National Academies Press: OpenBook

Urban Change and Poverty (1988)

Chapter: Trends in Urban Governance

« Previous: Urban Fiscal Conditions
Suggested Citation:"Trends in Urban Governance." National Research Council. 1988. Urban Change and Poverty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1096.
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Page 42
Suggested Citation:"Trends in Urban Governance." National Research Council. 1988. Urban Change and Poverty. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1096.
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Page 43

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42 URBAN CHANGE AND POVERTY from cutbacks in social programs and human capital investments in education and training programs that are important to a city's long-term economic growth. Trends in Urban Governance KirTin and Marshall (in this volume:362-363) observe that cities, in the face of federal cutbacks, have turned to a new entrepreneurial politics of growth and development that has supplanted the politics of social service delivery that predominated in the 1960s and 1970s: The national government Is focusing its resources more tightly upon direct service delivery and income redistribution, while cities are expanding beyond traditional delivery of municipal services to a wide range of entrepreneurial activities designed to stimulate economic activities, to create jobs, and to generate revenues, much of which are used to support the traditional service delivery. Other urban scholars (Judd and Ready, 1986:210, 215-215) have also noted this trend: Over time, the municipal development agenda has been transformed. Economic development strategies have become much more elaborate and complex. Growth cities as well as cities in decline have turned to the national market and scrambled to make themselves attractive to footloose private firms. All cities are engaged in aggressive campaigns to secure their share of national economic growth. Well before the 1980 election, cities were actively trying to gain more control over their own economic destinies. They have been pushed further in this direction by the policies of the Reagan administration. The federal mandate is clear: cities must make themselves more attractive to private firms and must provide fertile ground for local entrepreneurship. To accomplish these objectives, HUD suggests that localities form public-private partnerships.... Nearly all cities have created public-private partnerships to promote economic growth. Some 15,000 local nonprofit and quasi-public organizations currently administer much of the economic development activity that · — IS OCCUrEl21g. Usually there is general consensus on the desirability of economic development projects that will create jobs and increase tax revenues, especially in large cities. Disagreements can arise, however, over whether or not a particular project is beneficial, over the distribution of benefits, and also over the location, size, and environmental effects of a project (P. Peterson, 1981:Ch.7; Stone and Sanders, 19873. Public opinion polls indicate that black urban residents desire

COMMITTEE REPORT 43 a higher level of social welfare spending and government services than do whites. Black municipal leaclers emphasize issues of hous- ing inequality, health care, employment and poverty, and education. Greater proportions of the budgets in cities with black mayors and council members are devoted to health, education, and housing than are devoted to these purposes in cities with white elected officials (Karnig and Welch, and Welch and Combs, cited in Judd and Ready, 1986:211-212~. By 1985 there were nearly 3,000 black municipal officials, nearly double the number of officials in 1975; most are in the South. There are 17 black mayors in cities with populations of over 100,000. Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia have black mayors, and Denver and San Antonio have Hispanic mayors. Yet minority success in city politics relies on electoral organizing and coalition formation, even in predominantly black cities (Brown- ing et al., 1984~. Black and Hispanic officials have worked to gain the support of business interests in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, Denver, and Miami, even though sometimes they have been criticized by minority groups (Browning and Marshall, 19863. It is difficult to document the extent of local entrepreneurial activities because fiscal data are not always included in the statis- tical data series that are available. Kirlin and Marshall (in this volume) point to some indirect and impressionistic evidence. They show, for example, that localities are relying relatively more on user charges and utility revenues and less on taxes and intergovernmental grants than previously (Kirlin and Marshall, in this volume:Table 4~. They note that the major associations representing cities and their managers have been busy sponsoring programs, workshops, and publications concerning entrepreneurship. There are also a number of case studies of local public entrepreneurship. Judd and Ready (1986) describe "the new politics of economic development" in Den- ver, Chicago, and St. Paul. Sonenshein (1986) looks at public-private development coalitions fostered by the mayor of Los Angeles. Erieden and Sagalyn (1984) found that public-private endeavors were more successful in completing downtown shopping centers than old style grants-oriented redevelopment efforts. The governance of cities evidently has not been seriously threat- ened by recent changes in their external environment. Mayors' of- fices and those of other elected officials have not become notably more precarious because voters have been blaming them for cuts in city services and other social services. Cities have responded to reductions in federal aid and earlier restraints from state fiscal limit

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This up-to-date review of the critical issues confronting cities and individuals examines the policy implications of the difficult problems that will affect the future of urban America. Among the topics covered are the income, opportunities, and quality of life of urban residents; family structure, poverty, and the underclass; the redistribution of people and jobs in urban areas; urban economic growth patterns; fiscal conditions in large cities; and essays on governance and the deteriorating state of cities' aging infrastructures.

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