Showing papers by "Harvey Molotch published in 1976"

The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place

Abstract: A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, econimic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine. The relevance of growth to the interests of various social groups is examined in this context, particularly with reference to the issue of unemployment. Recent social trends in opposition to growth are described and their potential consequences evaluated.

Varieties of Growth Strategy: Some Comments on Logan

Abstract: vented the continued expansion of employment which, it can be argued, provides a net fiscal benefit o these communities, helping to support excellent public services for those who can afford to live there. Expansion of employment in turn is the condition for population growth in other cities in the region. c) Notably missing among cases of strong antigrowth activity are the working-class uburbs in which the bulk of population growth as occurred. Yet these are the communities in which growth problems are most severethey are unable to attract the kinds of development favored by exclusive suburbs or employment centers, and so suffer the tax costs and public service burdens of extensive single-family subdivision development. We can only guess at the reasons for lack of organized opposition to the growth machine in such places: the absence of voluntary associations, the rapid turnover of population, the large proportion of renters, racial and ethnic cleavages, and the ambiguity and variability of people's perceptions of the causes of local problems. It is not clear that persons in these cities share the interests of or are benefited by the countercoalition i other areas. The variety of contexts in which growth may be treated as the central political issue implies that it is misleading to analyze the growth machine and countercoalition i gross terms. We are certainly far from being able to extrapolate the national effects of a victory by the countercoalition. The challenge is to elaborate a comparative theory of the urban political economy, to reflect and to order this variety of American communities.