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Urban redevelopment plays a major part in the growth strategy of the modern city, and the goal of this book is to examine the various aspects of redevelopment, its principles and practices in the North American context. Urban Redevelopment: A North American Reader seeks to shed light on the practice by looking at both its failures and successes, ideas that seemed to work in specific circumstances but not in others. The book aims to provide guidance to academics, practitioners and professionals on how, when, where and why, specific approaches worked and when they didn’t. While one has to deal with each case specifically, it is the interactions that are key. The contributors offer insight into how urban design affects behavior, how finance drives architectural choices, how social equity interacts with economic development, how demographical diversity drives cities’ growth, how politics determine land use decisions, how management deals with market choices, and how there are multiple influences and impacts of every decision. The book moves from the history of urban redevelopment, The City Beautiful movement, grand concourses and plazas, through urban renewal, superblocks and downtown pedestrian malls to today’s place-making: transit-oriented design, street quieting, new urbanism, publicly accessible, softer, waterfront design, funky small urban spaces and public-private megaprojects. This history also moves from grand masters such as Baron Haussmann and Robert Moses through community participation, to stakeholder involvement to creative local leadership. The increased importance of sustainability, high-energy performance, resilience and both pre- and post-catastrophe planning are also discussed in detail. Cities are acts of man, not nature; every street and building represents decisions made by people. Many of today’s best recognized urban theorists look for great forces; economic trends, technological shifts, political movements and try to analyze how they impact cities. One does not have to be a subscriber to the "great man" theory of history to see that in urban redevelopment, successful project champions use or sometimes overcome overall trends, using the tools and resources available to rebuild their community. This book is about how these projects are brought together, each somewhat differently, by the people who make them happen.
In the past twenty years the study of urban politics has shifted from a predominant concern with political culture and ethos to a preoccupation with political economy, particularly that of urban development. Urban scholars have come to recognize that cities are shaped by forces beyond their boundaries. From that focus have emerged the views that cities are clearly engaged in economic competition; that market processes are shaped by national policy decisions, sometimes intentionally and sometimes inadvertently; and that the costs and benefits of economic growth are unevenly distributed. But what else needs to be said about the policies and politics of urban development? To supplement prevailing theories, The Politics of Urban Development argues that the role of local actors in making development decisions merits closer study. Whatever the structural constraints, politics still matters. Collectively the essays provide ample evidence that local government officials and other community actors do not simply follow the imperatives that derive from the national political economy; they are able to assert a significant degree of influence over the shared destiny of an urban population. The impact of the collection is to heighten awareness of local political practices and of how and why they make a difference.
"Here is one of the great stories in American urban history told by a great historian. In 1949, Boston was 'a hopeless backwater' . . . by 1970, a 'New Boston' had been created . . . Thomas O'Connor, the dean of Boston historians, brings to this tale of transformation rich learning, intimate familiarity with his subject, and a lucid sometimes witty pen." -- Jack Beatty, Senior Editor, Atlantic Monthly
Unequal Partnerships explores urban development in American cities since World War II. Gregory D. Squires and other contributors examine what has long been a highly inequitable and destructive process of urban development. They look at the political and social assumptions and interests shaping redevelopment, the social and economic costs of development for the vast majority of urban residents, and alternative approaches emerging. The book begins with an overview of the ideological forces that have shaped urban economic development in the United States from the urban renewal days of the 1950s and 1960s through the celebration of public-private partnerships in the 1980s. Subsequent chapters examine specific cities in light of the consequences of development initiatives. These cities include those in declining rustbelt regions that are struggling with the consequences of deindustrialization (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee), as well as growing cities in the sunbelt (Louisville, New Orleans, Houston, and Sacramento). The book concludes with a discussion of promising policy alternatives. The contributors are David W. Bartelt, Larry Bennett, Scott Cummings, Peter Dreier, Norman I. Fainstein, Susan S. Fainstein, Joe R. Feagin, John I. Gilderbloom, Gregory A. Guagnano, W. Dennis Keating, C. Theodore Koebel, Norman Krumholz, Marc V. Levine, John T. Metzger, Jack Norman, Cath Posehn, Nestor P. Rodriguez, Alberta Sbragia, Derek Shearer, Michael Peter Smith, Gregory D. Squires, June Manning Thomas, Robert K. Whelan, and J. Allen Whitt. Gregory D. Squires is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He is coauthor of Chicago: Race, Class, and the Response to Urban Decline.
On March 1, 1966, the voters of Tucson approved the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project—Arizona’s first major urban renewal project—which targeted the most densely populated eighty acres in the state. For close to one hundred years, tucsonenses had created their own spatial reality in the historical, predominantly Mexican American heart of the city, an area most called “la calle.” Here, amid small retail and service shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues, they openly lived and celebrated their culture. To make way for the Pueblo Center’s new buildings, city officials proceeded to displace la calle’s residents and to demolish their ethnically diverse neighborhoods, which, contends Lydia Otero, challenged the spatial and cultural assumptions of postwar modernity, suburbia, and urban planning. Otero examines conflicting claims to urban space, place, and history as advanced by two opposing historic preservationist groups: the La Placita Committee and the Tucson Heritage Foundation. She gives voice to those who lived in, experienced, or remembered this contested area, and analyzes the historical narratives promoted by Anglo American elites in the service of tourism and cultural dominance. La Calle explores the forces behind the mass displacement: an unrelenting desire for order, a local economy increasingly dependent on tourism, and the pivotal power of federal housing policies. To understand how urban renewal resulted in the spatial reconfiguration of downtown Tucson, Otero draws on scholarship from a wide range of disciplines: Chicana/o, ethnic, and cultural studies; urban history, sociology, and anthropology; city planning; and cultural and feminist geography.
The authors draw on comparative data from 10 medium sized cities and examine 40 city-supported development projects to show how city investment in, and regulation of, development projects is the most effective way for political leaders to control and shape the future of their city. 19 illustrations.
A collection of international case studies that demonstrate the importance of ideas to urban political development Ideas, interests, and institutions are the "holy trinity" of the study of politics. Of the three, ideas are arguably the hardest with which to grapple and, despite a generally broad agreement concerning their fundamental importance, the most often neglected. Nowhere is this more evident than in the study of urban politics and urban political development. The essays in How Ideas Shape Urban Political Development argue that ideas have been the real drivers behind urban political development and offer as evidence national and international examples—some unique to specific cities, regions, and countries, and some of global impact. Within the United States, contributors examine the idea of "blight" and how it became a powerful metaphor in city planning; the identification of racially-defined spaces, especially black cities and city neighborhoods, as specific targets of neoliberal disciplinary practices; the paradox of members of Congress who were active supporters of civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s but enjoyed the support of big-city political machines that were hardly liberal when it came to questions of race in their home districts; and the intersection of national education policy, local school politics, and the politics of immigration. Essays compare the ways in which national urban policies have taken different shapes in countries similar to the United States, namely, Canada and the United Kingdom. The volume also presents case studies of city-based political development in Chile, China, India, and Africa—areas of the world that have experienced a more recent form of urbanization that feature deep and intimate ties and similarities to urban political development in the Global North, but which have occurred on a broader scale. Contributors: Daniel Béland, Debjani Bhattacharyya, Robert Henry Cox, Richardson Dilworth, Jason Hackworth, Marcus Anthony Hunter, William Hurst, Sally Ford Lawton, Thomas Ogorzalek, Eleonora Pasotti, Joel Rast, Douglas S. Reed, Mara Sidney, Lester K. Spence, Vanessa Watson, Timothy P. R. Weaver, Amy Widestrom.