The Economic Development Strategy Preferences of Community Leaders in Texas

James Vanderleeuw,Terri Davis,Michael Pennington,Thomas Sowers,Jason Sides

doi:10.1177/2158244012468283

James Vanderleeuw, Terri Davis + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244012468283

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Abstract

The suburb/central city dichotomy has been a conceptual tool used by scholars to differentiate communities in a number of ways, including politics, policy preference, and political ideology. Given the various changes undergone by suburbs and central cities during the past few decades, a renewed investigation into how well this classification actually accounts for differences in the policy preferences of city leaders is beneficial to an overall understanding of urban politics and policy. Using census data and survey results of several types of city leaders in Texas, we examine the ways in which the suburb/central city dichotomy influences the policy preferences of city leaders. Our findings indicate the dichotomy remains a useful conceptual tool for understanding urban policy making particularly with respect to influencing and promoting particular attitudes among city leaders in the important area of economic development.

Highlights

Literature on the suburb/central city dichotomy tends to focus on the respective communities as either residential environments (e.g., Warner, 1973) or commodities to be marketed to the financially affluent (Oliver, 2001)
Conventional understanding of the suburb/central city dichotomy holds that these two types of communities are subject to different concerns and needs which promote different attitudes among their respective community leaders
Our analysis did not test for city policy outcomes, our findings did demonstrate that attitudinal differences are associated with the type of community a leader governs

Summary

Introduction

Literature on the suburb/central city dichotomy tends to focus on the respective communities as either residential environments (e.g., Warner, 1973) or commodities to be marketed to the financially affluent (Oliver, 2001).

Results

Conclusion