Metropolitan Politics Midterm

3 periods of urban migration

"3 periods of migration and foreign immigration created the crisis of segregation, race, and poverty" ( p. 141) of second half of 20th century 1. 1910-1930: Great Migration 2. WWII-late 1960s: Great Migration Part 2 3. 1950s- present?: Suburban exodus

redlining

"Redlining" is, thus, the practice of not granting home loans to these D graded "red" areas

urban renewal

"a federally subsidized program of slum clearance and urban redevelopment established through the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954" Gotham p. 269 Govt used eminent domain power to seize "blighted" property to assemble land for redevelopment • "From 1953 to 1986...over $13 billion in direct federal spending had been committed to urban renewal" p. 183. • Result was neighborhoods leveled across the country and limited real re-development • Examples: LA, NOLA, KC, NY Growth Machine= way to understand urban politics that argues that "an array of real estate and banking interests...dominates and controls the urban redevelopment process" Gotham p. 270 and 271. • Essentially, a "growth coalition" develops between politicians and real estate and banking interests • Growth coalition frame can be used to understand urban politics

role of zoning in segergation

"most powerful tool" to control land uses • Many functions of zoning, but practice rooted in "desire to make it difficult or impossible for less affluent people to settle nearby " p. 274 • Example: Long Island Resident "We moved out here...to escape the city. I don't want the city following me here" p. 275

3 key themes of historic Metro development

1.Search for economic prosperity: communities generally seek economic growth 2.Challenge of governance: managing "social, racial, and ethnic conflict and competition" ( p. 1) has been a constant in U.S. urban history 3.Governmental fragmentation: multiple govt. entities struggle for control; "Within metropolitan areas, there is no single community, but many" Judd and Swanstrom p. 2

FHA/VA loans

2 key fed housing programs accelerated suburbanism: 1.Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans 2.Veteran's Administration (VA) loans • Programs offered access to affordable loans for housing to wide swath of population • Impact of programs: Home ownership increased from 40% in 1940 to 63% in 1970 • "Racialized" housing policy FHA loans had stipulations that led to segregation and suburban housing boom Loans weren't issued to mixed race areas • Result: "Virtually all new homes bought with FHA/VA loans were built in the suburbs" p. 192 "The real agenda was racial. FHA administrators were convinced that neighborhoods should be racially and ethnically segregated" p. 193.

Shelly v. Kraemer

A 1948 Supreme Court decision that outlawed restrictive covenants on the occupancy of housing developments by African Americans, Asian Americans, and other minorities. Because the Court decision did not actually prohibit racial discrimination in housing, unfair practices against minority groups continued until passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.

robert moses

Approach encapsulated by Robert Moses: "You can draw any kind of picture you like on a clean slate...but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat axe" p. 197 and 198. Moses' projects in NYC displaced 250,000 people • Moses was able to accomplish 2 things leaders wanted: highways to the suburbs and slum clearance simultaneously • His most infamous project: Cross-Bronx Expressway (a section of I-95) displaced 60,000 people

central governance challenge of progressive era

Central governance challenge late 1800s: Many Americans didn't think govt had capacity and/or shouldn't have role to improve conditions • Judd and Swanstrom: "Although urban leaders were able to persuade fellow citizens that local government should support schemes promoting the local economy, it was much more difficult to talk them into taxing themselves to support the services that might improve the local quality of life" p. 35

There is no unified federal urban policy: housing and transportation

Fed urban policy doesn't exist as a unified whole • Instead, policy made up of multiple, disparate programs • Two most important areas : transportation and housing • Fed "highway building powerfully shaped urban spatial development", but wasn't primary goal • Siloed administration essentially rammed highways through urban centers

growth machine

Growth machine: framework for understanding city politics • Growth machine= "made up of an array of real estate and banking interests (that) dominates and controls the urban redevelopment process" Gotham p. 270 and 271. • "Reform" was a political process that more clearly centralized power in the hands of business interests

sunbelt policy today affordable housing/auto-dependency and limited capacity for governance

Incomes stagnate while price of living continues to rise Key issues: lack of capacity to respond in SunBelt (urban policy response framework lacking) • Traditional Govt/Philanthropy approach from NE/Midwest to urban policy lacking in SunBelt because their government lacks the power to make changes

governmental fragmentation

Judd and Swanstrom argue that the level of governmental fragmentation in the U.S is. unique compared to other nations • In 2002, there were 87,000 local govts in the U.S • The result is that governmental fragmentation "makes it difficult to find solutions to problems that are truly regional in scope" p. 287. • Bulk of the chapter defines reform efforts

drivers of progressive reform era

Key reform actors: "broad-based alliance that included wealthy industrialists and other members of the upper class, well-educated members of the middle class, and middle class voters" p. 78 "Machine politicians, ethnic voters, and workingclass groups usually opposed reform" p. 78. • Reforms lasting impact on public admin fel

immigration conflict

Large numbers of immigrants changed makeup of urban America in 1880s • Between 1820 and 1919, 33.5 million foreign immigrants came to the U.S. • Population in many large cities was majority foreign born and/or native born with a foreign-born parent • New York (1910): 79% • Chicago (1910): 78% • St. Louis(1910): 54%

party machines

Machines involved "material incentives to nurture loyalty" (p. 50) • Material incentives included: govt contracts, granting zoning variances, fixing tickets, expediting businesses licenses • Granting these "favors" bought loyalty

racial discrimination "spatialized"

One of the key ways race was spatialized in US cities was governmental housing programs that placed public housing in already poor urban areas and bankrolling white suburbanization through discriminatory housing subsidies

reform legacy implications

Progressive Era legacy still persists: set template for many reforms still in place today (civil service, at-large elections, election registration, "business" govt)

housing act of 1949

Provided $ to subsidize below-market price for land cleared for urban renewal 2. $ given for land assembly and clearance 3. Agencies supposed to provide housing to displaced citizens

regans wither away doctrine

Reagan "actively worked to undo civil rights guarantees, slashing the budgets of civil rights enforcement units and slowing or stopping enforcement. The Reagan administration also set out to dismantle federal programs designed to help the cities, and over the course of 8 years it largely succeeded"

transportation drives development (canals/rail): walking city to streercar city

Streetcar city: dramatically altered growth of city expanding residential options • Pattern visible in nearly all cities

tammany hall example

Structure held together "by cooperating in ... a 'system of organized bribery.' Bosses and individual alderman had at their disposal patronage jobs in police, fire, sanitation, and streets departments" (p 54).

suburban development racialized

Suburbs grew during an intense period of racial segregation • Restrictive covenants and zoning restricted new neighborhoods for whites only and urban renewal decreased housing options for also minorities through "slum clearance" • Scope huge: half of all homes had restrictive covenants before overt practice stopped in 1948 • "Unofficial" practice continued of refusing loans, etc continued until 1968 Housing Act Result="'racialized' land use" p. 267 • Judd and Swanstrom: "by the time these practices were abandoned in the late 1970s, a metropolitan land use pattern of racial segregation had become basically fixed. Those patterns are now changing, but slowly and unevenly" p. 267

sun belt

Term coined by former Nixon Campaign Analyst, Kevin Phillips • Phillips argued that there was an "Emerging Republican Majority" that would be based in rapidly expanding southern and western states • Concept became a key political discussion point especially in relation to Rustbelt • Helped define emerging demographic changes 3 Problems with Sunbelt Concept: 1. Area of Sunbelt not all prosperous 2. Assumed that south and southwest had unifying features 3. Regional or state identities outweighed Sunbelt allegiance • Despite problems, concept useful as way to understand demographic shifts in city from old industrial to low tax and union states Reasons for Sunbelt Success • Economic and technological shifts favor Sunbelt • Demographic shifts and move towards warmer climate • Govt spending especially military focused on Sunbelt • Fed tax code favored investments in new plants rather than rehab of old

smart growth

Term coined in 1997 by then Maryland Gov Paris Glendening • Focus on using limiting public investments in infrastructure to "designated growth areas while at the same time protecting other areas from development" p. 305 • Example of smart growth in practice: Montgomery County, MD • Use 3 Corridors within county to allow different types of development: existing communities, fringe areas, & rural/agric. areas

Thick injustice

This means that we need to learn to read the city to "see" thick injustice • Hayward and Swanstrom argue that deep legacies of inequality are all around us we know what to look for • Key legacy policies: deed restrictions, HOLC/FHA redlining practices, Urban Renewal, & highway building • These combine with current practice exclusionary zoning, school financing • Result=Thick Injustice

4 elements of reform agenda

Voter registration and literacy requirements 2. Australian ballot (secret ballot) 3. Nonpartisan elections: no partisan "tag" on ballot 4. "Efficient" Govt: civil service systems "Reformers thought of civil service as the silver bullet because without patronage, they expected the machines to quickly wither away

urban-rural divide

division between those living in cities and those living in rural areas

impact of great society

federal power extended, poverty rate drops, increases deficit, leads to Vietnam, spurred economy, debate over finances, if the programs work. liberals - it helped millions, blacks can vote, and government has responsibility to help the excluded conservatives - big government is not the answer, budget deficits, cant solve problems with money, culture of dependency "funds were spread as thinly as thought necessary to secure annual program budgets. The deleterious effect of this strategy was that it virtually guaranteed that no program in any city could deliver on its promise"

concentrated poverty

there are areas of counties, cities, or states where larger percentages of people are poor

pendergast in KC

• Boss Tom Pendergast: Tom's Town perfect machine politics example • "By the early 1930s, Pendergast had almost complete control and influence over the city and the Democratic Party in Missouri due to that large blocks of votes he could deliver at election time that could make or break candidates seeking office" Gotham p. 276.

transportation: 1956 national defense highway act

• Housing policies vital to growth of segregated suburbs • Second component of explosion of segregated suburbs: federally funded highways • 1956 National Defense Highway Act set in motion largest single infrastructure project in world history: 42,000 miles of highways built between 1956 and 1992 State DOTs out in charge of building highways through local communities • Routes went directly through established neighborhoods, usually through poorest neighborhoods with largest concentration of minorities

new urbanism

• Movement begun in late 1990s by notable architects (Andres Duany) • Basic principle: "a combination of land use changes, urban design, and architecture can revive a sense of community and make the urban environment more livable" p. 309.

sprawl

• Urban sprawl definition: "used loosely to refer to low-density residential development at the periphery of urban areas" p. 292 • Numerous problems associated with this development pattern • At the core, sprawl entails land area growing much faster than population growth • Example: St Louis grew by 35% from 1950 to 1995 but land area grew by 355%

bureaucratic silos

•Silos= narrow organizational focus on one aspect of larger issue; Result: $ & resources locked into silos

wicked problems

•Wicked Problems are dynamic problems that defy traditional, "siloed' approach 1.Unstructured 2.Cross-Cutting 3.Relentless To be successful, require multi-disciplinary, creative responses