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Foundations of Urban Governance and Politics

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... this system did bring fast modernization of cities ... Famous Bosses. Boosterism. New emergence of ... capital-labor relationships in industrial cities ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Foundations of Urban Governance and Politics


1
Foundations of Urban Governance and Politics
Geg309 Urban Geography
Instructor Jun Yan Geography Department SUNY
at Buffalo
2
Outline
  • Urban Governance in Early Age (pre-1840)
  • Municipal Socialism Machine Politics
    (1840-1875)
  • Boosterism and Reform (1875-1920)
  • Metropolitan Fragmentation (1920-1945)

3
Politics in City
  • Types of political issues
  • scope of government
  • sources of financial support
  • control over land use
  • service provision performance
  • allocation of existing/scarce resources
  • civil rights
  • They change over time
  • democracy does not happen over night

4
Urban Governance in Early Age (Prior 1840)
  • Rooted in laissez-faire ideology
  • free market
  • Cities were limited service providers
  • municipalities to assist state governments
  • sanitation and basic law order
  • Politics associated with landed local elite
  • weak, disorganized, corrupted
  • Based on principles of home rule

5
Urban Governance in Early Age (Prior 1840)
  • Limited powers/capacity to develop public
    infrastructures
  • Later, incorporation
  • passive ? active in local economic development
  • dept financing

6
Municipal Socialism
  • Side effects of urbanization and
    industrialization fire, disease, the mob
  • Local government steps in to provide key service
    provision infrastructures not provided by
    private sector to limit the disorder
  • simultaneously associated with physical
    (sanitation/sewer systems) social (morality
    laws) infrastructure in cities
  • social welfare programs begin
  • scope and scale of government grows
  • initial signs of private sector regulation

7
Machine Politics
  • Functions as a Brokerage System
  • brokers access to services goods to working
    class, poor
  • exchange votes for jobs and benefits ?
    corruption
  • Tommany Organization in NYC
  • quickly spread to other cities
  • especially big cities

8
Machine Politics
  • Strength based on hierarchical spatial politics
  • single member districts with wards precincts
  • highly centralized
  • donation by members
  • Benefited from spatially ethnically distinct
    neighborhoods found in northern industrialized
    cities
  • rarely happens in southern cities

9
Machine Politics
  • Undermines notion of ruling class
  • broadens political participation
  • empowers disenfranchised groups working class
  • Ironically, this system did bring fast
    modernization of cities
  • The more development, the more patronage

10
Famous Bosses
11
Boosterism
  • New emergence of urban elite
  • Downtown business owner and professionalists
  • An elite attempt to limit the political power of
    the working class ethnic political machines
  • key for boosterism (the expansion of current
    urban space, thus attract more investors to the
    city)

12
Boosterism
  • Assures stable capital-labor relationships in
    industrial cities
  • to meet the needs of industrial development
  • to retake over the urban political power from
    working class, later on with the help from fast
    growing middle class
  • public interests aggregate economic benefits
    rather than equity, social justice, civil rights,
    democracy or community well-being

13
Reform
  • Key Themes of Progressive Reform
  • Efficiency of delivery of public services
  • Politics election v. Day-to-Day of
    administration
  • Taylors Scientific Management city became more
    and more complex, call for experts ? business
    like management
  • Merit system used written exams to determine the
    suitability of employment
  • Strategy is to weaken impacts of machines and
    working-class immigrant voters

14
Reform
  • Core argument for change was based on
    corruption of machine politics
  • eliminate hierarchical election spaces through
    at-large council seats
  • create new city government styles associated with
    professionalization of government civil service
    model
  • city manager-council
  • weak-mayor
  • commission

15
Annexation
  • Rapid urban growth ? annexation
  • addition of unincorporated land ? addition of tax
    bases in suburbs
  • boosterism is behind this as well
  • economics of scale in government
  • further reduce the influence of machine politics
  • benefits most were speculators
  • example Chicago, NYC
  • Central city and suburbs both benefited in a way,
    but the conflicts increased between them

16
Fragmentation
  • Response to rapid annexation of efforts of urban
    boosterism to expand industrial space
  • urbanized spaces incorporate to prevent
    annexation
  • Suburban development promotes fragmentation
    preemptive action
  • new communities beyond urban limits incorporate
    to provide local services
  • suburbites not only can escape from central city
    but also the tax burden
  • governance politics confined to their value

17
Fragmentation
  • Result Central city was surrounded by a ring of
    hostile governments

18
Consequences of Fragmentation
  • Urban centers are not able to deal with
    metropolitan change UFC
  • lose a poor of highly educated person
  • decreasing income
  • increasing services demands metropolitan wide
  • Fiscal Squeeze

19
Consequences of Fragmentation (Cont.)
  • Intensified socio-economic segregation
  • a result of the political independence of middle
    class
  • exclusionary zoning exclude undesirable ?
    further enhance segregation based on social
    status
  • Consolidate different tax structures service
    packages

20
Consequences of Fragmentation (Cont.)
  • Metropolitan planning impossible because of
    political fragmentation
  • minimized intra-community conflicts
  • but little or no benefits to embrace regionalism
    hard to solve area wide problems home rule
  • competing growth coalitions competing for
    economic development dollars Zero Sum Game

21
Next Class
  • City As Growth Machine and Service Providers
    (1945-1973)
  • Reading chp 13. pp 345357
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