What Every City Political Machine Wants. Chicago, IL, March 2006 (Elvin Wyly)

Transcription

1 What Every City Political Machine Wants. Chicago, IL, March 2006 (Elvin Wyly) Notes on a Seminar Discussion in Urban Studies 400, January 15, 2007, focusing on Harvey Molotch (1976). The City as a Growth Machine. American Journal of Sociology 82(2), The Argument A city is an aggregate of land interests working together to bring development resources to their locale at the cost of other locales in short, a city is a growth machine. Growth refers to a wide range of economic and physical changes in a community, but it is most directly measured in terms of a constantly rising urban population. Local elites and power brokers, work together to influence policies at various levels of government, and they cooperate regardless of their differences on other issues. They cooperate due to the fact that they all believe in notions of local progress, development, and growth. The essence of local government is to affect the distribution of growth: it is the key function, but it is often the most ignored or hidden. Local politicians, even those who have reputations for a commitment to symbolic agendas of values or ideology, either

2 come from the growth-promoting coalition of a locality, or they have to be accountable to it when they pursue symbolic politics. Though growth is often portrayed as beneficial to the entire community, local growth often has significant negative consequences, and usually delivers benefits only to a narrow segment of the local elite. Local growth redistributes national growth, rather than enhancing it, and thus does not help to solve structural problems such as high unemployment. There is an emerging counter-coalition against the imperative of growth at all costs, and initial signs suggest that a more progressive stance towards growth and development leads to more progressive agendas in all domains of policy. Key Quotes and Declarations We need to see each geographical map not merely as a demarcation of legal, political, or topographical features, but as a mosaic of competing land interests capable of strategic coalitions and actions. (p. 311) To raise the question of the wisdom of growth in regard to any specific locality is hence potentially to threaten such a wealth transfer and the interests of those who profit by it. (p. 320). There is thus a game of musical chairs being played at times, with workers circulating around the country hoping to land in an empty chair at the time the music stops. Increasing the stock of jobs in any one place neither causes the music to stop more frequently nor increases the number of chairs relative to the number of players. Thus, for many reasons, workers and their leaders should organize their political might more consistently not as part of the growth coalitions of the localities in which they are situated, but rather as part of national movements which aim to provide full employment, income security, and programs for taxation, land use, and the environment which benefit the vast majority of the population. They tend not to be doing this at present. (p ). For the growth coalition, It just makes good sense to plan, and good planning for sound growth thus is the key environmental policy of the nation s local media and their statesmen allies. Such policies of good planning should not be confused with limited growth or conservation: they more typically represent the opposite sort of goal. (p. 316).

3 Those who come to the forefront of local government (and those to whom they are directly responsive), therefore, are not statistically representative of the local population as a whole, nor even representative of the social classes which produce them. (p. 318). Critiques, and an Agenda for Revising the Growth Machine Metaphor 1. We need to contextualize Molotch s approach, and to distinguish those elements of his theory that have changed, those which have not, and which parts of the thesis are no longer relevant. a. Part of this contextualization is economic, but part of it is cultural and discursive: Molotch s article was published shortly after what is now regarded as the death of modernism, and so we need to understand how the machine metaphor has been reshaped in subsequent years. b. We need to situate his theory in the particular political circumstances that led him to ask these kinds of questions about local politics and local growth competition. 2. We need to understand whether and how Molotch s thesis applies to Mumbai, Shanghai, Dubai, Beijing, Sao Paulo, Guangzhou, Jakarta. 3. We need to reconsider his recommendations on regional settlement planning. 4. We need to reconsider his economic reductionism and his mechanisms for achieving full employment (guarantees for income security and high unemployment benefits). 5. We need to examine how Molotch s arguments on the non-representative nature of the growth machine relate to contemporary debates over voter apathy and other problems of local politics. Today s Molotchian Manifestos Growth is necessary for life, but is not the ultimate point of life. So as a city develops to a certain size, a dialogue is initiated through some form of public media, but also between individual people on their role in the city. This

4 dialogue is akin to consciousness. While growth may be a necessary part of urbanity, it need not be blind growth. (Ken Vimalesan) If the city is an organism, then the first purpose of an organism is survival. This can help us understand city budget decisions, and the implications of policymakers decisions for city survival. (Julie Wright) Is the city equivalent to The Corporation? Is the contemporary city fundamentally a business entity? What are the social consequences of the pursuit of growth at all costs, of the city as a business machine? (Wesley Attewell) If the city is a growth machine, then we need a series of unique models to apply to different cases. Urban expansion must be understood in the context of its particular urban and regional setting. Each city is unique, and merits its own careful study. (Cam McPhail) If the city is a business entity, then the job of the coalition has changed. The old game of smokestack chasing has become an enterprise of marketing and branding the city. After a period of sustained challenges to growth, the old coalitions now must justify growth through sophisticated public-relations campaigns, and co-opting challenges such as environmental movements, publicspace activism, and so on. (Cameron Balfour) There is no coalition anymore. Business and government are increasingly indistinguishable. They no longer play off one another, but they now pursue the same goals. Government was once the forum in which business sought to achieve its goals, but now the forum is gone, and the boundaries between local government and private business are blurred. (Adam Lawrence) The machine has changed. The old metaphor, of pulling a lever and seeing a product come out with Acme stamped on it, has died, and now the metaphor is as a machine as a conduit for flows of ideas, symbols, and influences. And so the city is now a machine for flows flows of capital, but also flows of ideas, communications, symbols, and cultural meanings. Cities compete for privileged positions within this matrix of flows, and some succeed in becoming busy interchanges or nodes. (Nick Gallant)

5 Time Magazine s 2006 Person of the Year is You. And so the city is no longer a place for growth, it simply needs to be a sustainable haven for the individual. All they want is a safe place for themselves, for their own pursuits. (David Lang) The city is not an organism. There is no such thing as social welfare that you can identify with any precision. There are winners and losers, and each individual pursues their own interests and agendas. (Thomas Senecal) The old growth-machine emphasis on growth, defined simply in quantitative terms, has been replaced. Today s growth machines must pursue the right kind of growth, not just growth itself. Cities should (and many of them do) compete to attract the creative class and other things now understood to be the right kind of growth. Quality of life matters. (Melissa Fong).