Coping with Crises: The Politics of Urban Retrenchment

Abstract

It has been customary to treat retrenchment politics as an exercise in service cutbacks with a view to balancing municipal budgets. Professor Pecorella suggests that if we study the matter from a historical perspective we can see periods of retrenchment as crucial points at which political forces and institutional arrangements in urban politics have been recast. In New York City, for instance, the adaptations the reformers made to deal with retrenchment in the 1930's brought about the welfare city; the changes made to handle retrenchment in the 1970's reduced the scope of the welfare city but opened the way to greater participation by the "attentive nonelites" in placing neighborhood issues on the urban political agenda.