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Author: Richard Gendron Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 042997597X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
Almost all US cities are controlled by real estate and development interests, but Santa Cruz, California, is a deviant case. An unusual coalition of socialist-feminists, environmentalists, social-welfare liberals, and neighborhood activists has stopped every growth project proposed by landowners and developers since 1969, and controlled the city council since 1981. Even after a 1989 earthquake forced the city to rebuild its entire downtown, the progressive elected officials prevailed over developers and landowners. Drawing on hundreds of primary documents, as well as original, previously unpublished interviews, The Leftmost City utilizes an extended case study of Santa Cruz to critique three major theories of urban power: Marxism, public-choice theory, and regime theory. Santa Cruz is presented within the context of other progressive attempts to shape city government, and the authors' findings support growth-coalition theory, which stresses the conflict between real estate interests and neighborhoods as the fundamental axis of urban politics. The authors conclude their analysis by applying insights gleaned from Santa Cruz to progressive movements nationwide, offering a template for progressive coalitions to effectively organize to achieve political power.
Author: Richard Gendron Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 042997597X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
Almost all US cities are controlled by real estate and development interests, but Santa Cruz, California, is a deviant case. An unusual coalition of socialist-feminists, environmentalists, social-welfare liberals, and neighborhood activists has stopped every growth project proposed by landowners and developers since 1969, and controlled the city council since 1981. Even after a 1989 earthquake forced the city to rebuild its entire downtown, the progressive elected officials prevailed over developers and landowners. Drawing on hundreds of primary documents, as well as original, previously unpublished interviews, The Leftmost City utilizes an extended case study of Santa Cruz to critique three major theories of urban power: Marxism, public-choice theory, and regime theory. Santa Cruz is presented within the context of other progressive attempts to shape city government, and the authors' findings support growth-coalition theory, which stresses the conflict between real estate interests and neighborhoods as the fundamental axis of urban politics. The authors conclude their analysis by applying insights gleaned from Santa Cruz to progressive movements nationwide, offering a template for progressive coalitions to effectively organize to achieve political power.
Author: G. William Domhoff Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1351588621 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
This book critiques and extends the analysis of power in the classic, Who Rules America?, on the fiftieth anniversary of its original publication in 1967—and through its subsequent editions. The chapters, written especially for this book by twelve sociologists and political scientists, provide fresh insights and new findings on many contemporary topics, among them the concerted attempt to privatize public schools; foreign policy and the growing role of the military-industrial component of the power elite; the successes and failures of union challenges to the power elite; the ongoing and increasingly global battles of a major sector of agribusiness; and the surprising details of how those who hold to the egalitarian values of social democracy were able to tip the scales in a bitter conflict within the power elite itself on a crucial banking reform in the aftermath of the Great Recession. These social scientists thereby point the way forward in the study of power, not just in the United States, but globally. A brief introductory chapter situates Who Rules America? within the context of the most visible theories of power over the past fifty years—pluralism, Marxism, Millsian elite theory, and historical institutionalism. Then, a chapter by G. William Domhoff, the author of Who Rules America?, takes us behind the scenes on how the original version was researched and written, tracing the evolution of the book in terms of new concepts and research discoveries by Domhoff himself, as well as many other power structure researchers, through the 2014 seventh edition. Readers will find differences of opinion and analysis from chapter to chapter. The authors were encouraged to express their views independently and frankly. They do so in an admirable and useful fashion that will stimulate everyone’s thinking on these difficult and complex issues, setting the agenda for future studies of power.
Author: G. Williams Domhoff Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131725581X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
Based on new archival research, G. Williams Domhoff challenges popular conceptions of the 1930's New Deal. Arguing instead that this period was one of increasing corporate dominance in government affairs, affecting the fate of American workers up to the present day. While FDR's New Deal brought sweeping legislation, the tide turned quickly after 1938. From that year onward nearly every major new economic law passed by Congress showed the mark of corporate dominance. Domhoff accessibly portrays documents of the Committee's vital influence in the halls of government, supported by his interviews with several of its key employees and trustees. Domhoff concludes that in terms of economic influence, liberalism was on a long steady decline, despite two decades of post-war growing equality, and that ironically, it was the successes of the civil rights, feminist, environmental, and gay-lesbian movements-not a new corporate mobilisation-that led to the final defeat of the liberal-labour alliance after 1968.
Author: Donald L. Rosdil Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136287825 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 214
Book Description
Why do some U.S. cities like Seattle and Boston impose social exactions and sustainability targets on private investment while others like Las Vegas and Houston offer property tax and fee remissions to business, tolerate environmentally hazardous activities such as oil drilling, and express skepticism even about recycling mandates? The behavior of the former cities appears especially puzzling in view of globalization processes that seemingly offer many more options to mobile capital and expose cities’ vulnerability to private investment decisions. Cultural Contradictions examines the paradoxical finding that some U.S. cities can impose burdensome regulations and extract social and environmental contributions from the private sector despite an apparently weak bargaining position. It usescultural change and the growth of non-traditional subcultures to explain why cities adopt these progressive policies. Responding to the urban policy literature’s tendency to prioritize economic considerations over other kinds of causal factors, the book demonstrates the joint impact of culture and economics in encouraging policy outcomes which emphasize social justice, human rights, and environmental sustainability in large U.S. cities. The book makes several specific contributions to urban literature. First, it argues that cities in which nontraditional cultural beliefs and practices thrive and which are strongly linked to dynamic economic sectors such as information services, professional, scientific and technical services, financial services, and education and health care services are especially likely to adopt progressive policies. It establishes this claim using both statistical analysis of large-N city samples and a closer investigation of four case studies. Second, it reveals how progressive policies are a plausible response to psychological concerns associated with unconventional ways of life and the nature of postindustrial society. Finally, the book indicates how these new ways of life and postindustrial economic sectors grow in mutually reinforcing ways in order to make these policies acceptable to local economic elites and therefore favorable to the city’s future development.
Author: Pierre Clavel Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 0801460115 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
In 1983, Boston and Chicago elected progressive mayors with deep roots among community activists. Taking office as the Reagan administration was withdrawing federal aid from local governments, Boston's Raymond Flynn and Chicago's Harold Washington implemented major policies that would outlast them. More than reforming governments, they changed the substance of what the government was trying to do: above all, to effect a measure of redistribution of resources to the cities' poor and working classes and away from hollow goals of "growth" as measured by the accumulation of skyscrapers. In Boston, Flynn moderated an office development boom while securing millions of dollars for affordable housing. In Chicago, Washington implemented concrete measures to save manufacturing jobs, against the tide of national policy and trends. Activists in City Hall examines how both mayors achieved their objectives by incorporating neighborhood activists as a new organizational force in devising, debating, implementing, and shaping policy. Based in extensive archival research enriched by details and insights gleaned from hours of interviews with key figures in each administration and each city's activist community, Pierre Clavel argues that key to the success of each mayor were numerous factors: productive contacts between city hall and neighborhood activists, strong social bases for their agendas, administrative innovations, and alternative visions of the city. Comparing the experiences of Boston and Chicago with those of other contemporary progressive cities-Hartford, Berkeley, Madison, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Burlington, and San Francisco-Activists in City Hall provides a new account of progressive urban politics during the Reagan era and offers many valuable lessons for policymakers, city planners, and progressive political activists.
Author: Mike Douglass Publisher: Springer ISBN: 981130209X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
This book explores the leading role that cities can play in shaping progressive policies in collaboration with various stakeholders. It examines the timing of such shifts to progressivity in cities, the interactions that enable progressive actions to be developed and sustained, and the challenges and constraints facing progressive cities. The book approaches the themes using an array of methods to investigate how progressive city governments emerge, what constitutes a “progressive city” in terms of governance institutions, processes and outcomes and whether progressive cities are destined to be ephemeral or if they can be sustained over time. With its focus on the emerging role of local governments in shaping city futures, this book is useful for students, academics, government official and policy makers interested in geography, sociology, urban planning, public policy, political economy, social movements, participatory democracy and Asian and European studies.
Author: Yonn Dierwechter Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319544489 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
This book investigates the new urban geographies of “smart” metropolitan regionalism across the Greater Seattle area and examines the relationship between smart growth planning strategies and spaces of work, home, and mobility. The book specifically explores Seattle within the wider space-economy and multi-scaled policy regime of the Puget Sound region as a whole, ‘jumping up’ from questions of city politics to concerns with what the book interprets as the “intercurrence” of city-regional “ordering." These theoretical terms capture the state-progressive effort to promote smarter forms of regional development but also the societal/institutional tensions and outright contradictions that such urban development invariably entails, particularly around problems of social equity. Key organizing themes in the text include: the historical path-dependencies of uneven economic and social development, particularly between Tacoma-Pierce County and Seattle-King County; current patterns of high-wage, medium-wage, and low-wage jobs; the emerging spatial and social structure of recent residential changes, especially with respect to class and race composition; and, finally, transit trends and new urban spaces associated with policy efforts to mitigate highway congestion and car-dependency. Greater Seattle, then, is mapped as a key US urban region inscribed spatially by the uneven search for a more sustainable order. Historically-sensitive, theoretically-informed and empirically topical, this book is of interest to scholars and students at all levels in regional planning, urban geography, political science, sustainability studies, urban sociology and public policy.
Author: Christine Kelleher Palus Publisher: CQ Press ISBN: 1483350029 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 489
Book Description
The CQ Press Guide to Urban Politics and Policy in the United States will bring the CQ Press reference guide approach to topics in urban politics and policy in the United States. If the old adage that “all politics is local” is even partially true, then cities are important centers for political activity and for the delivery of public goods and services. U.S. cities are diverse in terms of their political and economic development, demographic makeup, governance structures, and public policies. Yet there are some durable patterns across American cities, too. Despite differences in governance and/or geographic size, most cities face similar challenges in the management of public finances, the administration of public safety, and education. And all U.S. cities have a similar legal status within the federal system. This reference guide will help students understand how American cities (from old to new) have developed over time (Part I), how the various city governance structures allocate power across city officials and agencies (Part II), how civic and social forces interact with the organs of city government and organize to win control over these organs and/or their policy outputs (Part III), and what patterns of public goods and services cities produce for their residents (Part IV). The thematic and narrative structure allows students to dip into a topic in urban politics for deeper historical and comparative context than would be possible in either an A-to-Z encyclopedia entry or in an urban studies course text. FEATURES: Approximately 40 chapters organized in major thematic parts in one volume available in both print and electronic formats. Front matter includes an Introduction by the Editors along with biographical backgrounds about the Editors and the Contributing Authors. Back matter includes a compilation of relevant topical data or tabular presentation of major historical developments (population grown; size of city budgets; etc.) or historical figures (e.g., mayors), a bibliographic essay, and a detailed index. Sidebars are provided throughout, and chapters conclude with References & Further Readings and Cross References to related chapters (as links in the e-version). This Guide is a valuable reference on the topics in urban politics and policy in the United States. The thematic and narrative structure allows researchers to dip into a topic in urban politics for a deeper historical and comparative context than would be possible in either an A-to-Z encyclopedia entry or in an urban studies course text.
Author: Richard Gendron
Author: Richard Gendron
Author: RICHARD. GENDRON
Author: G. William Domhoff
Author: G. Williams Domhoff
Author: Donald L. Rosdil
Author: Pierre Clavel
Author: Mike Douglass
Author: Mike Rotkin
Author: Yonn Dierwechter
Author: Christine Kelleher Palus