FUNDRAISING COALITIONS IN OPEN SEAT MAYORAL ELECTIONS

ABSTRACT: Mayoral candidates need to assemble a fundraising coalition so they can raise sufficient funds to be competitive. What is the nature of those coalitions? Are they narrow partnerships of like‐minded interests, or are they broad alliances encompassing many different groups? Also, are the coalitions assembled by opposing candidates fundamentally different, or do most candidates receive their funds from the same sources? This article explores these questions through an analysis of five open seat mayoral elections in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. Most candidates assemble broad coalitions of many different groups, and because of this breadth candidates often have internally inconsistent coalitions (especially labor‐backed candidates). Further, the fundraising coalitions of opposing candidates are usually quite similar. The results show that mayoral elections are not characterized by competing coalitions of donors and that voters who desire to use financial backing as a factor influencing their decision have limited choices.     

BEFORE AND AFTER THE CREATIVE CITY: THE POLITICS OF URBAN CULTURAL POLICY IN AUSTIN,TEXAS

ABSTRACT: This article examines the politics and practice of urban cultural policy in Austin, Texas. I demonstrate how aspects of the local context frame how local government and cultural sector interests strive to initiate the direction of policy. While larger trends—such as Richard Florida's creative city thesis—influence cultural policy and planning, specific contextual factors including prior economic development and growth management policy, departmental organization, the forum for interaction between municipal actors and non‐governmental coalitions, and the character of the city's cultural economy mediate such trends to produce policy outcomes. As this case shows, contemporary urban cultural policy is not simply due to the rise of the creative city discourse, but is an evolving product of past policy structures and shaped by local institutions and actors.     

Property‐Led Redevelopment in Post‐Reform China: A Case Study of Xintiandi Redevelopment Project in Shanghai

Abstract: Urban redevelopment in China has experienced great transformation. Government‐backed redevelopment has been replaced by privately funded and property‐led redevelopment. This article discerns the impetus of ongoing property‐led redevelopment. A case study of the Xintiandi project in Shanghai reveals how property‐led redevelopment actually works. Pro‐growth coalitions between local government and developers are formed. Despite its role as capital provider, the private sector is still regulated by the government due to its negligible influence on local governance. The government controls the direction and pace of urban redevelopment through policy intervention, financial leverages, and governance of land leasing. Property‐led redevelopment is driven by diverse motivations of different levels of the government, e.g. transforming urban land use functions, showing off the entrepreneurial capability of local government, and maximizing negotiated land benefits. Driven by profit seeking, some thriving urban neighborhoods are displaced by high‐value property development, and suffer from uneven redevelopment.     

Applying Black Threat Theory,Urban Regime Theory,and Deracialization: The Memphis Mayoral Elections of 1991, 1995, and 1999

Abstract: Until 1991 Memphis was the only major US city with a majority‐black population that had not elected a black mayor. Various explanations, including in‐fighting and competition among black city leaders and citizen aversion to candidates who attempt cross‐racial appeals, have been offered to explain the lack of an elected black mayor of Memphis prior to 1991. We first investigate how Herenton overcame these electoral obstacles to become Memphis’ first elected black mayor in 1991, and then won reelection in two consecutive reelection attempts. We then apply Herenton's campaign strategy and the vote in these elections to several popular theories of voting and election strategy in urban elections—black‐threat theory, urban regime theory, and deracialization. Our findings point to the new trend of biracial coalitions in the urban setting and suggest the importance of reconsidering the traditional theories of racial politics, such as the black threat thesis.     

BEYOND GOVERNING COALITIONS: Analyzing Urban Regimes in the 1990s

ABSTRACT: This paper argues that economic restructuring is best analyzed as potentially a two-way relationship between global forces and local actors. The research and concepts in the literature on growth machines, governing coalitions, and urban regimes are central to that two-way relationship, but the focus on political coalitions must be broadened. Two changes are proposed: (1) the focus on coalitions must be accompanied by analysis of the mobility of local capital and the degree to which governments can influence that mobility and (2) analysis of coalitions must include investigating the ability of coalitions to implement the policies they enact.     

IDEOLOGICAL DEVELOPERS AND THE FORMATION OF LOCAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY: THE CASE OF INNER‐CITY PRESERVATION IN TEL AVIV

ABSTRACT: This article studies the role of ideological developers (IDs) in the formation and implementation of local development policy. The IDs are developers whose motivation is ideological as opposed to financial, and they initiate ideas rather than plans and projects. Based on a case study regarding inner‐city preservation, we claim that in Tel Aviv, IDs have much leverage on local decision making. The IDs are individuals with high personal capital, who focus on an issue that it is not championed by existing civil groups. As the IDs seek out influential routes to policy makers, they build circumstantial coalitions. Through these limited and conditional partnerships with administrators and other influential actors, the IDs apply pressure and advance their specific cause.     

PROGRESSIVE AND SUSTAINED SCHOOL REFORMS: FRAMING AND COALITION BUILDING IN SWISS CITIES

ABSTRACT: Urban politics in the early 21st century is structured by conflicts over social cohesion and economic competitiveness. Education policy takes center stage in this struggle as schools are institutions of both social and economic reproduction. I draw on arguments of urban regime and policy frame analysis to examine the politics of urban school reform in two Swiss cities. Empirically, I analyze neighborhood‐embedded bottom‐up school reforms committed to social cohesion. The paths these reforms eventually take were shaped by different coalitions geared around specific school policy frames. Frames indeed play a crucial role in building a coalition toward progressive school reforms. In addition, their sustainability in a political environment, increasingly shifting toward development policies, hinges on the dominant frame underlying the reforms as well as the properties of the network advancing them.     

“RE‐STATING” THEORIES OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT: THE POLITICS OF AUTHORITY CREATION AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL TRIADS IN POSTINDUSTRIAL CHICAGO

ABSTRACT: State governments and special‐purpose authorities, together with city governments and private‐sector actors, play a crucial role in building contemporary urban development partnerships, or intergovernmental triads. Such triads significantly shape decision‐making outcomes, and yet existing theories and case studies of urban development overlook these formal coalitions. Three cases from Chicago are examined in which the intergovernmental triad arrangement was utilized in attempts to reach development goals: the city's attempt to host the 1992 World's Fair, the construction of a new stadium for the Chicago White Sox, and Navy Pier's redevelopment. Using archival and interview data, the article traces events involving local and state governments that lead to the creation of special‐purpose authorities to manage development projects. The study concludes that current theories cannot explain such outcomes and must be adapted to account for the critical role of authorities and states.     

REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND CHILD CARE: TOWARD SOCIAL RIGHTS

ABSTRACT: Economic arguments are now at the center of child care policy discussions in the United States and Canada. We review the main economic logics applied to child care, namely long‐term studies of child development on school readiness and future workforce, and short‐term analyses of impacts on the regional economy. We analyze a sample of economic development–focused child care studies to demonstrate how they draw on a new discursive frame, authorize new coalitions of actors and champions, and introduce new policy tools at the state/provincial and local levels. Such economic logic makes the regional level a new priority for child care development, marking a shift in scale. We find the economic development approach is reshaping discourse and is leading to changes in public policy at both the state and local levels. The new paradigm of promoting child care as economic development has potential to strengthen child care as a social right and to enhance gender justice.     

The Actions of Discontent: Tea Party and Property Rights Activists Pushing Back Against Regional Planning

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The Tea Party's effects on local and regional planning efforts, given the movement's fierce support of property rights and equally fierce opposition to sustainability goals in regional planning efforts, have received little study. I wanted to understand how Tea Party and fellow property rights advocates became involved in regional planning efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area and Atlanta, GA, and how planners perceived and dealt with their objections and tactics. Interactions between the two groups were marked by philosophical differences over the role of government and the necessity and value of regional planning. However, these actors were also deeply divided on plan content and the authenticity of the public outreach process. Tea Party and property rights activists were not the only ones with substantive and procedural concerns about regional planning efforts; tactical -coalitions of unexpected allies emerged, aligning on plan viability, finance methods and funding, project costs, impacts, and process. My research shows that common ground can be negotiated between -opposing groups on matters of content and process. The concerns of the various stakeholders involved parallel questions often addressed by scholarly planning research, providing evidence of continuing challenges and flaws in planning.

Takeaway for practice: The planning community should not dismiss the opposition of Tea Party and property rights advocates; these activists could catalyze new coalitions of opponents if planners do not attend to the substantive and procedural concerns of participants.     

REVISITING BLACK ELECTORAL SUCCESS: OAKLAND (CA), 40 YEARS LATER

ABSTRACT: The city of Oakland, California, was one of the case studies Browning, Marshall and Tabb picked in their book Protest Is not Enough (1984) as a significant example of successful liberal black‐and‐white coalitions, leading to strong black incorporation. Yet over the past 40 years, the balance of power has dramatically changed in the city of Oakland. After several decades of experience with African‐American mayors and changing demographics, we need to reflect on the adequacy of this paradigm in light of the contemporary situation. The city once governed by a black mayor with a majority black city council in a traditional white progressive‐black coalition has now become intrinsically multicultural, leading to the election of former Governor Jerry Brown as a Mayor in 1998. Despite Ron Dellums's election in 2006, the black hold and control over the city seems to be more tenuous and fragile than it was 15 years ago. This article raises the question of the future of black urban political power in cities undergoing demographic and political changes. Our main findings are that black urban power in Oakland is still predominantly coalition‐based but involves new coalition partners with the demographic growth and the electoral mobilization of Hispanics and Asians. While the black‐led coalition still relies on white progressive support, this support has weakened, mostly because of the broadening of the progressives' agenda. Finally, the black community seems less likely to vote on pure identity grounds and seems increasingly inclined to vote along issues and interests.     

Microbial specialists in below‐grade foundation walls in Scandinavia

Below‐grade foundation walls are often exposed to excessive moisture by water infiltration, condensation, leakage, or lack of ventilation. Microbial growth in these structures depends largely on environmental factors, elapsed time, and the type of building materials and construction setup. The ecological preferences of Actinomycetes (Actinobacteria) and the molds Ascotricha chartarum, Myxotrichum chartarum (Ascomycota), Geomyces pannorum, and Monocillium sp. (Hyphomycetes) have been addressed based on analyses of 1764 samples collected in below‐grade spaces during the period of 2001–2012. Our results show a significant correlation between these taxa and moist foundation walls as ecological niches. Substrate preference was the strongest predictor of taxa distribution within the wall, but the taxa's physiological needs, together with gradients of abiotic factors within the wall structure, also played a role. Our study describes for the first time how the wall environment affects microbial growth.     

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DECISIONMAKING IN A FRAGMENTED POLITY: Convention Center Expansion in Kansas City

ABSTRACT: Amid recent discussions of the shaping of economic development policies by urban governing regimes, little has been said about how these policies are made in cities which lack an effective governing coalition. This paper examines the planning of a major convention center expansion in Kansas City, Missouri, a city with a crumbling governing regime. That planning process does not conform to the work of Peterson or to Stone's model of regime policymaking where economic development policymaking is accomplished with ease. It conforms instead to a hyperpluralistic model wherein social production becomes a difficult and expensive proposition, requiring the building of a coalition on each issue anew. These findings may have broad relevance because many US cities appear to operate without effective governing coalitions.     

Simulating Cities: Process,Product, and Prognosis

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Little research examines the effect of diversity on regional economic resilience to natural disasters. We examine whether economic diversity benefits regional economies in typical circumstances and in recovery after a natural disaster, using the case of the 1993 U.S. Midwest flood. By matching counties in the nine states affected by the flood to control counties, we isolate the influence of diversity on employment and income in normal circumstances and after a substantial shock. We found economic diversity to have mixed associations with employment and income in typical circumstances. On average, economically diverse counties tended to experience faster employment gains but slower growth in per capita income than less diverse areas. The effect of economic diversity upon resilience following a natural disaster was unambiguous. Economic diversity aided counties in weathering the downturn following the flood and sped their return to long-term patterns of employment and income growth.

Takeaway for practice: In promoting policies to enhance economic diversity, planners in communities located in areas prone to natural disasters should consider both the goal of disaster resilience and the potential tradeoffs between different aspects of economic performance.

Research support: None.     

What is Driving the Growth of New “Sunbelt” Metropolises? Quality of Life and Urban Regimes in Greater Phoenix and Brisbane-South East Queensland Region

In this paper we explore the conditions leading to the evolution and eventual weakening of urban regimes by comparing two sunbelt metropolitan areas in two continents. While Greater Phoenix is selected to represent the US case, the Brisbane-South East Queensland region provides a similar representative case in Australia. Both Greater Phoenix and Brisbane-SEQ have been the top or close to the top performers in population growth and economic growth compared to other metropolitan regions in their respective countries. In both cases coalitions of development interests and public officials created conditions for increasing rates of population growth and expansion of metropolitan territories. As growth pressures mounted over time leading to a deterioration of quality of life, local politics began to revolve around local issues of congestion, pollution, and better urban services. This paper explores the changing nature of urban growth coalitions and discusses their implications for the respective metropolitan futures.     

Modernist housing estates in European cities of the Western and Eastern Blocs

The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast modernist housing projects in Western and Eastern Blocs built in the period of accelerated urban growth that took place mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. The obvious starting point is that cities in the Eastern Bloc were different from Western cities because of the distinct nature of their urban policies, the centrally planned economy, the absence of a free land market, the impact of industrialization on building construction, etc. However, there are many concepts in urban planning and design, as well as urban processes and urban forms, shared by both ideological systems and that can be clearly recognized in housing estates from that period.

This paper offers a comparative perspective of the nature of some of those modern Housing Estates built on both sides of the Iron Curtain such as Grands Ensembles in France, Großsiedlungen in Germany, Polígonos de viviendas in Spain, or Socialist Housing Estates equivalents in Eastern Bloc countries. The goal is to understand how mass housing forms were related to the modernist international urban culture of the Athens Charter and what was the role of urban design in the significant loss of environmental quality appreciable either in the West or in the East in those years of accelerated urban growth almost everywhere in Europe.     

Growth kinetics of the filamentous microorganism Sphaerotilus natans in a model system of a food industry wastewater

Bulking by Sphaerotilus natans has been attributed to several factors such as low dissolved oxygen in the aeration basin, wastes with high C:N ratios and phosphorus limitation; however, the occurrence of bulking has been reported in fruit, vegetable, meat and poultry wastewaters in which the ratio C:N is variable.Growth of S. natans was analyzed in a model system of a food industry wastewater (potato processing waste) that was characterized by HPLC determining that citric acid was the most important identified component. The effect of several carbon sources on S. natans growth was also studied; different C:N ratios were tested in a continuous culture system (chemostat). This strain grew in a mineral medium with citric acid as a sole carbon source, in spite of the contradictory results found in literature. Chemostat studies showed that the medium was carbon-limited when C:N ratios <19 mgCOD (mgN-NH₃)⁻¹. Monod kinetic growth coefficients, determined for this strain in chemostat were: maximum specific growth rate, μ_max=0.301 h⁻¹; Monod constant, K_S=4.6 mgCOD l⁻¹; true biomass growth yield, Y^T_X/S=0.490 mgVSS (mgCOD)⁻¹; endogenous decay rate, k_d=0.011 h⁻¹ and maintenance coefficient, m_S=0.022 mgCOD (mgVSS)⁻¹ h⁻¹. The obtained parameters were compared with literature data and the effect of glucose and citric acid as carbon sources was discussed; these parameters are useful in modeling the growth of S. natans in potato processing wastewaters (or in other effluents under carbon-limiting conditions) especially when citrate is the main component and can be used to control filamentous bulking by metabolic or kinetic selection.     

Cultivating Food Connections: The Toronto Food Strategy and Municipal Deliberation on Food

This paper shares an exploratory case study of the development of the Toronto Food Strategy as an urban food strategy, through the lens of public health. It asks: what is a food strategy and how does it work? We will answer these questions through an analysis and discussion of the Food Strategy development process and attention to three key mechanisms: (1) framing or directing attention to the diverse policy instruments that deal with food, (2) brokering working relationships between diverse stakeholders and across existing governance arrangements, and (3) leveraging existing resources. We also distinguish the work of the Food Strategy from the role of food policy councils in how they cultivate deliberative spaces to catalyse policy change.     

BEING REALISTIC ABOUT URBAN GROWTH

Abstract: This paper distinguishes between cities experiencing high rates of growth and those growing more slowly and argues that it is critically important to take rates of growth into consideration in policy making. Using the examples of Vancouver and Winnipeg, we explore the economic, physical, and political differences associated with their different rates of growth and consider the policy implications of these differences. We critically compare policies pursued by the two cities in five areas: economic development, infrastructure and services, land use, planning for growth, and housing. We argue that both slow and rapid growth have advantages and disadvantages but that policy, especially in slow‐growth centers, is often dictated not by a sober assessment of opportunities and constraints but by an unreasoning pursuit of growth at all costs. This pursuit has engendered a way of thinking about urban policy that has affected both city governance and academic urban studies literature.