Growth Machine Up-Links: Urban Renewal and the Rise and Fall of a Pro-Growth Coalition in a U.S. City

Abstract

Recent research examining post-Second World War urban renewal and redevelopment programs acknowledges the pervasive influence of progrowth coalitions and the ideology of “growth” in local politics and decision-making. Yet few researchers have examined the role of state structures, political interests of urban planners and city officials, and the feedback effects of past growth initiatives and conflicts in shaping subsequent growth strategies and the composition of growth coalitions. I draw upon archival data and newspaper articles, real estate industry documents, and planning reports to examine the key actors, important decisions, and political struggles surrounding urban planning and redevelopment efforts in Kansas City, Missouri from 1940 through the 1960s. I use the narrative concepts of path dependency and policy feedback to illustrate how past events and actions, important decisions, and political conflicts can delimit future growth strategies and policy options, altering alliances between progrowth coalitions and local redevelopment agencies, and transforming the programmatic orientation of growth policy. Probing for the feedback effects of past redevelopment conflicts and institutional arrangements on subsequent growth strategies is useful for two reasons: First, it reveals how changing growth agendas and growth coalitions emerge not only in response to new socio-economic conditions but also on the basis of previous growth policies. Second, it highlights an important “up-link” dimension (Molotch 1999) in the growth machine heuristic that connects local processes with the macrostructures of the state and the economy.