The Intergovernmental Regime and Public Policy in Hartford,Connecticut

Regime theorists have not included state government as a member of urban governing coalitions even though governors and state legislatures have the constitutional authority and fiscal resources that can facilitate local governance. In this research, I analyze economic development and education policies in Hartford, Connecticut to illustrate that the governor is a leader of Hartford’s regime. Like other regime actors, the governor provides selective inducements to other coalition members to gain support for his policies. The Hartford regime came to include the governor because the city lost much of its business and political leadership, and management and accountability problems crippled public policy. Because governors have the capacity to act as a powerful regime partner, it is important to study the effect they have on urban governance.     

Manufacturing Industrial Decline: The Politics of Economic Change in Chicago, 1955–1998

Contemporary urban political economy emphasizes the role of structural factors in explaining the deindustrialization of cities in the post‐World War II era. Urban economic restructuring, by most accounts, has left city officials with few choices other than to pursue corporate‐centered economic development strategies emphasizing downtown‐area commercial and residential growth. In Chicago, however, a corporate‐center redevelopment strategy advanced by a coalition of downtown business leaders competed with a production‐oriented strategy articulated by a coalition of neighborhood organizations, manufacturers, and labor. Centrally located industrial districts facing gentrification pressures became contested terrain, and manufacturers ultimately benefited from protective measures put in place by a sympathetic administration. This essay argues that urban economic restructuring is open‐ended and politically contested. It concludes that a fuller appreciation of the contingency of urban economic development would help uncover viable regime types featuring governing coalitions that include both community‐based organizations and neighborhood business establishments.     

REGIME BUILDING,INSTITUTION BUILDING: URBAN RENEWAL POLICY IN CHICAGO, 1946–1962

ABSTRACT: Urban regime analysis emphasizes the role of coalition building in creating a capacity to govern in cities. Through a case study of urban renewal policy in postwar Chicago, this article considers the role played by political institutions. Conceptualizing this historical period as one of regime building, I show how existing political institutions were out of sync with the city's new governing agenda of urban renewal and redevelopment following World War II. Creating a capacity to govern in urban renewal policy required both coalition building and a fundamental reworking of formal governing institutions.     

URBAN REGIMES AND RACIAL POLITICS IN NEW ORLEANS

ABSTRACT: This paper describes and analyzes the nature of the New Orleans urban regime focusing on the first term of Sidney Barthelemy, the second black mayor of New Orleans (1986–1990). First, because the authors believe that regime theory needs to be more carefully theorized in relation to racial politics, they begin by discussing the changing relationship of blacks to the prevailing New Orleans regime. Second, in analyzing this racial politics, they focus on the relationship between the evolving structure of the electoral coalition, governing coalition development strategies, and the stability of the governing regime. They conclude that a caretaker regime is very difficult to maintain in a city with a recent majority black electorate. Such an electoral coalition has a tendency to support either a progressive or corporate regime. Finally, the authors pay particular attention to the development of the consensus-seeking para-apparatus, its relationship to racial politics, and its affect on development policy, governing coalition politics, and regime transition.     

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.     

Do Industrial Preservation Policies Protect and Promote Urban Industrial Activity?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: In recent years, several major cities have implemented industrial preservation policies to attract and retain industrial uses after facing acute pressures to rezone often centrally located industrial land to “higher and better” uses. Minimal research to date, however, has examined how effective industrial preservation policies have been at protecting and promoting urban industrial activity. In this study, we ask how New York City’s (NY) Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) program affected four measures of urban industrial activity—industrial business registrations, industrial employment, industrial building permits, and industrial land—in IBZs in New York City. We benchmark our results against a comparison group established using propensity score matching. We find that the IBZ program had a significant impact on retaining industrial land in IBZs but that it did not have a significant impact on promoting new industrial business registrations, employment, or building permits in IBZs.

Takeaway for practice: Our research provides evidence of how various measures of urban industrial activity change following the designation of an industrial preservation policy. This research suggests that industrial preservation policies can be an effective tool to stem urban industrial land losses in cities facing land use conversion pressures, but that such policies need to create more robust linkages with economic development planning objectives. In the interest of continuing to protect middle-class industrial job opportunities in central cities, planners and practitioners should consider how to strengthen ties between physical land use planning and economic development planning.     

城市政体模型及其对中国城市发展研究的启示

随着中国快速城市化过程 ,越来越多的学者认为城市发展和建设不再是单纯的物质性、经济性的问题而是与城市政府的制度安排和政策选择息息相关。特别是对于正处在社会经济转型期的、以经济增长为主导的中国城市来说 ,政策选择参与者的价值取向、政策决策和协商机制的建构显得尤为重要。对此 ,西方规划学界主要是通过城市政体模型从政治经济学的角度来分析城市发展的。文章从源于美国的城市政体模型入手 ,简述其主要的理论特征 ,并且在此基础上进一步探讨其对现阶段中国城市政体分析的启示     

Capital city dynamics: Linking regional innovation systems,locational policies and policy regimes

We propose a tentative theory linking economic and innovation dynamics with the ways capital cities try to develop and position themselves through the formulation of locational policies. Global and world city theories challenge the traditional role and centrality of capital cities. Capital cities that are not the economic centers of their nations – so-called secondary capital cities – tend to be overlooked in the fields of economic geography and political science. Consequently, there is a lack of research and resulting theory analyzing their political economy. We put forward an interdisciplinary perspective that is informed by theories of economic geography and political science, as processes of economic development and political positioning are interrelated and need to be examined together. By linking three different theoretical strands – the regional innovation system approach, the concept of locational policies, and the policy regime perspective – this paper proposes a framework to study the economic and political dynamics in secondary capital cities. Examples of secondary capital cities such as Bern, Canberra, Ottawa, The Hague and Washington D.C. illustrate our theoretical arguments throughout the paper.     

FOLLOWING THE SIGNS: APPLYING URBAN REGIME ANALYSIS TO A UK CASE STUDY

ABSTRACT: As the debate continues regarding the applicability of urban regime analysis in a UK context, three aspects stand out as highly significant: the target for analysis, the mode of scrutiny, and the context of local governing arrangements with its implications for interdependence as an impetus for co‐operation. This article will examine urban regime analysis and the move from government to governance in order to answer why and how the private, voluntary and public sectors might be inclined to collaborate in regimes. In addition, the regime analysis will provide the parameters for examination whilst the issue of governance will afford context for local governing arrangements. Although some issues require slight reframing to reflect the UK context, the article will follow a rigorous framework for examination utilizing the full weight of regime analysis as articulated by Stone such that it could not be accused of “concept stretching.” Far from it: Through the examination of an informal partnership, a coalition of actors from the public, private, and voluntary sectors that has been in existence for more than 13 years, the article focuses, specifically, on the long‐term, less visible aspects of local governance. As such, it is able to demonstrate how economic and political change can have a tangible effect on the manifestation of interdependence as an impetus for co‐operation, not only for this specific locale but also for other cities facing similar challenges.     

Planning and Antiplanning in Nigeria: Lagos and Ibadan

This case study of two Nigerian cities concerns the effects of planning policies on the cost, location, and quality of housing for the low-income majorities of the cities' residents. Planned development policies, followed in Lagos and other cities in developing areas, often appear irrelevant and even detrimental to the solution of housing problems. By contrast, Ibadan has coped with its growth problems in a natural, unguided way without active governmental control over development. To be effective, urban development planning policies must consider access to employment and environmental sanitation together with the operations of the land and housing markets in a programmatic, rather than a project oriented, approach.     

REGIME APPROACHES TO OBSCENITY POLICY: 1960s to 1980s

ABSTRACT: During the 1970s, the governing regimes of both Chicago and Seattle were confronted by sharp increases in the number of adult movie theaters, particularly in their central business districts. Since the traditional means of suppressing such businesses had been declared unconstitutional, these regimes were forced to derive new obscenity policies. The central concern of the Chicago regime was to construct policies that would prevent any further economic deterioration of the downtown Loop. Toward this end, the Chicago regime utilized legal harassment, changes in land use ordinances, and property development to force adult theaters from the Loop. The Seattle regime was less concerned about downtown development than with mollifying its traditional constituency in the residential neighborhoods. Thus, the Seattle regime created a policy that concentrated adult establishments downtown. Ultimately, both regimes were successful in achieving their separate policy goals.     

SCALES,REGIMES, AND THE URBAN GOVERNANCE OF GLASGOW

ABSTRACT: Over the last two decades, urban regime theory has become one of the most dominant paradigms of thought in urban studies. In particular, regime theory offers a complex account of urban governance, or how local governments, the business communities, and community organizations gain the capacity to shape the policies that affect cities, that is, govern. Although regime theory is a dominant theory in urban studies, it does, nevertheless, have its share of detractors, and one criticism has been its failure to take into account geographical scale. While there is an acknowledgment in urban regime theory of wider economic processes, such as the broad transformations in international and national trade, investment, finance, etc., or the role played by federal or state governments, the bias has remained mostly local, particularly in regards to urban governance. In urban regime theory literature the policies and actions of international and national institutions either nicely conjoin with local interests or are nearly totally absent. Due to this oversight, urban regime theory tends to underemphasize how the capacity to govern a city effectively is sometimes the result of the interaction of actions of people at multiple scales. This article attempts to address this oversight in an analysis of Glasgow, Scotland, during the 1980s. By focusing on the role of the European City of Culture in the revitalization of the city, this article demonstrates how the capacity for a ruling coalition to transform the city and to govern effectively was the consequence of the policy and administrative actions undertaken at other geographical scales.     

走出宜居城市研究的悖论:概念模型与路径选择

在对国内外宜居城市的概念内涵、评价标准等方面进行比较分析的基础上,建立起以经济发展为基础,以社会文化、生态、治理为3个支柱的宜居城市概念模型和基本公式,对宜居城市的"两个悖论"进行理论解释.然后,得出我国宜居城市要走经济性与宜居性相结合的C路径的结论,并阐述C路径下的宜居城市发展规律,提出我国现阶段宜居城市建设的基本思路.最后,从空间结构、生态环境、文化建设、交通系统和住房体系等5个方面提出相应的规划对策,探索建立符合我国国情的宜居城市新模式.     

Integrated Development Planning,Supportive Public Policies,and Corporate Commitment: A Recipe for Thriving Major Cities in Aichi,Japan

In spite of Japan’s economic slowdown during the 1990s, major cities in Aichi Prefecture have continued to thrive. Nevertheless, these, and others in Japan, have largely been ignored by Western scholars as successful models of how to maintain vibrant cities elsewhere. As a result, little has been written in English, and few lessons have been learned in the U.S. from urban planning efforts in Japan. From literature research, field observations, and qualitative interviews with 40 local land use and economic development planners in the prefecture, this article chronicles how well integrated national, prefectural, and municipal development planning, supportive public policies, and corporate commitment have produced thriving major cities in Aichi, Japan.     

Devolving Housing Policy and Practice in Northern Ireland 1998-2002

This paper reviews the effect of devolution on housing policy and practice in Northern Ireland. It outlines the history and context of devolution and housing policy in Northern Ireland, including the legacy and persistence of intense social conflict. Current devolution arrangements are reviewed, including the implications of enforced coalition for policy governance. The paper focuses on three dimensions of housing and housing-related policy development and implementation: social housing, especially the distinctive history and changing organisation of social housing provision; policies affecting the housing market, including the changing regime for spatial planning; and, regeneration and tenant participation. The paper argues that housing policy has tended to converge with policies in England, rather than moving towards a distinctively local agenda. Local political agendas remain dominated by disagreements over constitutional status thus policy formulation is determined more by officials than by elected politicians.     

Understanding Infill: Towards New Policy and Practice for Urban Regeneration in the Established Suburbs of Australia's Cities

A major challenge for urban Australia and its fast growing cities in particular is the provision of an adequate supply of appropriately located, affordable and sustainable housing across a range of dwelling types. A related challenge involves attempts by the metropolitan planning agencies in the capital cities to restrict residential sprawl and deliver more compact cities. Residential infill in the established suburbs has emerged as one of the principal urban planning policies designed to address this dual challenge. Infill targets, typically in the 50–70 per cent range, are now integral to all capital city planning strategies. This article examines the current pattern of infill housing development in Melbourne, Australia's second largest and fastest growing capital city. It highlights the existence of two infill segments—brownfields and greyfields—each with distinctive patterns of development that need to be better understood if urban regeneration is to figure significantly in delivering more liveable and sustainable cities. Current urban policies, programmes and practices are lacking an effective response to redevelopment of the greyfields.     

Barriers to sustainable economic development: The Dallas-Fort Worth experience

This article examines the scope of existing economic development activity and the motivations and perceptions of practitioners to shed light on the barriers to sustainable practice. In contrast to related fields like urban planning, the economic development literature has minimally examined how practitioners think about sustainable development and the extent to which sustainable development principles are adopted in practice. This omission is significant because economic development policies can have a notable impact on the sustainable development goals of environmental protection and social equity alongside economic growth. To capture the extent to which economic developers engage in sustainable development and the barriers that practitioners face, we study fifteen cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. We find that six key barriers - a conventional economic development mindset, incentive-based practice, a lack of resources, ad hoc planning, inter-regional competition, and a lack of coordinated regional planning - impede sustainable economic development in the region.     

The urban context for adjustments to the planning process in post-soviet Russia: Responses from local planners in Siberia

This paper examines changes to planning practices in different types of Russian cities that inherited varying levels of administrative status and economic diversification during the Soviet period. Considered the hallmark of the previous regime, planning faces a tenuous fate because of its perceived incompatibility with a democratic, market-based society. For many cities, urban development plans created during the Soviet period do not represent or accommodate the needs of post-Soviet society. Local planners, whose main responsibility previously was to execute these now-defunct plans, are redefining their role within city administration in order to remain relevant. The responses to these fundamental issues at the local level vary by city-type because of post-Soviet realities distinctly impacting each type of city.     

Comment: The Greenbelt Towns and the American New Towns

Citizen participation in various forms has been a key element in the Kennedy Administration's Juvenile Delinquency Demonstration Program, OEO's Community Action Program, and now HUD's Model Cities effort. Each of these programs establishes a local planning agency to act as a conduit for federal funds, aims at local program development, and is “comprehensive” in scope. Each encourages organization of the affected citizenry as well as their participation in the policymaking process. This article traces neighborhood involvement from its minor place in the public-private policy coalitions of the Delinquency Program, through expansion of the policy coalition in the CAA's “three-legged stool” (including neighborhood representation), to the Model Cities Program, with its “adversary” relationships with city government and organized black neighborhoods—each possessing independent authority over planning and program development.