Local Growth Coalition Research Articles

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.

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.

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.

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

Reformulating the developmental state theory to explain Chinese spatial planning

Developmental state literature almost completely neglects the fact that one of the unique features of the developmental state is its capacity to reorganize its territory, and the literature on the Chinese developmental state repeats the same oversight. Against this backdrop, this study attempts to retheorize China’s spatial planning from a developmental state perspective. In light of the theoretical discussion in this study, we argue that the developmentalist spatial planning has five main characteristics of the developmentalist spatial planning: (1) The state sees its territory as a means of production, not as a living environment. (2) Industrial location policies were market-conforming. (3) The spatial planning was controlled or strongly influenced by the elite economic agency that formulates industrial policies and guides the market. (4) The bureaucracy is more or less insulated from local growth coalitions. (5) Spatial planning creates rather than responds to economic changes. These five characteristics are apparent in China’s spatial planning as much as in South Korea’s.

Transferal From EEG to MEG

In human geography the literature on the politics of local development is a fairly recent one. It emerged in part as a critical response to earlier work in sociology and political science in the United States. Central to it has been the theme of a tension between fixity and mobility. Agents are to varying degrees locally dependent. In virtue of fixities in social relations, the continuing flow of value through them is of central importance. The ever-changing character of the wider economic geography threatens that flow, and hence those values. This is the necessary condition for the formation of local growth coalitions, aiming at securing the conditions of continuing growth. The recognition of their significance has precipitated interest in cognate topics including local governance, the politics of scale, and the ideologies of local development through which growth coalitions try to defuse opposition to their plans. There are continuing yet creative tensions in the literature between the claims of universality and particularity. Initially there were difficulties in extending essentially American frameworks to the British case. Study of the topic in other countries, however, means that these tensions will continue to be a source of innovation in thinking about it.

China meets Jeju Island: provincializing geopolitical economy in East Asia

ABSTRACT This article presents Jeju Island, the largest island in the Korean Peninsula, as a spatial ensemble newly constructed by various geopolitical and geoeconomic forces in East Asia. A new urban model called the Jeju Free International City has integrated China’s growing presence as a geoeconomic opportunity for local economic development. Yet, the subsequent establishment of Jeju Naval Base is premised on the vision of China as a new geopolitical threat that should be addressed. This incoherence results from the problematic articulation between the geopolitical–economic imaginations of the central government and economic development imperatives of the local growth coalition. This paper draws upon recent discussions of geopolitical economy and calls for provincializing geopolitical–economic analysis. The operation of zoning technologies in Jeju Island has been closely associated with the promotion of the contradictory visions of China’s rise, and as a result fails to reconcile geoeconomic and geopolitical discourses, practices and desires.

Contradictory time horizons of Durban energy piping in an era of looming climate chaos

The contradictory role of time in urban capital’s uneven development can be observed through the analytical lens of infrastructure investment. The two cases considered below are energy pipelines in Durban, South Africa. On the one hand, urgency is associated with greenhouse-gas emissions mitigation, to slow climate change that is already doing enormous damage in this city. Yet on the other hand, the lengthy payback of mega-project investments made in long-term fossil fuel projects (and hence their reliance upon public subsidisation and guarantees) and the financial difficulty of switching to low-carbon transport, energy and waste disposal systems, together mean that temporal contradictions loom large. In sum, it appears impossible to align socio-ecological survival needs with investors’ profit-driven time horizons. This is the case involving a controversial pipeline for petroleum products from the African continent’s largest refinery complex (South Durban) to its largest market (Johannesburg), constructed at the same time as was piping to redirect methane that is emitted from the continent’s largest landfill, into a new electricity generator (in central Durban). The context, globally and locally, is that the ‘displacements’ of overaccumulated capital into infrastructure finance (and then specifically into piping systems) hit both temporal and spatial barriers, failing to deliver the promised returns on the infrastructure investments. With such insights, critical urban activists can better apply contrary analysis—of time, space, scale, class, race and environmental overlaps—whenever local growth coalitions parrot the slogan used to justify massive public subsidization of this infrastructure on behalf of investors: ‘build it, and they will come.’ The next question: who wins and loses—and when?

How Subordinate Financialization Shapes Urban Development: The Rise and Fall of Warsaw's Służewiec Business District

AbstractThis article studies the development of Warsaw's Służewiec neighbourhood, Poland's largest business district, as a case of real estate financialization. We argue that the neighbourhood's chaotic ‘de‐contextualized’ growth was shaped by Poland's semi‐peripheral position in the global economy on the one hand—enabling a process of subordinate financialization—and legacies of state socialism on the other. In so doing, we mobilize research on peripheral financialization and global economic hierarchies, and studies of post‐socialism to enhance debates about real estate financialization. Commercial real estate—and office development in particular—is a crucial domain in which contemporary core–periphery structures are produced and negotiated. A key function of subordinate financialization is to absorb globally mobile capital—the product of financialization in the core. The case of Służewiec shows that only by considering the interplay of global hierarchies (Poland's position as capital absorbent), local dynamics (fragmented urban development, which was characterized by competition among these unequal municipalities, with local growth coalitions in some municipalities, but not in others) and specific historical legacies (Warsaw's socialist‐time functional organization and its transformation, which weakened the city) can we fully understand the specific dynamics that shape real estate financialization in different places.

Urbanizing the periphery: infrastructure funding and local growth coalition in China’s peasant relocation programs

ABSTRACTThe Chinese State has addressed the dilemma between urban growth and farmland loss by launching mass peasant relocation programs. By moving peasants into high-rises and reclaiming their living space, arable lands are created to counterbalance the farmland loss. However, the current infrastructure funding model, which relies on local government’s bank loans, falls short of supporting the relocation programs. This paper explores this latest phase of urbanization in China by examining relocation programs in two counties in Chengdu, Sichuan and Shangqiu, Henan – before and after the transition to private investment. The paper reveals that private investors are becoming the main funders of relocation programs, and that the transition to private investment in relocation programs resulted in power reshuffle within the local growth coalition, compromises by the local government and consequently the exacerbation of peasant conditions. The paper concludes by reflecting on the social consequences of the transition, specifically benefit encroachment and risk transfer.

Making Jerusalem “Cooler”: Creative Script, Youth Flight, and Diversity

The creative city approach, already one of the most popular urban development models in recent years, continues to spread to new destinations. When urban scholars explain how ideas become canon, including the particular case of the creative city approach, they usually focus on political–economic mechanisms, the role of global elite networks, and the interests of local economic growth coalitions. These explanations are insightful but miss the political–cultural projects that cities pursue concurrently to the creative city approach, two aims that sometimes reinforce each other and sometimes contradict. Using interviews and fieldwork, I follow the importation of the creative city approach to the contested city of Jerusalem, and argue that the drive to adopt the creative script cannot be explained only by political–economic forces, but also by the local political–cultural projects of preserving Jerusalem as a Zionist city. Moreover, I suggest three directions for interpreting the role of local forces in the adoption and translation of urban ideas.

Searching For Economic And Cosmopolitan Roots: The Historical Discourse Of “Hankou Merchant Port Nostalgia” In The Central Chinese City Of Wuhan 武汉

In recent years discussions of historic urban place-making have emerged within the field of Chinese urban studies. Specifically, writers have discussed the role of new forms of historical place making in the marketing of urban spaces for property development and foreign direct investment. In these discussions cities like Shanghai, with its rich 1930s colonial history/heritage, have often been cited as typical examples of the way in which growth coalitions (and the entrepreneurial local state) market urban spaces in contemporary processes of capital accumulation. However, whilst Shanghai, has often been read as a singular and isolated case, broader research into historical place-making in Chinese cities is still under researched; whilst this paper, does not survey a vast range of cities, nevertheless, the authors of this work turn to the under-researched Chinese central city of Wuhan to explore whether historic place-marketing and place branding have been utilised by local growth coalitions. By exploring a series of empirical cases we claim that, like Shanghai, growth coalitions of developers and state led officials have drawn upon a range of powerful historic discourses to market the city; of the many historic discourses available, we argue that a narrative of “Hankou merchant Port” nostalgia has been the most prominent in the promotion and marketing of a new historic imaginary of the city. Moreover, we suggest that the marketing of this imaginary (and others like it) shares similar features to Shanghai's place-branding, where historical discourses of economics and cosmopolitanism structure the 'histories' and 'heritage' produced. Whilst such manoeuvres often have positive economic benefits for Chinese cities, it our contention that the moulding of local histories, identities and heritage in this way, also has serious consequences for the politics of local history and identity.

Urban Elites, Energy, and Smoke Policy in Montreal during the Interwar Period

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Montreal’s air was blackened by smoke from coal-burning homes, factories, and the locomotives and lake freighters connecting its growing economy to the rest of Canada. Lacking regulatory tools suited to the task of abating this nuisance, the municipal government passed the country’s first modern smoke bylaw, consisting of an objective emissions standard, a smoke control bureau, and requirements for the installation and utilization of technology to lessen emissions. In providing an account of the process through which Montreal’s smoke nuisance was addressed, this article describes the role of the city’s most influential local growth coalition, the Montreal Board of Trade, in introducing the issue on the city’s policy agenda, participating in the formulation of a policy response, and monitoring the implementation of the resulting bylaw. The Board of Trade sought a resolution to the problem because it damaged the city’s reputation and business climate. Consistent with other documented examples of smoke abatement in large urban areas, the response promoted by this elite growth coalition consisted largely of technology-based measures that managed the problem while eschewing recourse to measures that would dampen economic activity.

Growth coalitions in declining cities: casinos, redevelopment, and inter-urban competition

ABSTRACTCasino development is a popular strategy for urban redevelopment in declining cities. I examine the process of casino acquisition in the former Canadian automotive capital, Windsor, Ontario – one of the first cities in North America, outside of Atlantic City and Las Vegas, to host a resort casino. Drawing on 20 interviews with urban elites and the local news media, I explore the interplay between a local growth coalition and State interests in the development of Casino Windsor. To capture maximum revenue for provincial coffers, provincial interests used competition between economically depressed cities to co-opt the Windsor casino alliance’s project . Windsor’s urban elites, however, continue to “talk” urban entrepreneurialism, perpetuating the myth that municipal entrepreneurialism was an effective strategy for this struggling city. These findings suggest that the importance placed on the entrepreneurial capacity of local growth coalitions in urban redevelopment studies may be misplaced, especially in peripheral and declining cities.

Pseudo use value and output legitimacy of local growth coalitions in China: A case study of the Liede redevelopment project in Guangzhou

Existing research on the growth coalition of China mainly focuses on the process of urban land development and concludes that the strategic alliance of local states and market gradually emerged with the exclusion of communities in the course of development. Empirical evidence on whether or not a coalition can involve the villagers and how a coalition capacity is delivered with legitimacy is lacking. This research revisits the growth machine thesis in the redevelopment of an urban village in Guangzhou where pseudo use value is examined. Pseudo use value reflects a hybrid of the appreciation of land, which incorporates the nostalgia for the rural past and the desire for improvement. Results show that complementary expectations in the redevelopment of urban village formed an ad hoc growth coalition that incorporates the municipal government, private developers, and villagers. The generation of output legitimacy is grounded on frequent exchange of resources (i.e., land, private capital, manpower, and regulatory capacities), which also relies on empowerment and an intermediary made of the rural collective to stimulate coalition capacity. Pseudo use value makes indigenous villagers a part of the growth machine. Although the formation of local growth coalition acknowledges the role of private developers and villagers, a counterpart emerged in which the development became a political rhetoric for achieving recentralized land governance.

Competitive multi-city regionalism: growth politics beyond the growth machine

ABSTRACTCompetitive multi-city regionalism: growth politics beyond the growth machine. Regional Studies. Local growth politics are increasingly conducted at scales that confound the assumptions of growth machine theory. This paper analyzes ‘competitive multi-city regionalism’ in the United States – local growth coalitions collaborating on economic development across multiple city-regions. It introduces the concept of ‘scalar logics of regionalism’ to characterize the multiple regionalism projects at work throughout the state–economy nexus, and develops a comparative case study of regionalism initiatives in Arizona, Florida and Ohio to demonstrate the importance of interactions and conflict between different scalar logics in determining the multi-scalar outcomes of local growth politics.

Urban Elites, Energy, and Smoke Policy in Montreal during the Interwar Period

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Montreal’s air was blackened by smoke from coal-burning homes, factories, and the locomotives and lake freighters connecting its growing economy to the rest of Canada. Lacking regulatory tools suited to the task of abating this nuisance, the municipal government passed the country’s first modern smoke bylaw, consisting of an objective emissions standard, a smoke control bureau, and requirements for the installation and utilization of technology to lessen emissions. In providing an account of the process through which Montreal’s smoke nuisance was addressed, this article describes the role of the city’s most influential local growth coalition, the Montreal Board of Trade, in introducing the issue on the city’s policy agenda, participating in the formulation of a policy response, and monitoring the implementation of the resulting bylaw. The Board of Trade sought a resolution to the problem because it damaged the city’s reputation and business climate. Consistent with other documented examples of smoke abatement in large urban areas, the response promoted by this elite growth coalition consisted largely of technology-based measures that managed the problem while eschewing recourse to measures that would dampen economic activity.

Developing the eventful city in Sibiu, Romania

Purpose – Cities are increasingly using events as an instrument for economic and social change and cultural and urban regeneration. Major events help cities to distinguish themselves, and attracting event-related tourism generates income and jobs and increases atmosphere and “liveliness”. Many cities have therefore positioned themselves as “eventful cities” or “festival cities” by adopting event-led strategies. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The effects of the 2007 European Capital of Culture (ECoC) in Sibiu, Romania were evaluated through a decade of longitudinal research including surveys and depth interviews with local residents, stakeholders and tourists to monitor the sustainability of event-related regeneration strategies. Findings – The impacts identified include increased cultural activity, tourism growth, image improvements and increased pride among residents. These impacts have been facilitated by a local growth coalition, and the increased linkage of the city to flows of investment, skills and talent through EU membership. The city has taken some important steps to becoming an “eventful city”, in which events are utilised to sustainably increase the quality of life. However, the momentum of eventfulness developed in 2007 has been difficult to maintain, and there are difficulties in separating the effect of event-related activities from wider cultural, social and economic development factors. Originality/value – The research indicates that the Sibiu ECoC in 2007 and the programme of cultural development leading up to it had substantial impacts on the city both in the short and longer term. The ECoC certainly met most of its short-term aims, as there was a significant economic boost from tourism and an improvement in the external image of the city.

Learning from Las Vegas: Unions and post-industrial urbanisation

Las Vegas is often portrayed as the apogee of postmodern urbanism, but we argue that you cannot understand Las Vegas without understanding the role of unions in the City’s political economy. By focusing on the social relations surrounding workplace, class, and gender we highlight alternative versions of Las Vegas’ history. The Culinary Union, a UNITE HERE local, has introduced new institutional forms and played an active role in the local growth coalition. They have set standards around work intensity, training, and job ladders. Highlighting the ability of the union to affect these issues contributes to a counter-narrative about the City which stresses the agency of labour to actively produce Las Vegas’ cultural and economic landscapes. The postmodern narrative about Las Vegas hides these important lessons. Learning from Las Vegas can transform issues of signs and symbolism to issues of union organising and institutional structures in the post-industrial economy.

The politics of PAO’s new football stadium

This paper examines local initiatives for a sports stadium-centered economic development project in Athens, Greece within the framework of urban political theories. This project was not successful for the proponents, which in itself makes a crucial issue as most stadium projects are successful in the US, where most stadium research has been conducted. The local growth coalition (LGC) concept is used as a template for understanding this Athenian project. In this case, the coalition was strong yet ineffective. In any LGC, ineffectiveness may result from various structural factors that are unrelated to the coalition’s internal organizational or institutional composition. In this case, the key structural factor was a judicial decision by the Supreme Administrative Court of Greece that severely impeded the LGC’s ultimate goals. This paper also briefly compares judicial decisions in the US and Greece regarding new private sports stadia as projects for the “public good.”