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Urban Politics

This popular text mixes classic urban theory and research with a review of the most recent developments and trends in the urban and metropolitan arena. The book’s balanced and realistic approach helps students understand the nature of contemporary urban problems and the difficulty in finding effective “solutions” to those problems in a suburban and global age. The ninth edition, thoroughly rewritten, maintains its focus on questions of

economic development and race and gives enhanced attention to the changing patterns of the American city, including the impacts of globalization and gentrification. Boxed case studies of both current political controversies and urban-related films provide material for class discussion. The concluding sections demonstrate the trade-off between “ideal” and “pragmatic” urban politics. Key changes to this edition include:

thoroughly updated and rewritten chapters, reflecting the most current census data and evidence in areas such as the “new immigration,” changing patterns of suburbanization, gentrification, and community development; a new opening chapter providing a sharper focus on the differences between industrial and post-industrial communities; coverage of cities in crisis, including the politics surrounding municipal bankruptcy in Detroit and Stockton and the big-city pension problems of Chicago and other cities; increased attention on policies for sustainable urban development; new photos and boxed material throughout the book illustrating important themes.

Myron A. Levine is Professor in the Department of Urban Affairs and Geography at Wright State University, USA. In addition to authoring Urban Politics, Dr. Levine is the editor of two volumes, Annual Editions: Urban Society and Taking Sides: Urban Affairs. His writings have appeared in various journals, including the Urban Affairs Review and the Journal of Urban Affairs. His research focuses on national urban policy, urban revitalization, and efforts at regionalism and local government collaboration. He has received NEH and NSF awards to study and teach in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Latvia.

Urban Politics Cities and Suburbs in a Global Age

Ninth Edition

Myron A. Levine

Ninth edition first published 2015

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any

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only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Eighth edition published by M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levine, Myron A.

Urban politics : cities and suburbs in a global age / by Myron A. Levine.—Ninth edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Municipal government—United States. 2. Metropolitan government—United States. I. Title.

JS323.R67 2015

320.8’50973—dc23

2014026934

ISBN: 978-1-138-85357-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-7656-4625-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-71970-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Times

By Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Nancy

For her love, support, caring, and wisdom. For showing me the beauty of life. For being fabulous.

Contents

Preface

1. The Urban Situation: Global City, Tourist City, Bankrupt City The Postindustrial Transformation of Pittsburgh Global City Tourist City Bankrupt City Power and the Study of Urban Politics Power: The Ability to Get Things Done Privatism: The Limited Power of Government The Subthemes of This Book Conclusion: The Urban Situation Key Terms

2. The Evolution of Cities and Suburbs The Natural Factors that Shape the Growth and Decline of Cities and Suburbs Hidden Urban Policy: How the Government Shapes Metropolitan

Development The Importance of Corporate and Private Power How Public Policies and Private-Sector Actions Contribute to Homelessness Conclusion: Hidden Urban Policies, Private Power, and the Contemporary

Urban Situation Key Terms

3. Recent Trends: Gentrification and Globalization Gentrification Who Transformed the Inner City: Urban Pioneers or Corporate Developers?

Why Cities Promote Gentrification Despite Its Costs How Public and Private Institutions Promote Neighborhood Transformation Coping with Gentrification World Cities and the Global Hierarchy: The Position of Cities in a Global

Economy Globalization: The Permeability of City Borders Conclusion: Globalization, Power, and Democracy Key Terms

4. Who Has the Power?: Decision Making, Economic Development, and Urban Regimes Moving Beyond the Old “Power Elite” versus “Pluralism” Debate “City Limits”: How Economic Competition Shapes Local Politics Regime Theory: Power as Social Production The Transformation of San Francisco: Political Power and Economic

Development in the Postindustrial City Conclusion: Constrained Local Politics Key Terms

5. Formal Structure and Leadership Style Municipal Incorporation, City Charters, and Local Fragmentation Dillon’s Rule Preemption Home Rule State Regulations Regarding Local Annexation and Secession Local Government Finance: State Limitations on Local Taxing and Borrowing The Voter Tax Revolt and Recent Trends in Financing Local Government “Academic Bankruptcy” Laws: The State Takeover of Schools in Crisis The Formal Structure of City Government City Councils: No Miniature Reproductions of the U.S. Congress Women in Local Government The Difficult Task of Mayoral Leadership Minority Mayors and the Debate over Deracialization Conclusion: The Limited Position of Cities and the Prospects for Effective

City Leadership

Key Terms

6. The Machine, Reform, and Postreform City How Urban Machines Operated and How They Lasted for So Long Why Political Machines Declined Who Were the Reformers? The Ideology and Bias of the Reform Movement The Reforms and Their Impact Reform’s Legacy: The Growth of Bureaucratic Power A New Generation of Reform Conclusion: The Postreform City Key Terms

7. Citizen Participation The Evolution of Citizen Participation Levels of Citizen Participation Treating the Public Not Only as Consumers But as Citizens and Partners Keys to Making Citizen Engagement Work The New Style of Community Organizations: Moving from Protest to

Partnership Community Development Corporations E-Government and E-Democracy: From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 (and 3.0) Conclusion: Bottom-Up Participation, Deep Democracy, and the Facilitating

Role That Government Can Play Key Terms

8. Improving Urban Services The Power of Municipal Service Agencies: The Bureaucratic City-State The Importance of Street-Level Bureaucrats Professionalism: An Imperfect Cure for the Urban Bureaucracy Problem Performance Measurement: Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Equity in

Municipal Government Coproduction and Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) Service Contracting and Privatization The Private Management of Public Schools Vouchers, Tax Credits, and Charter Schools: A Variety of School Choice

Programs Conclusion: Improving Public Services Key Terms

9. A Suburban Nation Suburban Diversity: The Changing Face of Suburbia Racial Stratification: Is It Race or Income that Determines Where People

Live? Schools and Suburbia Suburban Land Use and Exclusion Suburban Autonomy and Metropolitan Fragmentation Can “Smart Growth” Curb Suburban Sprawl? “New Urbanism”: Can We Build Better Suburbs? Conclusion: Moving from Suburban Autonomy to a Working Regionalism Key Terms

10. Regional Governance in a Global Age Old-Style Restructuring: Annexation, Consolidation, and Metropolitan

Government Is Metropolitan Government Really Desirable? Two Contrasting Schools of

Thought Regional Cooperation, Old Style A New Regionalism for the Twenty-First Century: Improving Regional

Governance, Not Creating Regional Government Building Regional Coalitions Conclusion: Governing Regions in a Global Age Key Terms

11. The Intergovernmental City: State and National Policy The Constitutional Basis for Federal Urban Programs: Cooperative Federalism Grants-in-Aid: The Fuel of Cooperative Federalism and Intergovernmental

Relations Types of Grants The Grant System: Its Accomplishments and Problems Why the United States Has No National Urban Policy

Urban Policy for an Anti-Urban Age: Bill Clinton’s “Stealth” Urban Approach Barack Obama’s Hybrid Urban Approach The Continuing Importance of the States Conclusion: Finding Ways to Create Partnerships in an Anti-Urban Policy

Age Key Terms

12. The Future of Urban America The Continuing Emphasis on Economic Development The Future of Minority Empowerment Urban Policy in a Suburban Age: The End of Urban Policy? Toward Sustainable Cities The Urban Future: U.S. Cities in a Global Age Key Terms

Notes Index

Preface

Much popular commentary has focused on the “comeback” of America’s cities. Once-ailing downtowns have bloomed as centers of global corporate offices, entertainment, night life, and tourism. Previously declining inner-city neighborhoods have experienced extensive upgrading, with new housing and trendy stores that serve capable young professionals attracted to the dynamism of city life. These knowledge workers, in turn, provide the creative talent that serves to draw prestigious national and global firms back to the city. But these images of urban prosperity disguise an elementary truth: all is not

well with the American city. Despite the evidence of an urban rebound, many communities—suburban as well as central city—are not thriving. Local growth trends are very uneven; while some communities exhibit significant gains, others suffer unabated decline. Cities—and increasingly suburbs as well—continue to face the “wicked” problems of urban poverty, family dissolution, homelessness, worsening inequality, housing abandonment, crime, and the resegregation of public school systems. A new immigration, primarily from Latin America and Asia, too, has added to the service burdens of cities. Even economically booming cities—New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, to name only a few— suffer serious problems of housing affordability, displacement, ghettoization, school segregation, traffic congestion, and environmental harm. The nation’s suburbs have become new centers of immigration, poverty, closed storefronts, vacant properties, and resegregated school systems. The 2014 protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, that occurred in the aftermath of a police officer’s shooting of an unarmed young black male, serve as testimony to the inequality and racial tensions that continue to exist in the contemporary metropolis. The urban crisis never really left the city; yet, somehow, it has moved to the suburbs. The 2013 bankruptcy of Detroit underscored the depth of the problems that

major urban areas face. Detroit was not the only city in the nation to face the

prospect of bankruptcy, only the nation’s biggest. In Detroit, Harrisburg (Pennsylvania), Stockton (California), and a fairly large number of other communities, fiscal crisis appears to have become a permanent part of the local condition. In an age when population and political power have shifted to the suburbs,

urban leaders have had to become more creative in their coalition-building and problem-solving efforts. In a global age, effective urban leadership is made even more difficult as cities and suburbs are affected by events and decisions from beyond their local borders. Local communities now compete for new jobs not only with one another but also with communities located overseas. The intensified economic competition has led local officials to anticipate the needs of business leaders, even at the price of diverting spending away from residential neighborhoods, reducing municipal responsiveness to other needs. The 9th edition of Urban Politics argues that it is important to look at the

interaction of public and private power in the local arena. The formal rules of local government remain important, as they define what cities can and cannot do. The formal structure of local governing and electoral systems also help to determine “who gets what” from politics, just who is—and is not—represented in city hall. Yet a description of the formal rules and institutions of city government—city charters, the mayor, city manager, city council members, and other top municipal officials—by itself yields only a very incomplete and misleading understanding of how politics is played in the local arena. City officials are often constrained by the decisions made by private actors and by concerns for local competitiveness. It is not easy for public officials to get important things done. Yet, while

public leadership is difficult, it is not impossible. Private power counts, but so does local politics! Creative and inspired public leadership—at the neighborhood level as well as in the top offices of city hall—can get results. Urban Politics remains quite pragmatic in its overall orientation. It identifies

the root sources of urban problems, but it does not call for idealistic policy changes that are impossible to achieve. Instead, it seeks to identify targets of opportunity where urban advocates can hope to fashion a winning coalition behind practical—albeit at times rather small—measures that will improve the urban condition. The book also concludes by examining the possibilities of a

“green politics,” where a commitment to environmental protection and sustainability can offer keys to building a better city. Urban Politics draws on current work in a number of fields: political science,

geography, urban sociology, urban economics, urban planning, and public administration. It draws the reader’s attention to “current affairs” that reveal the relevance of more scholarly academic works to the contemporary urban debate. Over the years, this book has been the beneficiary of the insights and support

offered by numerous colleagues. I will name only a few. Bill Peterman and Janet Smith showed me the extensive changes taking place in Chicago. Innisfree McKinnon generously shared her knowledge of regional planning in the Pacific Northwest. Jack Dustin tutored me as to the possibilities inherent in regional partnerships and collaborative action. Jack further underscored the critical importance of public-private partnerships and performance measurement and management systems as cities and suburbs attempt to do more with less. Jack has proven to be a quite supportive and exemplary chair of Wright State University’s Department of Urban Affairs and Geography. At Wright State, Dean Kristin Sobolik, too, deserves thanks for her celebration of faculty scholarship. I would never have been so deeply involved with writing Urban Politics were

it not for the late Bernard M. Ross, who asked me to co-author the book’s earlier editions. Bernie was a lover of cities, a believer in the virtues of professionalized urban management, and an advocate of citizen participation. He was also a true gentleman. The Urban Affairs Association also deserves a word of appreciation for its

work in giving greater prominence to a field of study that, for many years, suffered a degree of neglect as it lacked an agreed-upon disciplinary core. The UAA is a rarity among the academic professions; its journal articles are relevant and readable, and its annual conferences are lively and interesting—and worth attending! Very special thanks go to Harry Briggs at M.E. Sharpe, the publisher of

previous editions of Urban Politics, for his continued support and enthusiasm for this project. Harry’s belief in Urban Politics helped to keep the book alive at a time when it seemed to be on the verge of disappearing amid the rubble of the continuing consolidation, restructuring, and shakeout of the book publishing industry. Thanks a lot, Harry! Elizabeth Parker also provided detailed editorial

assistance and help with photo permissions while the manuscript was at M.E. Sharpe. I am extremely pleased that Urban Politics has a new home at Routledge, a

publisher renowned for its list of titles in the fields of Political Science and Urban Affairs. A number of people at Routledge have extended their enthusiastic support and a kind welcome. Michael Kerns, the Acquisitions Editor at Routledge, was solicitous of my concerns from the very beginning. Emma Elder at Taylor & Francis Books in England took charge of the entire production process and assembled a most capable team behind the volume. Lillian Rand took charge of various details. My thanks also go to Alice Sparks for her close eye in proofing the volume and to Alan Rutter for providing the volume’s index. Leigh-Ann Bard has been extremely helpful in marketing the volume. Harbour Fraser Hodder has my special thanks for meeting deadlines, for keeping me on deadline, and for the extremely positive way by which she extends editorial advice. Nicola Platt was also wonderful, joining Taylor & Francis and taking charge of production as the volume neared completion. Of course, my deepest thanks go to Nancy, my partner over the decades in this

and every other important project in my life. And now our son Alex, his wife Marisa, and our daughter Evie show us the continuing wonders of cities like Chicago and Minneapolis, even in the dead of midwinter.

1 The Urban Situation

Global City, Tourist City, Bankrupt City

A time traveler from the 1950s who woke up in 2015 would be struck by the unfamiliar appearance of urban America. Important changes took place during the time in which the time traveler slept. Our time voyager left an era where cities were industrial centers; manufacturing and related industries (including port-related activities, warehousing, and distribution) dominated the urban economy of midcentury. The American city of the twenty-first century, by comparison, is much different, having lost much of its industrial base and character. New York City in the 1950s was defined by its numerous small factories,

warehouses, and shipping, with “finger piers” jutting into the Hudson River from Manhattan. By the twenty-first century, the gritty industrial nature of large sections of New York had disappeared, giving way to a “new city” of internationally connected corporate offices and soaring office towers. Entertainment centers sprouted up on former manufacturing sites. New York was no longer the manufacturing center of old; instead, the city had become a hub of global corporate headquarters, banking, financial services, information technology, digital and other “new media” firms, and entertainment activities. New York was not the only city to undergo such a transformation. The change

was even apparent in prototypical industrial cities like Pittsburgh. By the beginning to the twenty-first century, civic leaders in Pittsburgh had torn down the idle, rusting hulks of the city’s famed steel mills and removed the industry’s slag heaps in order to build a new postindustrial infrastructure: riverfront bike paths and parks, office and shopping complexes, and modern professional sports

stadiums. Big-city downtown enjoyed a new revival, as did many of the “core”

residential neighborhoods located nearby. The urban comeback was all the more notable as during the latter half of the twentieth century, the same downtown business districts and core-city neighborhoods suffered extensive decline as middle-class families left the city in search of the “good life” of the suburbs. Businesses, both retail and manufacturing, soon followed. Our urban time traveler would be surprised to find that in many cities the central business district and surrounding residential neighborhoods no longer appeared to be dying; instead, these areas have blossomed as the site of new investment, with

THE POSTINDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION OF PITTSBURGH

The Industrial City: Steel Mills and the South Slopes Neighborhood of Pittsburgh, 1940.

Photo taken by Jack Delano, January 1940. From Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, DC, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mill_District_-_Pittsburgh.jpg.

Pittsburgh’s Postindustrial Transformation. The city has redeveloped its riverfront, previously the site of

idle steel mills and slag heaps, into a place for recreation and commerce, with parkland, bike paths,

riverside restaurants, new offices, and two stadiums for the city’s professional baseball and football teams.

From Wikimedia Commons, User PerryPlanet, June 28, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Shore_Riverfront_Park

upgraded residences, sidewalk cafés, fashionable bistros, upscale boutiques, and even new shopping complexes that offered the convenience that previously could only be found in suburban malls. In a transformation process that came to be called gentrification, technologically competent workers, young professionals, and newly married couples took up residence in core neighborhoods, in some cases converting vacant warehouses to residential use, having rediscovered the virtues of living in close proximity to the job opportunities and the nightlife of an active city. Suburbia, too, underwent considerable change during the more than half a

century that our time traveler slept. In the 1950s, at a time when many Americans still did not own an automobile, suburban development was in its relative infancy. Suburbia was largely viewed as an expanse of leafy, affluent,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mill_District_-_Pittsburgh.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Shore_Riverfront_Park
single-home communities, although closer observation also revealed the existence of numerous industrial and working-class communities that did not fit the upscale-bedroom-suburb stereotype. Over the decades that followed, however, suburbia exploded (Figure 1.1), gaining extensive population and new economic activities. The United States of the twenty-first century has become a suburban nation: census data reveals that since the 1970s the total population of U.S. suburbs outnumbers that of central cities.

Figure 1.1 The 1990s: A Decade of Continuing Suburban Expansion. The Rate of Population Growth of

the Nation’s Suburbs Was Twice That of Central Cities (Percent Change in Metropolitan Population and

Families, 1990–1997)

Note: The HUD figure is based on the U.S. Bureau of the Census Current Population Study.

Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), The State of the Cities, 1998, p. 7;

available at www.huduser.org/Publications/PDF/soc_98.pdf.

Contemporary suburbia is also considerably more varied in its economic and demographic makeup than it was in the 1950s. Economic activities once confined to the Industrial City are now commonly sited in the office and industrial parks and shopping malls and big-box retail stores of the suburbs. Factories, warehouses, and commercial centers have sprouted at beltway exits and along the roadways near airports. Highways and airports serve as important transportation nodes in an increasingly national and globalized economy;

http://www.huduser.org/Publications/PDF/soc_98.pdf
businesses no longer have to locate, as they once did, along rail lines and near the river and ocean ports of the Industrial City. Continuing advances in computerization and telecommunications have further

served to liberate national and global corporations from central-city locations. Corporations can now site much of their office and support activities in edge cities, the relatively dense concentrations of office parks, technology-related firms, restaurants, shopping, and entertainment centers that can be found in contemporary suburbia. But new suburban development is not limited to the “new suburban downtowns” of edge cities. Substantial new economic growth is also located in the edgeless development1 located along suburban roads on the outskirts of the metropolis. Suburban “strip malls” have become the sites of new offices, restaurants, and entertainment facilities, further weakening not just a region’s central city but also many inner-ring suburbs located in closer proximity to the central city. As the economy of suburbia changed so did its demography. In the 1950s,

suburbia was primarily a bastion of white prosperity; in contrast, suburbia of the 2000s is considerably more diverse. Contemporary suburbia has become the home to numerous ethnic groups and even newly arrived immigrants from oversea. The numbers of low-income families residing in the suburbs have also increased; the stalled national economy and the collapse of the housing finance bubble of the early 2000s further added to suburban poverty rates. By the early twenty-first century, the total number of poor families living in suburbs surpassed the number living in central cities—even though poverty rates (the chances that a person will be poor) remain higher in central cities.2

The family structure found in the suburbs also changed noticeably. The two- parent family norm of suburbia in the 1950s gave way to an increase in the numbers of female-headed families and also to gay and lesbian households. In short, our urban time traveler would discover that cities and suburbs in the

United States had changed with the rise of globalization and with the transition of the United States from an industrial to a postindustrial society. The Industrial City to a great extent faded away3 and was replaced by three new urban forms: the Global City, the Tourist City, and the Bankrupt City. This book seeks to describe the forces that have shaped the transformation of

United States cities and suburbs and to identify just what strategies can—and

cannot—reasonably be undertaken to help alleviate contemporary urban problems. It makes a simple but important argument: power and politics count! The changes in the American urban landscape and the problems of urban communities were not, and are not, inevitable. They are not the simple result of inescapable demographic and economic forces. Instead, decisions made by public officials and private actors have played—and continue to play—a great role in shaping the geography of urban problems and how the nation responds to the urban situation. In short, political power counts. This chapter describes the emergence of the Global City, the Tourist City, and

the Bankrupt City. It will then begin to explore the role that public decisions and private power have played in forging the contemporary urban situation.

GLOBAL CITY

The decline of the Industrial City left former manufacturing centers in desperate search for new economic possibilities. The most successful communities adapted and found a new role to play in an increasingly globalized economy, a world where the organization of production transcends a nation’s borders. Cities sought to attract the headquarters and production facilities of multinational corporations. Cities also made investments that they hoped would lead to the development of jobs in health care, education, and advanced technology, growth fields in a new service economy. New York City, badly hurt by the decline of its manufacturing base and by the

exodus of both population and commercial activity to the suburbs, skirted on the edge of fiscal default in the mid-1970s, unable to find the revenues necessary to pay off its creditors as municipal loans came due. The intervention of the state and federal governments helped New York gain access to funds (especially new borrowing through the municipal bond market) that the city needed to maintain operations while implementing various fiscal reforms. New York, despite its fiscal problems, also still enjoyed important advantages as a critical national and global center. As a result, the city was able to dig itself out of the hole, escape the specter of default, and reemerge as a top-tier Global City, a world center of

corporate headquarters, banking, and financial services firms in a world where economic activities transcend national borders. New York City’s decline and rebound point to the importance of globalization

and the position of a city in the global city hierarchy. Globalization denotes the eroding significance of national and local borders. Contemporary cities exist in a global system of interconnected relationships. Economic global competition helps to explain the financial problems that cities like New York suffered beginning in the mid-century, as multinational corporations shifted manufacturing and back-office support jobs to lower wage sites located overseas. But globalization of the economy does not only pose problems for cities, it

also presents cities with opportunities. Of course, certain cities are in a better position than others to find an important role to play in the new global economy. Contemporary New York—along with London and Tokyo—is generally regarded as one of the world’s three top-tier cities, cities that have a large concentration of business firms that are critical to business decisions around the globe. The credit and investment decisions made by corporate officials in a global city like New York can affect the opening or the shutting down of a manufacturing plant half a world away. Global cities are vital centers of commerce, corporate control, knowledge, creativity, communications, and entrepreneurship.4

What opportunity did a globalizing economy offer New York? Major multinational and national firms find great value in agglomeration, which is locating a firm in close proximity to other corporations doing similar work. Cities also offer the advantages that industries receive from cluster patterns of development: by locating in relatively close proximity to similar firms, a corporation can tap a large pool of qualified workers as well as draw on the specialized support services provided by financial accounting, legal, and managerial assistance firms that work in their field.5 Simply put, a firm enjoys benefits from locating in the same general geographic area as other firms in its industry. New York rebounded, as the city provides one of the world’s premier clusters of banking, finance, and corporate activities.

The Freedom Tower, New York City. The soaring 1776-foot Freedom Tower, the centerpiece of the 9/11

rebuilding site, is actually taller than the Twin Towers that fell during the 9/11 attacks. The Freedom Tower

was built despite great cost and concerns for safety. Critics also objected to a building that commercialized

a memorial site. The office space provided by the Freedom Tower and other new World Trade Center

buildings helped to reinforce the position of Lower Manhattan as a financial center of the global economy.

From Wikimedia Commons, User Hakilon, December 30, 2013,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:One_World_Trade_Center_im_Dezember_2013.jpg.

Los Angeles ranks a rung or so below New York on the global city ladder, especially in terms of its reach on the world economic stage. Los Angeles, of course, is an important center of communications (especially the film industry) and Pacific Rim banking. It is also a multicultural, multilinguistic city. Still, the city still lacks the concentration of world-class firms found in New York.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:One_World_Trade_Center_im_Dezember_2013.jpg
Chicago, Houston, Denver, Miami, and San Francisco are other U.S. cities with global connections. These cities are important national and regional commercial centers. But, compared to New York and even to Los Angeles, the cities are less critical command-and-control centers of the global economy. A city’s position in the global hierarchy helps to determine the opportunities it

has available and even its ability to rebound from disaster. In the global hierarchy of cities, New Orleans ranks lower than the national and regional centers named above. During the age of the Industrial City, New Orleans was an important port city, a result of its advantageous location near the mouth of the Mississippi River. But even before Hurricane Katrina hit the city, New Orleans’ economic importance had already begun to slip. In the new postindustrial global economy, Miami, not New Orleans, became the primary locus of United States finance and trade with the Caribbean.6 As New Orleans does not occupy a critical position in the global economy, in the wake of the flooding and devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, there was no equivalent sense of national urgency to rebuild New Orleans as there had been to rebuild Lower Manhattan after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the collapse of the World Trade Center. New Orleans remains an important center of tourism but is not as essential to the health of the national economy as is New York; New Orleans does not occupy a critical position in the global economy. Globalization denotes the permeability of national borders not just to capital

investment but also to population flows. The urban time traveler from the 1950s would undoubtedly be astonished by the variety of languages spoken on the streets of the twenty-first century American city. A new immigration, primarily from Latin America and Asia, has brought greater population diversity to cities. Immigrants help provide the investment funds, the creative talent, and the physical labor that can fuel the dynamism of cities and suburbs. Post-Katrina New Orleans experienced a record increase in its Mexican population, as thousands of Hispanic workers came to New Orleans seeking work in the rebuilding of the flood-ravaged city.7

A brief look at a list of the persons who died in the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center (WTC) underscores the importance of immigration to the Global City. The homelands of the victims ranged from the Dominican Republic to Canada to Poland.8 The dead on 9/11 included both legal and

undocumented immigrants, a large number who came from Mexico and who worked as window washers, custodial staff, and food-service personnel in the WTC’s below-ground eateries and its top-floor world-renowned Windows on the World restaurant. Mexicans are New York’s fastest growing minority and an important source of labor in the city’s service industries.

TOURIST CITY

In numerous urban areas, the Industrial City has given way to the Tourist City. In a postindustrial age, municipal officials no longer focus their efforts exclusively on “smokestack chasing,” offering tax reductions and other incentives in the hope of winning the location of a major new factory. Cities also attempt to generate new economic activity through the construction of sports stadiums, convention centers, casinos, and distinctive tourist and shopping districts. (See Box 1.1, “Baltimore’s Harborplace: Reclaiming the Old Dock Area.”) Local leaders recognize that the offering of such subsidies does not constitute

the only tool that a city can use to spur economic growth; the provision of urban amenities—that is, making the city a better place in which to live—can help drive local economies. Economist Richard Florida, most notably in The Rise of the Creative Class,9 argues that a city’s investment in lifestyle amenities will do more than merely increase tourism: cities need to provide interesting living spaces and a quality of life that can attract computer programmers, Web designers, media specialists, and other knowledge-based workers and members of the creative class, a pool of talent that, in turn, will help a city attract major corporations seeking a highly skilled workforce. An amenities-driven development strategy represents a distinct break with the

urban development policies of the Industrial City. For many years, cities wooed manufacturing plants by promising tax cuts and by offering the infrastructure improvements—increased sewage processing capacity, expanded airports, and strengthened city streets that can handle heavy trucks—demanded by businesses. The amenities-driven approach, by contrast, focuses on building more livable

neighborhoods. Neighborhoods with sidewalk cafés, Starbucks coffee houses, restaurants offering diverse cuisines, bookstores, rock and jazz concerts, edgy local theater, and access to cycling, river

Box 1.1 Baltimore’s Harborplace: Reclaiming the Old Dock Area

Like many other industrial centers, Baltimore over the decades lost industry and population. Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, virtually next door to the city’s central business district, itself suffering decline, was marred by empty warehouses and closed factories. The city’s shallow shipping channel could not handle big ships; as a result, port-related activities migrated outside the city.

The Tourist/Entertainment City: Baltimore’s Harborplace, with the USS Constellation.

From Wikimiedia Commons, User Cszmurlo, March 6, 2007,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USS-Constellation-Szmurlo.jpg.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USS-Constellation-Szmurlo.jpg
Baltimore’s civic leaders sought to transform the city’s image and bring new activity to the Inner Harbor area. The State of Maryland and the city invested heavily in tourist attractions: Baltimore opened the Maryland Science Center and planetarium in 1976, a new convention center in 1979 (which, years later, was rebuilt and expanded), the “National Aquarium” in 1981, a “retro” Camden Yards ballpark for the Orioles in 1992, and a 71,000-seat football stadium for the NFL Ravens (1998). The city built— and later rebuilt—a downtown convention center. A new light rail line served the football stadium, ballpark, convention center, and parts of the old downtown. New hotels sprouted on land that was previously disused or underutilized. Expensive townhomes and condominiums took the place of abandoned warehouses. Without a doubt, the pivotal project in the Inner Harbor’s transformation

and revival was the 1987 opening of Harborplace, a postindustrial, pier-side entertainment/shopping/dining complex. Visitors can walk along the harbor, watch jugglers and mimes, visit historic ships, and eat and drink in the project’s crab houses and Irish-themed bars. Desirable townhouses were soon built on the site of rotting warehouses. Harborplace signaled that Baltimore had “come back.” Critics point to the public cost of all of these projects and ask “who

benefits?” and “who loses?” from such heavy public investment in tourist- bubble projects. All of the new development brought little improvement in the lives of people living in Baltimore’s more poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Critics also observed that the various Inner Harbor projects led to an increase in land prices and rents in immediately adjacent residential neighborhoods. The gentrification of neighboring areas has been accompanied by the displacement of the working class and the poor. Sources: Costas Spirou, Urban Tourism and Urban Change: Cities in a

Global Economy (New York: Routledge, 2011); Marc V. Levine, “Downtown Redevelopment as an Urban Growth Strategy: A Critical Appraisal of the Baltimore Renaissance,” Journal of Urban Affairs 9, no. 2 (June 1987): 103–123.

rafting, and other recreational activities all help to make a city attractive to

members of the creative class. Municipal officials hope that if a city attracts talented workers, businesses will soon follow. The transformation of Chicago provides a case in point. For a long time,

Chicago was the prototypical Industrial City, the “City of the Big Shoulders,” to use the words of poet Carl Sandburg. Over the years, however, Chicago’s position as a manufacturing center began to slip. By the 1960s, Chicago had entered a period of sharp decline, losing both jobs and population. Mayor Richard M. Daley (who served six terms in office, from 1989 to 2011)

responded with programs to reestablish the city’s downtown, to strengthen neighborhoods to make them ripe for gentrification, and to make the city more attractive to tourists as well as to creative-class professionals, and to national and global corporations. Daley removed a large antiquated railroad yard located on the lakefront in the heart of the city’s downtown in order to build Millennium Park, with its concert venues, exciting public art, skating rink, active water feature, ample space for major public festivals, and acres of underground parking. The city made improvements in up-and-coming residential neighborhoods, planting trees, introducing wrought-iron fences, upgrading softball fields and lakefront beaches, and providing trails for jogging, cycling, and rollerblading. The city introduced clearly marked bicycle lanes on streets that connected the city’s “hip” neighborhoods with its downtown; where necessary, the city removed a lane of automobile traffic in order to make way for bicycles. The Chicago River, for many years the site of vacant warehouses and underutilized industrial land, became the location of pricey new waterfront condominiums and even a site for such leisure activities as kayaking; Mayor Daley “wanted the Chicago River to become as lively as the Seine in Paris.” By the time Daley left office in 2011, entertainment had become the city’s Number One industrial sector.10 Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Daley’s successor, continued the focus on amenities, dedicating additional bicycle lanes and breaking ground for the three-mile elevated Bloomingdale Trail along a disused rail line.

Box 1.2 The Wire: HBO’s Portrait of

Baltimore

The Wire, the 2002 Home Box Office (HBO) drama that ran for five years, took television viewers into the poor neighborhoods of Baltimore, a much different world from the tourist bubble of the Inner Harbor and the stadium- related development projects of downtown. The Wire presented a fictionalized view of life in the city’s most devastated neighborhoods, sections of the city where residents confronted the ills of gang-related activity, illicit drugs, teenage pregnancy, a failing school system, dilapidated housing, lead poisoning, homelessness, and AIDS. In these impoverished neighborhoods, children see no promise of a good future and, instead, turn to drug sales and gang membership as means of advancement. The Wire revealed the dreams and aspirations of inner-city residents and how young people adapted to an unforgiving urban environment. The Wire also provided an indictment of the inability of public

institutions to tackle the serious problems and inequalities of the contemporary city. Yet, despite the good intentions of the show’s creators, the visuals and storylines of The Wire helped reinforce stereotypes that white middle-class Americans have of the central-city poor. The series focused on some of the more salacious elements of Baltimore’s inner-city life, while neglecting to reveal more positive elements, such as the extensive activities of BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development) and other bottom-up, grassroots community organizations (as this book describes in Chapter 7). Little in the series focused on Baltimore’s downtown—except for shots

of police headquarters, city hall, the docks, and newspaper offices as public servants and reporters attempted to do their jobs. The series gave even less attention to Harborplace, an insular bubble of tourist privilege that is separate from, and almost alien to, life in the “real” Baltimore. Source: Peter L. Beilenson and Patrick A. McGuire, Tapping into The

Wire: The Real Urban Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012); Peter Dreier and John Atlas, “The Wire: Bush-Era Fable about America’s Urban Poor,” City & Community 8, no. 3 (September 2009): 329–240.

Critics argue that strategies aimed at enhancing amenities and building the Tourist City and the Global City do not necessarily help a city’s poorer residents and more distressed neighborhoods. Critics charge that city officials have too often responded to the demands of business interests in constructing a tourist bubble, an island of privilege for visitors, young professionals, and major corporations that flourishes in the midst of a larger urban landscape still characterized by extensive ghettoization, urban poverty, and distress.11 (See Box 1.2, “The Wire: HBO’s Portrait of Baltimore.”)

BANKRUPT CITY

Not all is well with America’s cities. The so-called urban renaissance does not extend to all cities and neighborhoods. In the early 2000s, a sluggish national economy and the collapse of the mortgage finance market led to a flood of home foreclosures and boarded-up properties. Decline was not confined only to distressed neighborhoods in the inner city. Fashionable “main-line” suburbs that were once the most desirable communities in a metropolis suffered vacant storefronts and had “For Rent” signs pop up in front of once-attractive single- family homes. Sprawling communities on the edge of the metropolis saw condominium projects left partially built. In 2013 Detroit became the largest city in United States history to file for

bankruptcy. Once the nation’s most important automobile manufacturing center, Detroit was unable to manage the transformation to a postindustrial, globalized, and suburban age. In just a single decade, Detroit lost a half million residents, its population of 1.2 million in 1980 shrinking to just 700,000 in 2010. Extensive areas of vacant properties, razed homes, and closed storefronts testified to Detroit’s dramatic descent.

One of Thousands of Abandoned Houses in Detroit. Detroit has hemorrhaged population and has no

hope of regaining its former size. Note the vacant lots on the sides of the house and dominating the block.

As the city no longer needed the extensive housing stock that it had at its peak population, over the years it

razed houses that were abandoned and suffering from extensive disrepair. Detroit has physical infrastructure

much larger than it presently needs, a “footprint” inherited from the days of the city’s Industrial Era vitality.

From Wikimedia Commons, User Notorious4life, May 20, 2010,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AbandonedHouseDelray.jpg.

Declarations of municipal bankruptcy in the United States have historically been rare events. In recent years, however, a number of municipalities have sought Title IX bankruptcy protection. Detroit’s move followed bankruptcy filings by two California cities: Stockton (with a population of 296,300) and San Bernardino (population 212,600). Vallejo and Orange County are other large California municipalities that filed for bankruptcy after imposing cutbacks in service provision and attempting to negotiate repayment agreements with the municipality’s creditors.12 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, similarly began the steps

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AbandonedHouseDelray.jpg
necessary to file for bankruptcy, only to face the intrusion of the state government, which enacted a new law to prohibit the filing. With no other alternative readily available, Harrisburg received state assistance and worked out a deal with the city’s creditors, making payments to bondholders while substantially reducing the services provided to local residents.13

In each of the cases mentioned above, the municipality’s economic well-being had been severely weakened by long-term trends, including deindustrialization and the exodus of the local jobs and tax base to the suburbs. In Detroit, Stockton, and Harrisburg, past labor agreements had further undermined municipal financial stability, saddling the city with generous pensions and expensive health care benefits that were not fiscally sustainable. Stockton permitted police officers to retire and draw benefits at age fifty.14 Even seemingly prosperous cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Omaha, and Portland discovered that they were facing a looming pension crisis, and that they were likely to have great difficulty in finding the monies to cover the unfunded pension liabilities owed municipal workers.15

Detroit’s downfall was largely the result of the city’s lack of economic diversification. The city was reliant on an automobile industry that had reduced the number of assembly-line jobs and that was undergoing a restructuring as globalization enabled American manufacturers to assemble automobiles from parts produced overseas. Detroit also faced a greater exodus of wealth and population to the suburbs beyond that experienced by other major cities in the Northeast and the Midwest.16

Simple descriptions of the shake out of the automobile industry and the shift of population and economic activity to suburbia, however, do not tell the full story of Detroit’s fall. Race also played a role in Detroit’s problems, setting the stage for political polarizations, extremes of rhetoric, and a politics of blamesmanship, scapegoating, and distrust that made it impossible for civic leaders to forge coalitions that could provide meaningful responses to the city’s mounting problems.17 The Detroit metropolitan area is arguably the nation’s most divided metropolis by race, with white flight to the suburbs leaving a central-city population that is 92 percent nonwhite.18

Short-sighted and corrupt leadership, too, exacerbated Detroit’s problems. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was found guilty in U.S. District Court of bid-rigging

in the issuance of city contracts to enrich himself, family members, and friends. Misguided pension managers handed municipal retirees a “13th check” or bonus check in a year, resulting in a loss of nearly $2 billion that could have helped shore up the shortfalls in pension accounts.19 Such salient episodes of blatant corruption and mismanagement allow critics to place the blame for the city’s downfall on the errant behavior, incompetence, and shenanigans of its political leaders. But corruption and mismanagement, however deplorable, are not the root

cause of Detroit’s decline. The city had hemorrhaged jobs and population during the decades before Kilpatrick assumed office, even during years when the city balanced its budget. The 50-year “downward economic trajectory” of Detroit (and of other large cities) suggests that “no single policy regime”20—no single political administration or set of policies—bears the full responsibility for the downfall of Detroit and for the long-term decline of other cities with an antiquated industrial infrastructure. As Chapter 2 documents in greater detail, a vast range of government policies and the self-interested actions of private actors both contributed greatly to the downhill slide of Detroit and other cities.

POWER AND THE STUDY OF URBAN POLITICS

Urban patterns are not inevitable. Patterns of growth and decline are not simply the product of human desires (for a better life, a larger home, and a safer neighborhood) and the workings of an unfettered free market. Rather, government policies and the exercise of private power, too, play a great role in determining just which communities grow and which decline. As Chapter 2 describes, a great many governmental regulatory and spending

programs contributed to the shift of population and economic activity from central cities to the suburbs, and from communities in the Frostbelt (the Northeast and Central regions of the United States) to the Sunbelt (the South and Southwest). Government policies also helped facilitate the movement of capital to locations overseas. Government tax policies, too, served to incentivize, oftentimes unintentionally, important economic and population shifts.

Even the more recent renaissance of central business districts and core neighborhoods in many cities, is not simply the result of unfettered individual choice operating in a free market. Instead, private interests took actions and demanded public policies that contributed to the revival of a city’s downtown and the gentrification of nearby residential areas. A growth coalition of interests that benefit from new development—major corporations, property developers, real estate firms, construction unions, and their political friends in office— worked to secure programs committed to downtown revitalization and neighborhood transformation. As Chapters 3 and 4 describe, cities invest heavily in new sports stadiums, convention centers, casino gambling, and historic- themed districts in response to the demands of private actors who gain financially from the emergence of the Tourist City. Municipal governments also invest heavily in the Global City, for instance, in “wiring” the city and in providing the advanced telecommunications infrastructure demanded by multinational and technology-oriented firms. New York City gave extensive tax breaks and other subsidies to create “Silicon Alley,” a new and lively area of Internet-related and “new media” firms in the old Flatiron district of Lower Manhattan. Such investment, however, often does little to improve conditions faced by the residents of a city’s lower- and working-class neighborhoods. Private institutions also play an important role in the onset of municipal fiscal

crises. Certainly, as discussed above, public officials deserve blame for mismanagement, corruption, short-sightedness, and a reluctance to make politically difficult decisions, when necessary, to cut back services and to restrain the demands of public workers for costly pension and health care benefits. But the blame is not the city’s alone. Private lending houses often encouraged debt-ridden cities to issue more bonds—that is, to borrow more and more money despite fiscal warning signs—as the bond houses and private financial firms earned considerable fees from the continuing issuance and sale of municipal bonds. (See Box 1.3, “Orange County’s Bankruptcy: A Story of Public Imprudence and Private Manipulation.”)

Box 1.3 Orange County’s Bankruptcy: A Story of Public Imprudence and Private Manipulation

There certainly is nothing natural or inevitable about the 1994 filing of bankruptcy by a municipality as affluent as southern California’s Orange County. The county should have had no great problem paying its bills. But when county voters continued to reject new taxes, local officials decided to look for creative ways to maintain public service levels without having to raise taxes. The county treasurer turned to a high-risk borrowing-and- investment strategy; the county borrowed funds to invest in the stock market, with the expectation that the return on the investment would be sufficient to repay the sums borrowed while also yielding sizable additional sums to be used for public service provision. But the investment scheme did not work out as planned. When the stock

market unexpectedly turned sour, the county did not earn the profits that it had anticipated. Worse yet, the county discovered that it could not repay the money it had borrowed. County officials deserve blame for engaging in such a speculative

strategy. But that risky course of borrowing was encouraged by private investment houses and bond rating firms that ignored warning signals that the county was overextended and might have difficulty in paying off its obligations. As the county ran up its debt, brokerage houses continued to encourage private investors to buy the county’s bonds, that is, to lend more and more money to the county. By ignoring the warning signs and encouraging more and more loans, these financial houses reaped high loan placement fees and considerable profits. When the county’s debt situation reached the point that it could no longer

be ignored, Wall Street financial institutions began to seize collateral and sell off the Orange County portion of their investment portfolios. Moody’s

and other bond rating houses downgraded the county’s credit rating. Private investors saw these actions as a clear signal not to buy new county bonds, a shutoff of funds that precipitated the county’s 1994 filing for federal bankruptcy protection. Source: Marc Baldassare, When Government Fails: The Orange County

Bankruptcy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); Milan J. Dluhy and Howard A. Frank, The Miami Fiscal Crisis: Can a Poor City Regain Prosperity? (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 82–83.

When a municipal fiscal emergency occurs, private institutions act to ensure that their interests are served, even at the price of drastic cuts in the level of municipal services provided city residents. In Vallejo and Stockton, more conservative interests used the looming threat of municipal bankruptcy to force local officials to adopt a more businesslike model of operation, downsizing government, reducing public services, dismissing public workers from their jobs, and making past labor contracts “rewritable,”21 in essence forcing municipal unions to accept reductions in the level of health care and pension benefits to which the municipal employers had previously agreed. Vallejo shrunk the size of city staff, closed fire stations, cut services to senior centers, and lowered the funding of libraries.22

POWER: THE ABILITY TO GET THINGS DONE

The particular focus of this book is on power and how it is exercised in the urban arena. The study of cities and suburbs requires that we look not only at the decisions made by public officials but that we also look behind the scenes to the influence of private actors. Power is too often viewed simplistically only in terms of social control; a

political actor possesses power when he or she can force others to comply with his or her wishes. Under this elementary definition of power, an actor has “power over” others who fear sanctions or punishments should they fail to behave as expected.

In the study of cities, however, power does not refer only to situations of social control, to situations where a person has “power over” someone else. Rather, power also denotes social production or the “power to” get important things done. The exercise of power does not always entail conflict and the use of overt or even hidden threats. An actor also has power when he or she can organize things and get important projects accomplished. Power is exercised by someone who is successful in arranging coordination and joint action in the pursuit of goals.23

In the urban arena, we need to find out whose cooperation is necessary for social production, that is, whose active participation or consent is necessary to get things done and who possesses the ability to stop or thwart important courses of action. The study of urban politics must go beyond descriptions of the formal structures of city government and the powers (that is, the formal bits of authority) that a mayor, city manager, city council members, and other officials possess. A critical examination of the urban arena requires that we also look at how these actors get things done, despite their oftentimes quite limited formal authority or powers of office. The study of local politics also requires a focus on nongovernmental actors and institutions to discover the degree to which public officials are constrained in their decision making. Just whose cooperation—both inside and outside of government—do municipal officials require in order to get important things done? In Detroit, municipal officials simply lacked the ability to organize social

production; they lacked meaningful power, that is, the “power to” get major things done. Detroit officials could not put in place policies to constrain suburbanization; they had no ability to enact regional land-use plans to limit the outmigration of jobs and population. They lacked the formal authority to impose the taxes that would yield the funds necessary to tackle the city’s many deep- seated problems. They could not force independent suburban governments to enter into meaningful collaborative arrangements with the city to increase racial integration or otherwise improve conditions in the city’s public schools. Nor was the city able to offer the financial inducements necessary to attract and retain major corporations in the city and thereby improve the city’s fiscal position. A major corporation could simply turn to other jurisdictions that offered subsidy packages that were the equivalent of—or even superior to—those offered by

Detroit.

PRIVATISM: THE LIMITED POWER OF GOVERNMENT

In sharp contrast to Europe, cities in the United States lack strong public authority and planning powers. In Europe, government officials enact strong regulations on land use; local and regional governments in Europe also rely on public investment—even having the municipality buy up available land—to guide urban development and to ensure the achievement of public purposes. Compared to the United States, European governments have much stronger tools that they can use to curb urban sprawl, to preserve historic areas and the city streetscape, to construct effective mass transit systems, and to build extensive affordable housing. European governments not only invest heavily in mass transit systems; European planners establish pedestrian-free zones in the center of cities, limit parking in the downtown, and even set the timing of stoplights to slow the movement of traffic—all measures intended to limit automobile use and to promote the livability of cities.24 Planners in Europe often require that the developers of new commercial projects provide subsidized housing units for the poor.25

Such policies, widely adopted throughout Europe, are, with few exceptions, alien to the American city. In Europe, governments play a strong role in shaping metropolitan areas; private developers and free-market forces do not dictate the geography of urban development. In the United States, in contrast, a prevailing culture of privatism serves to

keep public planning and governmental authority to a minimum while maximizing private-sector freedom. The privatist culture of the United States views cities narrowly as places where private actors engage in profit-making activities. In the American “private city,”26 homeowners and the heads of business possess great leeway to develop and dispose of their property as they see fit. Many of the most important decisions that affect a city’s health are in the hands of private actors, including business leaders, real estate developers, mortgage lenders, and homebuyers, not public officials. Americans resist strong

urban planning requirements and the imposition of land-use restrictions that they view as violations of an individual’s freedom and property rights. In a privatist system, city officials lack the ability to dictate “good” urban

development and actions to correct urban problems. Instead, public officials in the United States must gain the involvement of private actors, persuading them to undertake actions that are important to the city. In the United States, more so than in Europe, urban problem solving requires effective partnerships that entail action by both government and private-sector actors. Privatism also denotes a system that gives great deference to private contracts

and the concerns of private investors. In cases of municipal bankruptcy, a city’s first obligation is not to its citizens but to its creditors. A city is legally required to take steps to repay its creditors, even if such repayment forces a city to make steep cutbacks in police protection and other important neighborhood services. The necessity of repaying creditors (or at least certain types of creditor) may even require that a city make sharp reductions in the pensions and health benefits provided to retired municipal workers. A municipality in fiscal distress must obey the legal requirements of a privatist

system that protects investors. Municipal bondholders are “superior claimants”27

who stand first in line to get paid. When the small city of Central Falls, Rhode Island, declared bankruptcy, municipal workers found that they had little alternative but to accept reductions of up to 55 percent in their pensions, at the same time that the city was initiating steps to repay bondholders in full. The State of Rhode Island even gave bondholders the right to place liens on municipal tax revenues, a step that further protected creditors and forced steeper cuts in other service areas. In Stockton, California, a U.S. federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the city, seeking to emerge from bankruptcy, could reduce its contributions to worker pension plans despite having agreed to the benefits in past labor agreements.28 In the privatist city, profit-seeking investors often enjoy a privileged position that is denied to municipal workers and ordinary citizens. Yet, a city’s creditors do not always come out ahead. Detroit’s financial

stewards pursued a more balanced approach to bankruptcy, not one that repaid investors while making deep cuts in the pensions of retirees. New pacts with labor unions led to some cuts in retirement benefits, including the elimination of cost-of-living increases and a reduction in health benefits. But the city also went

to court arguing that some of its obligations to creditors should be voided. The city justified its move claiming that the Bank of America, UBS, and other financial institutions had prompted the city to make complicated interest-rate swaps, transactions that the city said were illegal, decisions that further eroded the long-term ability of the city to meet its pension obligations. Detroit’s fiscal manager offered the holders of certain types of bonds only 20 cents on the dollar. Stockton had offered a major creditor only a penny on a dollar to settle outstanding debts.29 The formal rules of bankruptcy privilege some bondholders, but not all bondholders. Private financial interests cannot simply dictate to the city. In the contemporary city, skilled public leadership also counts.

THE SUBTHEMES OF THIS BOOK

As already noted, the major focus of this book is on the interrelationship of public authority and private power in the American metropolis. Six important subthemes further guide this book’s study of politics in United States cities and suburbs:

1. GLOBALIZATION EXERTS A POWERFUL INFLUENCE ON CITY AFFAIRS

Globalization—the cross-border flow of investment, the outsourcing of production to sites located in other countries, the rise of internationally based as opposed to locally rooted businesses, and heightened immigration—has had a great influence on the contemporary urban situation. The competition for business no longer takes place only among the cities and suburbs of a single region; instead, economic competition has become national and global in its scope. The actions of private managers have always had an impact on a locality’s affairs; but in a global age, managers handed a local assignment by multinational corporations will often lack the sense of civic loyalty that an earlier generation of locally rooted downtown business leaders had displayed.

Table 1.1 Top 25 Cities Ranked by Percent of City’s Population That Is Foreign Born, 2002 (and 2009

Census estimate for the nations’ largest cities)

Rank City Percent Foreign Born,2002 Percent Foreign Born, 2009

†

1. Miami, FL 60.6 * 2. Santa Ana, CA 48.4 * 3. Los Angeles, CA 41.3 39.7 4. Anaheim, CA 40.3 *

5. San Francisco,CA 36.7 34.1

6. San Jose, CA 36.5 38.1 7. New York, NY 36.0 35.7 8. Long Beach, CA 30.9 * 9. Houston, TX 28.1 28.5 10. San Diego, CA 27.9 24.9 11. Oakland, CA 27.1 * 12. Boston, MA 27.0 25.1 13. Dallas, TX 26.5 24.8 14. Sacramento, CA 26.4 *

15. Honolulu CDRHI 25.5 *

16. El Paso, TX 24.9 24.1 17. Stockton, TX 24.2 * 18. Riverside, CA 23.9 * 19. Fresno, CA 22.7 * 20. Chicago, IL 22.6 20.6 21. Newark, NJ 22.4 * 22. Phoenix, AZ 21.1 21.7 23. Las Vegas, NV 21.1 * 24. Denver, CO 20.2 24.8 25. Austin, TX 19.6 20.2 26. Aurora, CO 17.7 *

27. Minneapolis, MN 17.6 * 28. Seattle, WA 17.2 17.1 29. Arlington, TX 16.6 * 30. St. Paul, MN 16.3 * Source: Extracted from U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Service Office, “Percent of

Population That Is Foreign Born,” September 2, 2003,

www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/2002/R15T160.htm; and U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical

Abstract of the United States: 2012, Table 39, www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0039.pdf.

† Estimate reported only for the nation’s 25 largest cities.

* The 2009 American Community Survey estimate presented data only for the 25 largest cities in the

United States. An asterisk indicates that the city was not one of the nation’s 25 largest in terms of

population in 2009 and hence no data was reported.

Globalization entails the trans-border flow of population. Modern transportation enables large numbers of people to travel to the United States from abroad. The long-term relaxation of the nation’s immigration laws, too, has altered the demography and politics of U.S. cities. Twenty-four large- and medium-size cities have a population that is more than one-fifth foreign born (see Table 1.1). Over 60 percent of the population of Miami was born outside the United States, as was nearly half the population of Santa Ana and 40 percent of the populations of Los Angeles and Anaheim. Over one-third of New York City’s population was born outside the United States. In a global age, immigrants, both legal and undocumented, represent an infusion of capital and labor into the local economy. Particularly in states along the border with Mexico, however, the arrival of unauthorized immigrants can strain budgets for schools, law enforcement, and health care.30

The new immigration is not only reshaping the politics of big cities; it is also altering politics in suburbs and smaller cities. Immigrants to the United States now reside in a more widely dispersed set of communities than did waves of immigrants who came to America during earlier eras in the nation’s history. Foreign-born families are no longer found solely in port-of-entry cities; today, recent arrivals also turn to heartland cities like Denver, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, and to smaller cities and the suburbs in a search for jobs. By 2010, over half of the nation’s immigrant population was living in

http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Ranking/2002/R15T160.htm
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0039.pdf
suburbs.31

2. FORMAL RULES AND STRUCTURE CONTINUE TO HAVE AN IMPORTANT IMPACT ON LOCAL POLITICS

This book stresses the critical role played by private power in the local arena, that nongovernmental institutions and players are key participants in urban decision making. Yet the formal rules and structures of local government remain important. The formal structure and processes of local government help determine just whose interests are represented in city hall and just what does and does not get done. This book shall examine the extent to which alternative electoral rules (including voter registration requirements and at-large versus district-based council systems) and alternative local governmental structures (i.e., city-manager-led systems versus strong-mayor cities) favor different interests. This book will also examine alternative arrangements for interlocal cooperation in metropolitan areas. The formal position of local government in the American federal system is set

by the United States Constitution. To be more precise, the U.S. Constitution makes no explicit mention of the existence of cities and lists no constitutionally protected powers for cities. Instead, each of the fifty states decides just what units of local government it will create and just what exact authority each unit may—and may not—possess. In general, the state-imposed rules serve to fragment local authority, creating numerous and relatively autonomous general- purpose governments (cities, counties, townships, etc.) and more specialized local political bodies, including school districts and the bistate Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Constitutionally speaking, municipalities are mere administrative subdivisions

of a state’s government. Each state determines the exact powers of its various local governments. State laws tend to strictly limit the taxing and borrowing capacities of local governments. Even the question of municipal bankruptcy— whether or not a city or county may file for federal bankruptcy protection—is a matter that is left up to each state; nearly half (twenty-three) of the states prohibit municipal filings for bankruptcy protection.32

3. THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL CITY: STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS PLAY AN IMPORTANT RULE IN URBAN AFFAIRS

Cities and suburbs exist in an intergovernmental setting where the decisions of the national and state bodies help determine the formal powers and the resources available to local governments. The ability of cities and suburbs to solve problems is highly dependent on decisions made by the state and national governments. The concept of the intergovernmental city points to the significant impact

that state and national government decision making has in local affairs. State and national financial assistance accounts for nearly 40 percent of local government revenues.33 Financially distressed communities are even more greatly dependent on intergovernmental assistance for the continued provision of basic municipal and social services. State and federal mandates can also burden a city with the cost of providing

specific required services. New York State law, for instance, mandates that New York City pay for half the state share of federal Medicaid program benefits provided for poor people. This is the largest Medicaid burden that any state in the nation imposed on its local governments. In 2008 alone, this single mandate saddled New York City with $4.6 billion in spending obligations.34

The actions taken by state and local governments can be critically important to cities facing fiscal failure, as a comparison of the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis and the 2013 Detroit bankruptcy will make clear. In the mid-1970s, New York City teetered on the edge of fiscal insolvency, unable to pay creditors as its loan obligations became due. But the city did not technically file for bankruptcy. Instead, the federal and New York State governments intervened in quite helpful ways, especially with “guarantees” that they would assure the repayment of bonds issued by New York City. In effect, the national government and the State of New York acted to assure creditors that these higher governments would take on much of the responsibility for loan repayment should the city itself prove unable to meet its repayment schedule for newly issued bonds. These guarantees led creditors to extend new flows of cash to New York, giving the city time to undertake the necessary reforms to put its fiscal house in order.35 The State of New York created the Municipal Assistance Corporation to sell state-backed

bonds to help the troubled city borrow the money it needed to maintain the provision of public services. New York’s governor also met with the leaders of local labor unions—especially the teacher’s union—to convince labor officials to use union funds to buy city-issued bonds and, by doing so, to keep the city financially afloat. The United States Congress voted to extend the city over $2 billion in loans.36

However, times had changed considerably by 2013, when Detroit filed for bankruptcy. The state and federal governments did not extend to Detroit similar levels of assistance that had decades earlier been extended to New York City. Republican Governor Rick Snyder even faced great difficulty in trying to convince Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature to approve a commitment of $350 million over twenty years as the state’s piece of a “grand bargain” to resolve the city’s pension crisis. Under the grand bargain that had been struck, if the state would commit $350 million and retirees would agree to a reduction in benefits, donations from philanthropic foundations would cover nearly a half billion dollars of additional pension obligations.37

Why were federal and state governments more reluctant to help Detroit than New York? To a great extent, the answer lies in the fact that the two cities occupy different positions in the global hierarchy of cities. A functioning and vital New York City is critical to the good health of the nation’s economy. Detroit, by contrast, is no longer even a lively industrial center; its days as a critical national economic hub had clearly passed. State and federal officials aided New York out of fear that a New York City bankruptcy would have severe repercussions that would cripple the entire United States economy. Few national actors shared similar sentiment regarding the repercussions of a Detroit bankruptcy. Partisan perceptions, too, make a different. Michigan’s Republican legislators

were reluctant to set a precedent where other communities would demand that the state intercede to help them with their debt. State legislators were also reluctant to saddle people living in other parts of the state with the costs of aiding Detroit. Some high state officials had even argued that municipal bankruptcy was fairly desirable, a means of forcing the city to curb its excess spending and to introduce new policies that would help attract businesses. But even the Democratic administration of President Obama was reticent to

step in and offer Democratic Detroit broad-scale assistance. In a suburban age, especially at a time of divided government in Washington (the Republican Party controlled the House of Representatives), there was simply no great willingness by the federal government to step in with a major assistance package to help Detroit get back on its feet. Detroit “is no longer self-governing.”38 Its elected officials lost power as the

State of Michigan placed much of the governing authority for the city in the hands of a state-appointed fiscal manager, an unelected official who does not answer to Detroit’s elected officials or to the city’s voters.

4. SUNBELT V. FROSTBELT: REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN URBAN PATTERNS

During the second half of the twentieth century, Sunbelt communities in the South, the Southwest and the West generally grew and prospered while the aging Frostbelt communities in the Northeast and Midwest suffered long-term decline. The problems typical of growing communities in the Sunbelt—increased traffic, gaining access to water supplies in the arid Southwest, and controlling land use to protect the natural environment—differ markedly from the problems faced by declining communities. The 2010 census confirmed the continuing shift of population to the Sunbelt

(Figure 1.2 and Table 1.2). California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida enjoyed the fastest rates of growth in the nation. Of the nation’s ten largest metropolitan areas, the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metroplex and greater Houston were the fastest growing.39 The nation’s most quickly growing communities—Gilbert, Chandler, and Peoria (Arizona); North Las Vegas and Henderson (Nevada); and Irvine, Rancho Cucamonga, and Chula Vista (California)—are in the Sunbelt.40

Other rapidly growing communities were found in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Washington, as families in metropolitan areas on the West Coast and in the Southwest began to look inland for affordable housing and a lower cost of living.41

The regional shift in population has also led to a regional shift in political power: The voting power of Frostbelt states has declined while that of the

Sunbelt continues to grow. The 2010 census count indicates that Texas is in line to pick up an additional 4 seats in the United States House of Representatives. The Sunbelt as a region was expected to gain an additional 12 congressional seats, an increase that would solidify the region’s congressional dominance; 263 of the 435 House of Representative seats are in the South and the West.42

Figure 1.2 The Regional Shift: Percent Change in Population by State, 1990–2000

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Table 1.2 Population Change in the United States by Region, 2000 to 2010

Population

Region 2000 2010 Percent Change, 2000-2010

Northeast 53,594,378 55,317,240 +3.2

Northeast 53,594,378 55,317,240 +3.2 Midwest 64,392,776 66,927,001 +3.9 South 100,236,820 114,555,744 +14.3 West 63,197,932 71,945,553 +13.8

Source: Extracted from U.S. Census Bureau, "Population Distribution and Change, 2000 to 2010," 2010

Census Briefs (March 2011), www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-01.pdf.

Ann Markusen uses the term gunbelt to underscore the importance of defense-related expenditures to the growth of Sunbelt communities, especially in California, Texas, and Florida. But the “gunbelt” is not strictly confined to the Sunbelt. The list of communities that have benefited from defense-related and aerospace spending also includes Seattle, Colorado Springs, Washington, D.C., and the high-tech suburbs of Boston.43