95 percent and

expenditures on home repair fell by 90 percent (Jackson 1983: 193). By 1933, half of US houses

were in default and mortgage foreclosures were happening at a rate of one thousand per day. Most

of the victims of foreclosure were the newly secure middle-class and poorer farmers many of whom

were doubly hit by the Midwestern Dust Bowl (Worster, ????). American capitalism was faced with

the greatest crisis of accumulation in its history.

The federal government under Roosevelt responded with frenetic activity. One of the early

proposals was a Greenbelt program modeled after the ideas of Ebenezer Howard. This program

sought to both develop and assist developers that were building streetcar suburbs. The Greenbelt

program also proposed large tracts zoned for greenspace to be filled with parks. It preceded many

recent ideas on urban growth management and what the federal government is possible to do in that

area. The program never was enacted due to vicious opposition by conservative officials at various

levels of government and in the private sector. The Roosevelt administration turned their attention

to the New Deal and job creation. The federal institutions that were developed during the 1930s

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New Deal to prop up the housing market also paved the way for the following decades of suburban

sprawl.

The New Deal developed two programs that have had a long lasting impact on US suburban

development: the Home Owner Loan Corporation (HOLC) and, most importantly, the Federal

Housing Administration (FHA). Jackson (1983: 195) points out that HOLC is important to history

because it introduced, perfected, and proved in practice the feasibility of the long-term, self-

amortizing mortgage with uniform payments spread over the whole life of the debt. This is a

system of housing finance that is still practiced and has spread across the globe. HOLC also led to

the standardization of appraisal methods across the US. HOLC was also the federal agency that

developed the practice of redlining and was responsible for many exclusionary zoning practices and

overt racial segregation in urban planning. Many of the areas designed and funded through HOLC

are still reflected in spatial segregation of ethnic neighborhoods.

The FHA was created by the National Housing Act in 1934. The agency did not build

houses or lend money to homeowners. Instead, they induce lenders who have money to invest it in

residential mortgages by insuring them against loss on such instruments, with the full weight of the

US Treasury behind the contract. They revolutionized home finance industry in a number of ways.

The FHA continued a trend begun by the HOLC, and extended the repayment period for its

guaranteed mortgages to 25 or 30 years and insisted that all loans be fully amortized. Before FHA

began operation, first mortgages were limited to one-half or two-thirds of the appraised value of the

property. Homebuyers often needed a down payment of at least 30%. With an FHA-secured loan,

the fraction of the collate