Growth Coalitions Research Articles

Who owns this neighborhood? The struggle for home in Latino Pilsen, Chicago

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the actions and structures of resistance that held off displacement in the neighborhood of Pilsen, Chicago against the renewed efforts of the Democratic Machine and growth coalition to expel them. While most studies of resistance focus on visible, organized actions, this paper examines both overt and covert structures, practices, and relations that, together, explain the success of Latino Pilsen against displacement and gentrification for nearly five decades. While the united efforts of Pilsen organizations and residents kept gentrification and displacement away up to the mid-1990s, the growth coalition through an appointed alderman and the neutralization or cooptation of Pilsen’s largest nonprofits opened the doors to them since that time. But new organizations and leaders continue the fight keeping gentrification on check to date.

Subsidizing a sports arena in a bankrupt city: Detroit's Little Caesars Arena

AbstractObjectivesThe potential for ancillary real estate transformation and downtown revitalization has moved to the forefront of sports venue subsidy arguments. Despite the City of Detroit being in the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history at the time, $324 million in public funding was directly provided to Little Caesars Arena, a new home for the Detroit Red Wings hockey team. Using the Detroit context, this article examines how a major arena subsidy deal arose in a severely financially distressed city.MethodsUsing a snowball technique, documents were collected from government, media, industry, community, legal, and academic sources to inform a retrospective, single case study. Over 300 documents covering a period from 1992 to 2021 were then reviewed for prospective relevance. A review of secondary media sources was conducted in lieu of traditional interviews.ResultsThe arena funding outcome is best explained by three interrelated aspects: local growth coalitions, real estate development promises, and lacking procedural and financial transparency exacerbated by both the chosen funding mechanism of tax increment financing (TIF) and the bankruptcy.ConclusionsWhere flexible financial subsidies and arena deal making are concerned, procedural transparency matters. Growth coalitions and rent‐seeking team owners can use the earmarked nature of TIF to circumvent traditional budgetary processes and mute prospective opposition through promises of self‐financing subsidies that will not result in new tax rate hikes. For venue deals where the substance is in the details of contractual obligations, transparency and adequate time for scrutiny are especially important.

Culture-led regeneration and the contestation of local discourses and meanings: the case of European maritime port cities

ABSTRACT Culture-led regeneration, understood as a range of policies using cultural activity as a catalyst for urban regeneration, has been widely implemented by many European cities. The interest of local businesses and politicians in these processes seems undiminished despite the various systemic crises hitting European cities. In the meantime, the ways in which culture-led regeneration and its promoters interact with, shape and manipulate local discourses and meanings have become critical for its successful implementation. Drawing upon the literature on the politics of urban development, this paper looks at how culture-led regeneration promulgates, negotiates and manipulates local discourses and meanings. It takes the example of European maritime port cities, where these processes have often served as a means to address the challenges associated with shifting meanings and practices surrounding port-city relationships. We argue that culture-led regeneration schemes operating in port cities in the twenty-first century strive to engage directly with local discourses and meanings associated with past economic activities but, in doing so, renegotiate them, producing hybridized models of regeneration that mirror and align with the agenda of culture-led urban growth coalitions.

Inventory land era and transformation of China's urban regeneration: An empirical study of Chengdu Hi-Tech West District, China

In the past, under the GDP-centered promotion tournament, the growth coalition theory was often used to explain commercial and residential district regeneration in China, which was property-led and profit-driven. However, currently, due to the new domestic and international environment, China is undergoing an unprecedented and profound transformation and entering the inventory land era, leading to significant changes in the assessment system for local officials. Specifically, the new assessment system incorporates a diverse array of indicators beyond mere economic growth, signifying a transition from a GDP-centered to a multi-objective promotion tournament. Consequently, in this new context, the traditional growth coalition is no longer sufficient to theorize current urban regeneration. Additionally, industrial district regeneration, the mechanism of which may differ from commercial and residential district regeneration, was often neglected before and requires further investigation. Through the case study of Chengdu Hi-tech West District, this study explores the transformation of Chinese urban regeneration in this new era. It argues that China's governmental assessment system has adjusted by dismantling the previous promotion tournament model based on economic growth in the new era. Under the multi-objective promotion tournament, local officials now consider other aspects in addition to economic growth. For them, IDR has been treated as an effective approach to protecting cropland, undertaking new enterprises with limited space, and becoming the flagship in promoting economical and intensive land use, all of which are of great concern to the central government. Therefore, local officials are keen on industrial district regeneration now, even though it does not yield direct and immediate economic benefits. In this process, they mobilize other actors and leverage key resources to achieve and balance their multiple goals. Accordingly, the traditional growth coalition is declining, while a new kind of coalition based on high-quality development is emerging.

Zoning initiatives, divide or unite? Anti-displacement struggles in Chinatown and the Lower East Side, New York City, 2002–2018

ABSTRACT Rezoning is an instrument used to unleash potential economic developments. Although anyone can apply for amendments to the zoning map and the zoning text in New York City (NYC), rezoning is a coalitional effort that reflects class dynamics. This paper examines zoning coalitional practices inside Manhattan’s East Village, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side (LES) between 2002 and 2018. Recent literature highlights the impacts of rezoning and real estate growth coalitions on displacement, but it overlooks their linkages. The paper combines urban planners’ analytics on racialized rezoning with urban regime theorists’ framework on coalition formation to grasp such linkages. It argues that zoning initiatives constitute major turning points in coalition formation and coalition disintegration inside ethno-racial enclaves. Zoning initiatives begin with city producers and ethno-racial elites forming a growth coalition. When the shift from coalition formation to coalition disintegration occurs, the shift alters the scope of actions in zoning initiatives. Strategic disintegration was a response to ongoing anti-displacement struggles. Subsequently, city producers launched zoning initiatives in atomizing sub-districts within Chinatown and the LES. The paper concludes that Chinatown and the LES are witnessing a new coalition formation and pro-longed attempts to undermine anti-displacement struggles.

Tourism dreams in rubble: Mass demolition and the reconfiguration of growth coalitions within China's ecological civilization

Amidst the mounting interest in China's Ecological Civilization (EC) campaign, this paper examines its ground-level implementation and its influences on fostering eco-conscious urban governance. Employing a temporal approach to scrutinize the change in local priorities over time, this paper conducts a detailed case study of Dali, a tourist destination in Southwest China. Environmental protection has escalated in this city over the last decade, manifesting in diverse measures adopted by the local government, including the demolition of hundreds of buildings in the core conservation zone of the lake Erhai. This paper demonstrates how the campaign of EC has strengthened environmental efforts locally, while emphasizing that local compliance relies on heightened oversight and financial support from the central government. Moreover, this paper argues that, despite resembling a degrowth strategy in terms of rhetoric and short-term effects, EC-led demolition serves as a spatio-temporal fix that has helped the local government to address both ecological and political imperatives, with growth coalitions being reconfigured. Overall, this paper contributes to scholarly discussions on the impacts of the EC campaign, expands the comprehension of the dynamic process of greening urban governance, and spotlights the analytical prowess of the demolition lens in such studies.

The territorial logic of an export-led growth strategy: Israel’s regime change after the Second Intifada

In recent decades, neo-mercantilism has become ubiquitous among small and large states. The conventional explanation for the appeal of an export-led growth regime has focused on the material interests of domestic growth coalitions. This article offers an alternative explanation for transition to export-led growth strategies, based on the geopolitical and territorial interests of states. It posits that states embrace a mercantilist export-led growth model because it aligns with their geopolitical objectives. The article demonstrates the geopolitical hypothesis based on the transition of Israel from a consumption-led to an export-led growth strategy after the end of the peace process and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.

Decoupling climate change: winter tourism and the maintenance of regional growth

ABSTRACT Climate change poses a severe risk for economic growth. The negative effects of climate change are, however, variegated depending on the region and the type of dominant industries fuelling their economies. Winter tourism in the Alps presents a case of a regionally specific and climate-vulnerable growth driver. Despite increasing climate-related physical risks to winter tourism such as snow scarcity, investments into infrastructure expansion continue. This raises the question of why a potentially unviable growth strategy is actively maintained considering the inevitable climate change scenario. Through semi-structured interviews, field work and archival research, this paper explores how the winter-touristic growth coalition responds to climate change. The findings show that key actors discursively decouple climate change from their growth strategies, which allows them to maintain the winter-touristic growth driver. ‘There is no alternative’ narratives and sustainability frameworks characterise the growth coalition´s response to the challenge of climate change. This paper makes an important contribution by exploring winter tourism as regional growth driver that contributes to a national export-oriented growth model. It thereby provides a unique perspective on regional underpinnings of growth models and the politics perpetuating growth model stasis under vulnerable climate conditions.

Varieties of demand and growth regimes – post-Keynesian foundations

We review post-Keynesian contributions to demand and growth regime analysis. First, for the theoretical model perspective, we distinguish the Kalecki–Steindl approach and the Sraffian supermultiplier approach as relevant theoretical foundations for demand and growth regime research, with investment-driven and distribution-led growth in the focus of the former and autonomous demand-led growth in the latter. Second, for the empirical-historical perspective, we review different ways of analysing the co-existence of demand and growth regimes in the current period of neoliberal and finance-dominated capitalism. We distinguish, first, a basic national income and financial accounting decomposition approach; second, a Sraffian supermultiplier inspired growth decomposition approach; and third, several lenses looking at growth drivers. We argue that these three levels of analysis are, in principle, not mutually exclusive nor even contradictory, but that they rather complement each other. We conclude that, in particular, the PK analysis of growth drivers provides several systematic links with comparative and international political economy approaches, when it comes to the introduction of the political economy dimension (social blocs, growth coalitions, changes in institutions favouring certain types of re-distribution and economic policies, etc.), while the national income and financial accounting, as well as the Sraffian supermultiplier growth accounting decomposition approaches provide the consistent macroeconomic foundations for such synthetic approaches.

Reconfiguring FDI dependency: SMEs as emerging stakeholders in an advanced peripheral export-led growth model

Political economy scholarship on Eastern European countries identifies their export-led growth models as dependent on foreign direct investors (FDI). This paper argues that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are another important cohort of exporters for at least some of these countries. We attribute the success of exporting SMEs to the rise of new technologies and production processes, which have allowed economic agents from peripheral countries to engage with global value chains and international business-to-business trade directly, rather than via FDI. We empirically draw on an in-depth case study of Serbia, combining macroeconomic analysis and 145 interviews with exporting SMEs. The country made a notable switch from consumption- to export-led growth in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, despite lagging in FDI attraction. To address this puzzle, we show that internationalization of SMEs became an additional driver of the country’s exports. Then examining how these exporters have internationalized, we find that firm co-location is not a main source of knowledge exchange for them. Instead, they emphasize the importance of drawing upon translocal sources of knowledge exchange for international competitiveness. Using SME owners’ networks abroad, immigration experiences, clients from online platforms, and contacts from outsourcing opportunities has provided them with the knowledge needed to become innovative, and to repurpose the old socialist industrial resources they had at their disposal. Since exporting SMEs and their multi-level agency is an empirically under-researched phenomenon in the region, future studies on peripheral export-led growth models should explore economic and political implications of this growth coalition further.

Cooperating and competing for land-based interests in the growth coalition of market-oriented urban redevelopment: The case of Longsheng village, Shenzhen

ABSTRACT This study seeks to enrich our understanding of the concept of growth coalition through analyzing the extended and changeable composition of the urban redevelopment growth coalition and its dynamic operation within the context of market-oriented urban village redevelopment in China. An analytical framework which combines growth coalition theory with the varieties of urban entrepreneurialism is developed. An in-depth investigation of a representative case of urban village renewal projects in Shenzhen has been further conducted to reveal the complex and dynamic processes of cooperating and competing for land-based interests within the coalition. Results show that the coalition of the Village Shareholding Companies (VSCs) and developers has become the key actor in initiating and implementing urban village redevelopment. Competition and cooperation between the cooperative developers and the local governments on provision of public infrastructures and between developers and the VSCs on the distribution proportion of land-based interests are key determinants in implementing the redevelopment.

Capitalist diversity or unevenness? Uneven and combined development, growth models and the crisis in the eurozone periphery

The ‘unevenness’ of European capitalism has been well established by Comparative Political Economy (CPE) as central to the origins of the eurozone crisis. The influential ‘growth models’ perspective has shown how the integration of export-led models in the ‘core’ with demand-led models in the periphery has led to the build-up of destructive current and capital account imbalances. However, CPE approaches are limited by their methodological nationalism, which stands in their way of adequately theorising the international dimensions of the crisis. In contrast, recent scholarship on Uneven and Combined Development (U&CD) and the global financial crash is more suited to overcome methodological nationalism, but existing contributions are let down by their lack of mid-range International Political Economy (IPE) concepts and their limited engagement with CPE. The main contribution of this article is to develop a new account of the origins of the eurozone crisis in Portugal and Ireland, by developing a framework that synthesises recent U&CD scholarship on the eurozone crisis and new developments in CPE, namely, the growth models perspective (GMP). This article shows how the GMP provides U&CD with two key mid-range analytical tools, namely the notion of the ‘dominant growth coalition’ (DGC), and a wider conception of European multiplicity. The DGC concept makes it possible for U&CD analysis to account for peripheral politics, while also recognising the wider multiplicity beyond relations of core-periphery dependency. In turn, U&CD makes it possible for the GMP to take the international more seriously in its analysis of the political economy of capitalist diversity.

The politics of structural reform in Ireland: Dominant growth coalitions, domestic business elites, and internal devaluation

This paper broadens the scope of the Growth Model (GM) research agenda beyond the study of ‘core’ business elites by investigating the influence of (oft-neglected) non-core business actors and sectoral interests in determining growth strategies. To do so it looks at a crucial case in the GM debate: Ireland. Ireland’s robust recovery from the eurozone crisis has set it apart from the rest of the eurozone periphery. For GM scholarship, Ireland’s recovery has been driven by its long-established multinational/export sector, which is relatively indifferent to the effects of austerity and internal devaluation. Why, then, was internal devaluation a central plank of Ireland’s crisis response and Economic Adjustment Programme (EAP)? Drawing on 10 original interviews with Irish business elites and policy makers and documentary evidence, this paper shows that domestic, not multinational, business elites played a key role in framing conditionality related to competitiveness and labour market reform in the Irish EAP. This challenges the concept of ‘dominant growth coalitions’ and argues that an exclusive focus on ‘core’ business elites neglects the ability of other fractions of business power to determine growth strategies. Looking beyond ‘core’ business elites makes it possible to identify transformation behind more obvious patterns of continuity.

Shaping planetary health inequities: the political economy of the Australian growth model

ABSTRACT Planetary health equity – the equitable enjoyment of good health and wellbeing in a sustainable ecosystem – is under threat from anthropogenic climate change and economic and social inequities. Driving these major challenges is the global consumptogenic system that encourages excessive production and consumption goods and services that are harming human and planetary health. Growth models lie at the core of the consumptogenic system. This paper examines the sources of economic growth in Australia, the coalitions that sustain this approach politically, and the implications of these dynamics for planetary health equity. Australia’s consumption-led growth model is underpinned by a combination of rising house prices and a permissive credit regime. This growth model is supported by a dominant growth coalition of producer interests, elements of organised labour, and property owners. The growth coalition has been able to successfully generate growth model policy convergence between the mainstream political parties. In turn this growth model, and associated growth coalition, has undermined the pursuit of planetary health equity in Australia by incentivising and driving excessive consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and economic inequality.

Balancing the scales: labour incorporation and the politics of growth model transformation

ABSTRACT Led by the emerging growth models perspective, research in comparative political economy has recently reintroduced demand drivers of economic growth into the centre of political-economic analysis. While this marks a significant advancement, current scholarship has, so far, focused mainly on explaining the endurance of existing growth models rather than the process of change. To begin addressing this gap, we identify one route to growth model change: the inclusion of organised labour into growth coalitions. Our proposed framework expands the role of growth coalitions in growth models by incorporating insights from the established literature on institutional change. Building on these insights, we distinguish between broad and narrow coalitions based on their scope, composition, and inclusive nature. With this distinction in mind, we argue that when a previously narrow coalition is broadened by incorporating organised labour, it can ‘balance the scales’, i.e. shift the growth model from a purely export-led model into a more balanced one. This shift occurs as labour’s influence on policy promotes wage growth and redistribution which, in turn, fuel wage-based consumption. We demonstrate our theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of the primary case study of Israel and two additional cases of Brazil and Ireland.

Community benefits agreements and growth coalitions: leveraging the growth machine thesis for alternative organizing strategies

ABSTRACT Growth machine theory, inaugurated by Harvey Molotch in 1976, continues to be a major way to understand the dynamics of urban growth in the U.S. and beyond. Growth machine theory, with all of its recent provocative changes, nevertheless still fails to capture the subtleties and complexities of organizing for accountable development based on growth dynamics in cities. In our essay, community benefits agreements are examined as one of the leading edges of a kind of local politics that Molotch and others have for the most part failed to recognize in their analyses of the political economy of growth, and argue that this analysis has implications for developing alternative and systemically transformative strategies for accountable development. We leverage the theoretical grounding of the growth machine to put forth new transformative strategies for accountable development, imagining what they might theoretically look like if the logic of the growth machine was fully taken into account.

The necessity of a transformational approach to just transition: defence worker views on decarbonisation, diversification and sustainability

ABSTRACT This paper highlights the perspectives of defence workers regarding a Just Transition of their industry, one of the most environmentally harmful sectors in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, pollution and use of non-renewable resources. It is based on (i) interviews with defence sector workers in the United States and the United Kingdom (n58); and (ii) focus groups with key representatives of national and international labour unions, defence companies and relevant NGOs (n18). Some of these defence workers and their trade union representatives envisioned a transformational path towards sustainability, including converting the defence sector to more socially useful production. Drawing on Gramsci, we define these as ‘counter-hegemonic views’, since they challenge the hegemonic ‘growth coalition’ and ‘treadmill of destruction’ paradigms. Such views support and echo more radical interpretations of Just Transition, emphasising the necessity of a structural transformation of society to achieve a fair and effective transition to sustainability.

Wachstumskoalitionen und Wachstumskritiken in der Stadtentwicklung: Reurbanisierungs- und Zuwanderungspolitiken

In this paper, growth coalitions and growth critiques are examined by using the example of in-migration policies in the context of Jena case study. This is based on the following questions: Which local growth coalitions do exist with which growth goals? To what extent do growth boundaries lead to an expansion of local growth coalitions with the urban hinterland? What kind of growth-critical positions are there in urban politics and to what extent do they question growth policies? The paper particularly ties in with the theoretical discussion of post-growth planning and enriches it by an empirical reflection by examining forms of municipal growth scepticism as well as limits of regional cooperation. The results show that there is a distinct growth coalition in Jena, which pursues the goal of attracting skilled workers to secure economic growth. However, due to natural growth limits and the resistance of individual residents, in-migration policies are reaching their limits, so that intermunicipal cooperation in the urban region is being sought as a fallback solution. Explicit critiques of growth and a fundamental public discussion about growth policies, on the other hand, just begin to emerge.

YIMBY divided: A qualitative content analysis of YIMBY subreddit data

ABSTRACT An established body of scholarship frames land use conflicts as schematically divided between pro-development “growth coalitions” and groups of anti-development civic activists, or “NIMBYs.” The arrival of “YIMBYs”—activists who advocate for additional housing production—onto the land use scene, has upended this dynamic. Yet, minimal scholarship has directly examined these new actors or their relationship to NIMBYs. We leverage data from the r/YIMBY subreddit (an online forum that discusses YIMBYism), blog posts published by YIMBY organizations, and newspaper articles featuring direct quotations from YIMBY organization representatives to examine the sources of friction between YIMBYs and NIMBYs. After conducting qualitative content analysis, we find that both YIMBY organization representatives and commenters on the r/YIMBY subreddit respond to NIMBYs in two broad ways: either addressing the personal motives of NIMBYs or countering NIMBYism through specific policy proposals. YIMBY organization representatives and the community of people interested in YIMBYism on Reddit converge around certain themes like regulatory reform, housing supply, institutional racism, and affordable housing policy, but divide over specific approaches. We further find that the spectrum of opinion found among the r/YIMBY community is far broader than that expressed by official YIMBY organizations, especially as regards to the issues of filtering, institutional racism, and rent control.

A Wrench in the Machine

Problem, research strategy, and findings Federal, state, and local government funding helps stimulate urban development, with growth machine politics playing an important role in determining where subsidies are allocated. The U.S. Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA) was enacted to curb the role of federal subsidies in fostering development along hazardous coastal barriers, providing an opportunity to explore how local growth politics are influenced by the removal of one source of government funding. In this study, we used a series of interview-based case studies to investigate why certain areas in the CBRA developed while most did not. In most cases, the CBRA obstructed local growth coalitions, isolating landowners from the resources necessary to improve the growth potential of their land interests. However, in cases where development occurred within the CBRA, we often found evidence that powerful growth machines were able to acquire replacement subsidies from state and local governments, suggesting these actions are a key driver in overcoming the financial barriers posed by the CBRA. Takeaway for practice This study revealed how growth machines could be hampered by removing access to the financial resources of one level of government, despite the potential to be undermined by intervention at other levels. In an era of increasing coastal risks, subsidy removal can be an effective tool for managing coastal growth, even when authority over land use decisions is limited.