Urban Politics and Governance

In these lectures…

• A timeline of the changing fortunes of various groups in cities and the ever increasing responsibilities urban governance entailed, linking these to broad economic changes

• A survey of theoretical approaches to politics to understand…

– How power is structured in cities

– How we can determine the role of government in urban development

– How can we contextualize local conflicts through broad patterns

• All this hinges on urban governance, which is “the process that is the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, plan and manage the common affairs of the city”

Time line: Laissez Faire

• From independence to 1840, US urban governance was very limited in scope in favor of a laissez faire system

– It was during this era municipal and county governments (along with school boards) emerged to help states manage their territories

– Mostly these governments were centers of corruption, dominated by elites who could sway votes

• The exception was the direct democracy of town hall meetings in New England townships, which led to less corrupt and more active governments

– They concerned themselves with policing and sanitation, with 60% of money spent on the night-watch, poor house and prison and were funded mostly by property taxes (which cities would eventually seek to increase by taking action to increase property values)

• Local governments initially could not borrow which prevented large scale infrastructure improvement

– But once the idea of incorporation took hold, then towns took on the property of limited liability (that the citizens could not be sued if the town government defaulted) and were able to issue bonds

– Municipal bonds are generally seen as safe investments, because property taxes are viewed as stable and infrastructure improvements are theoretically supposed to raise revenue by raising values

» Which begins a still-going cycle of dependence on debt financing by small entities, which is not super-cost-effficient

Municipal Socialism and the rise of Machine Politics

• From 1840 and 1875, now that urban government’s could finance debt, they could actually do something

– Local governments were more powerful and active

• The big fight was against the ‘unholy trinity’ of fires (again, this is an era of early industry, dense crowding, and wood structures), disease, and the mob

• Also era of machine politics (like Tammany Hall), which were hierarchical organizations topped by a charismatic leader who got support from the working class by returning goodies to them (thus allowing him to benefit from his power)

– These would become the basis of political parties and trade unions

– Machine politicians, however, liked being associated with public works, so spending on these increased during this era

• They also helped bring order to the city through housing codes

• Cities began providing services for collective consumption (meaning available to all citizens) like fire, water, policing, sewer

– With collective consumption, the idea is to choose areas where the market creates inefficiencies through competition that wastes resources (or that leaves gaps in universal service coverage). Competing private firefighters sucked compared to city ones

• In the North, a new class of entrepreneurs were becoming increasingly influential behind the scenes; in the South, there was less machine politics because of a lack of industrial working class and less entrepreneurialism

Boosterism & the Politics of Reform (1875-1920)

• Era of the pushback of the new urban elite which controlled downtown businesses against the corruption/pro-immigrant policies of the political machines

– Boosterism (the aligning of government and private sector to attract investment) was the governance priority; thus economic expansion came to take priority over equity, civil rights, community well being

• It became critical, because cities were increasingly competing against each other for new factories

• The middle class begins to emerge, who both push towards suburbs and want a focus on an improved quality of life (especially improved “morals”)

– This was the era of the temperance movements, one of many “reform” movements targeting the supposed moral decay of cities

• However, some places (like Detroit under Mayor Hazen Pingree), were governed by immigrant/middle class coalitions that went under the label “Progressive” that ended corruption, improved equity, and expanded urban services

… Reform (cont.)

• The Progressive ideals were enshrined by the National Municipal League as

– That there was an identifiable “public interest” that was common to all citizens, best met by providing efficient services

– Separation of service administration from city hall politics

– A permanent civil service of experts

– Application of principles of scientific planning

• It was put into place by

– A merit-based civil service, where applicants had to pass an exam

• Idea was this would bring better educated applicants disconnected from patronage (and thus less likely to be corrupt)

– Only in the South was this not implemented during this era

– Detailed, standardized accounting and public bidding for contracts

– Independently elected boards and commissions to oversee key areas (like the school board) that were separate from City Hall

… Reform (cont.)

• Put in place by (cont.)

– At-large (as opposed to ward-based) elections, to prevent patronage from concentrating among certain groups or in certain areas

• These elections were also non-partisan, in that people could not run as part of parties

– Although at-large elections can also prevent a minority group from getting any representation at all

– The abolition of the elected mayor as chief executive in favor of a professional city manager (to run operations) and an elected commission (to set policy)

• 50% of US cities now run this system, and more switch to it every year

– Although recently cities like Akron, Pittsburgh and Cleveland have gone to a county/regional mayor and a strengthened county commission, while limiting the power of the city/suburbs

» The idea is that a strong county mayor makes someone responsible for both representing the region AND who is answerable to all voters.

Reform (cont.)

• This was also a big era of annexation (where unincorporated land was added)

– It was thought to achieve economies of scale (bigger city could deliver more services at a lower per capita price)

– Boosters wanted the prosperous street car suburbs back in the urban fold

• They also helped the tax base

– Middle class suburban voters also would help break up machines

– Developers liked it because it meant city water and sewer would be extended to new developments

• Chicago swallowed then-exurbs like Hyde Park (and a lot of vacant land) in a 130+ square mile annexation in 1889

– By 1920, 1 million people lived on that land

– This also caused the creation of New York City as we know it, adding Brooklyn (then the US’s fourth largest city), Staten Island, most of Queens County and part of Westchester County (ie the Bronx) to Manhattan/Harlem to keep NYC the country’s largest city

– However, annexation (while providing better police, fire, water and sewer), also meant higher taxes for the burbs and having to share a school district, so this expansion era would come to an end

Fragmentation and Egalitarian Liberalism (1920-1945)

• This was the first big era of automobile suburbanization, allowing people to go even further afield

– And now, new suburbs quickly incorporated as villages to resist annexation (since people moved to suburbs to escape the city’s “problems”)

• State governments, weary of the voting power heading to burbs, basically ended forced annexation

– So central cities became surrounded by dozens of (often hostile) municipalities

• This is called metropolitan fragmentation. Consequences included:

– Fiscal squeeze for central cities, caused by

• Reduced pool of educated and experienced leaders for central cities

• The flight of middle and upper classes hurt central city property taxes, stopped the ability to get more taxes through annexation, and made it harder for cities to get financing

– Thus infrastructure needed ever increasing amounts of costly repair

• The new arrivals in the city were poor migrants or immigrants, which mean they needed costly welfare provision and policing

• Despite the middle class no longer living there, the central city still provided metropolitan-wide amenities like museums, theater, roads, utilities, shopping districts, parking for commuters, sports teams, etc.

Fragmentation (cont.)

• Consequences (cont.)

– As mentioned previously, incorporation (and especially zoning), intensified segregation as large lot sizes and bans on apartments could make areas comparatively more expensive.

– Political fragmentation, where no political body exists that can set region-wide policy (given that most metros spill over county lines and many county governments are weak).

• Also, suburban governments tend to be quiet, un-contentious entities, since most residents are similar to each other

– Fiscal mercantilism, in which suburbs and cities within the same metro compete with each other for investment, probably to the detriment of all because of the lucrative deals they have to offer.

Fragmentation (cont.)

• New Deal changed a lot of things for cities

– The Depression marked the first time cities appealed for money directly from the federal government (as some were facing property tax delinquencies of 10% or more)

• Before, they had to go begging state legislatures, which worked out poorly since rural representatives dominated most state legislatures

• Thus cities began to develop their own ways to relate to each other (and lobby the feds), like the United States Conference of Mayors

– This New Deal Policy was focused on cities because of the multiplier effects of stimulus. It included

• Spending on public works and infrastructure

• Welfare to stop poverty and boost incomes

• Clearing slums and resettling slum dwellers

• Federal support for home mortgages

– Thus the federal government began to make policies for cities superseding state policy

– What began to solidify was a Pro-Growth coalition of working classes and more liberal members of the middle class

• In this alignment, it was government, not the business community, which would promote economic development

Cities as Growth Machines & Service Providers (1945-73)

• Throughout this era, municipal expenditures rose much faster than the growth in city populations in almost all categories, but especially in education (needing a tech savvy workforce), sanitation (more consumption meant more trash), recreational services (with more leisure time), highways (more cars) and welfare spending (possible in a time of affluence)

– In fact, welfare spending went up 450% between 1960 and 1978

• What emerges during this era are growth machines for “urban renewal” – organized by the city government (or an urban affairs association) to make downtowns more business friendly, but which had many supporters

– It was made possible by the Housing Acts of 1937 and 1949 which allowed the clearance of “blighted” neighborhoods through eminent domain

• Unlike public housing, private sector actually liked this, because it closed rent gaps

Growth Machine (cont.)

• Coalition included:

– Investors, who could profit from the construction

– Downtown business interests (banks, retail) wanted to recapture lost business

– Elites like doctors and lawyers who liked the pro-growth ideology

– Real estate agents, who wanted higher values for higher commissions

– Political leaders, who could use it to create graft and point to dynamism

– Organized labor, who wanted jobs

– Local and federal bureaucrats, whose role was solidified by organizing such projects

– Universities, especially land grant universities (in terms of offering expertise) and urban ones (who had a pool of waiting gentrifiers)

– Amenities like professional sports (who got new stadiums) and the arts (who saw their surrounding neighborhoods cleared)

• Almost every city in the US saw changes to their CBD

– Minneapolis razed 40% of downtown and Pittsburgh opened the Golden Triangle near the confluence of the rivers

Growth Machines (cont.)

• Backlash

– Urban renewal (via eminent domain) displaced around 610,000 by 1963, most of whom saw rent go up (or moved to worse housing)

• Only property owners were compensated; renters sometimes did not even get moving expenses

• In fact, cities would pursue policies to make properties cheaper before seizing them all (like removing residents from near commercial strips, or demolishing a few homes)

– While old civic groups liked renewal, new groups (including African American, new immigrant, social service and college student groups) sprung up to fight it

• Didn’t like the targeting of the poor; didn’t like destroying established neighborhoods for highways; didn’t like the uniform bland modernist architecture (a la Jane Jacobs Life and Death of Great American Cities)

– Eventually, these groups would become part of the establishment, and moved the focus towards better service provision

» It was the first instance of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard); which become the norm in suburbs as well as BANANAism (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) that led to retail/commercial/industrial/residential segregation

Growth Machines (cont.)

• As African Americans became increasingly concentrated in central cities during this era, they became the major urban constituency (gaining more council seats and mayorships)

– This came only after the Civil Rights movement, with the early integration phase led by King, followed by the Black Power phase (which came in the wake of the late 1960’s wave of assassinations)

• This (finally) led to Black culture, art, history and society being recognized and valued, and problems within the community started receiving government help

• This was key, since the fallout from urban renewal impacted African American communities (and especially business districts) most especially, urban issues were bound up with civil rights

Growth Machine (cont.)

• During this era, there were many issues surrounding spatial equality

– Urban areas were underrepresented in Congress and state legislatures because districts were mal-apportioned (where urban districts had many more people in them than rural districts) until the Supreme Court forced reapportionment (although, not at the local level, where it persists to the disadvantage of poor communities)

– Following reapportionment, gerrymandering became more common where poor/minority constituencies were either stacked into a just a couple of seats to limit their influence or cracked into a bunch of different districts to eliminate their influence entirely

• Florida tried to crack Haitians in Miami following the 2000 census, only to have the Supreme Court overturn the districting as clear discrimination

– But there were spatial inequalities in service provision as well

• Cities created a lot of functional special districts (water, port, zoo, etc…) to administer functional areas close to the ground

– Led to uneven infrastructure provision and a lot of expensive and competing bureaucracy on top of the unevenness caused by the patchwork of wealthy suburbs

• Often times to save money, cities would build fewer, larger central facilities (for example libraries)

– But however, because of distance decay effects, meant only really close people used them extensively or they were inefficient because of the size of lines + commute time

Entrepreneurial Politics and Neoliberalism (‘73-Present)

• Stagflation hit just in the 1970’s until early 1980’s as government’s need to repair infrastructure and provide services grew

– Some reacted by saying government had become too big; this sentiment took Reagan into office

• Although Nixon really began this by cutting federal urban grants and money to the poor; tried to split the old pro-growth coalition pitting the middle and white working class against the poor

• Many states like California began seeing taxpayer revolts, where the middle class and business interests aligned to cap taxes they thought were only supporting “other people” and “lazy government workers”

– And while 1970’s bureaucracies were not efficient, the pendulum swung too far the other way and this has finally come home to roost for California

– Not surprisingly, public-private partnerships became more important and universal service provision less so

• In fact, it was an era of fiscal retrenchment and cut services (usually in the 10-40% range)

Neoliberal (cont.)

• This was also the era of massive deindustrialization of Rustbelt and growth of the Sunbelt, leading to changes in the urban system

– New York City nearly went bankrupt with a $2.5 billion debt – it was put into receivership by the New York State Legislature, and cut 60,000 jobs!

• The aforementioned fiscal squeeze hit cities hard, caused by a spiral of decay hitting property tax roles

– This was compounded by the increasing Suburnization of lower middle class jobs and the office-ization of downtown, which left the urban poor (lone elderly, single parent) out

– Increasingly the infrastructure of cities was divided in two: investments were made to help commuters and maintain business profitably, overseen by efficient bureaucrats; any social infrastructure that was built to support city residents came from patronage

– Because of all of this (plus cities getting “creative” with their accounting), cities entered an era of ever increasing borrowing costs (which meant they could not fix things)