Little minions in the battles of the Growth Machine

Urban sociology is probably the best way to understand how local political and economic elites work together and why. It's about real estate and to some extent, jobs development. The real estate agenda is dominated by a pro-growth ideology, intensification of land use, and generating maximum revenues from land use.

I think that the paper "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," by Molotch is seminal. But political science contributes as well. The urban regime school also looks at local political and economic elites and how they govern, but because they aren't focused on production and exchange like the political economists of sociology, they don't always get why people do what they do. But Stone explains very well how the Growth Machine (or the Urban Regime) operates:

By looking closely at the policy role of business leaders and how their position in the civic structure of a community enabled that role, he identified connections between Atlanta's governing coalition and the resources it brought to bear, and on to the scheme of cooperation that made this informal system work. In his own way, Hunter had identified the key elements in an urban regime – governing coalition, agenda, resources, and mode of cooperation. These elements could be brought into the next debate about analyzing local politics, a debate about structural determinism.

It's about money. See this discussion from the no longer published Common Denominator about the Federal City Council and the failure of the DC Government to enforce community amenities agreements on the Fort Lincoln "New Town" Development in northeast DC.

Therefore, it's easier to understand how:

1. People in Ward 8, for a bit of funding for a block party, believe that a soccer stadium is good economic development, despite an independent economic analysis that finds it isn't so. See "Will Fenty Drop The Ball in Ward 8?," from yesterday's Post.

Also see these past blog entries:

-- Office Buildings Won't Save Anacostia
-- Falling up -- Accountability and DC Community Development Corporations

2. Different elite groups in Chinatown fight over the slivers of defining "Chinese-ness." See "Chinatown's Growing Pain," from today's Post. But it's also about high stakes donations. Also this old blog entry:

-- Chinatowns on the Decline across the U.S.

Interestingly, Chinatown has been shrinking for decades--it was bigger than the diagram in today's paper. Probably the Old Convention Center, which destroyed 4 blocks of Chinatown--and it isn't included in the map--spelled the death knell.

But so did the inexorable push to reproduce the land area in and abutting the "Central Business District" into commercial space. After all, the height restriction produces constant demand for higher paying office space for the organizations--associations, lobbying firms, law firms--that are essential to influencing government.

Not to mention the normal change of neighborhoods, as explained by the invasion-succession theory--Chinatown or at least Asian Town, has moved to Fairfax County, but also the massive speed of change that Jane Jacobs warned about in Death and Life in Great American Cities, in the discussion about "slumming" and "unslumming." When 200,000+ people moved out of the city between 1954-1957, accelerating extant outmigration trends, the city changed "overnight."

3. Jonetta Rose Barras opines about developer-provided campaign funds to City Councilpeople, in "A D.C. developer in every pot," from the Examiner.

4. Sue Hemberger writes about land sell offs in Ward 3, in themail.

Public Land Sales: The View from Tenleytown

At an ANC 3E meeting Thursday night, David Jannarone from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, told a stunned audience that his office was hoping to issue an RFP (Request for Proposals) for the Tenley Library-Janney School site by the end of this month. As community members peppered him with a series of challenging questions, Jannarone reassured them that the Mayor’s goal was simply to unleash the value in the land to serve neighborhood goals and that the community would be fully involved in the process. He hoped that this deal, the first of many, would serve as a model for the rest of the city.

A brief look at that model thus far: 1) choose which sites to sell based on "unsolicited proposals" floated by developers. Don’t insist that such proposals be actual offers. Think of them more as "concept plans." The value of a "concept plan" is that it can be all things to all people. It’s concrete enough that specific benefits can be claimed ($16 million in additional revenue, no loss of green space), yet elastic enough that any new request (affordable housing, a larger library, tripling the size of the school project) can always be accommodated. How? Talk is cheap when there’s no offer on the table and you’re just seeking buy-in on the concept. At this stage, there’s no budget, no comprehensive site plan, and no detailed timeline to constrain the project. Gain credibility by enlisting the support of an enthusiastic councilmember, who will assure the community that there’s a political solution to every legal, financial, or temporal obstacle, while assuring the mayor and other councilmembers that the community is eager to explore this option.

2) Ignore the fact that the site in question contains DCPS’s most overcrowded school, as well as a shuttered library branch whose reconstruction has already been shamefully long in coming. Also ignore the fact that both projects are already fully-funded through capital budgeting. Use the fact that the school and library projects are on very different schedules to suggest that yoking the two will make the school project happen sooner. Treat the prospect that this scenario will further delay the library project as a justification for acting quickly to make a deal with a private developer. ("Quick, DC government is on the verge of building a library. They must be stopped before it’s too late!")

3) When controversy erupts over whether public land deals are being based on cronyism rather than the public interest, commit to issuing an RFP. Get the RFP out as soon as possible -- don’t wait to do any (short- or long-term) facilities planning for the site. Don’t assess your real estate holdings to decide whether this is a piece of land you should be selling. Don’t even wait to forge a community consensus around what should be built at the site. After all, an RFP commits you to nothing. And, who knows, maybe some developer will come up with something interesting that people will like. Urge everyone to wait and see. Suggest that if they don’t like the proposals, they can reject them. Backpedal when asked if the community will actually have that kind of veto power. The decision will be the mayor’s.

Tenleytown is where the mayor and the council will decide what lessons have been learned from the West End debacle. The need for competitive bidding and public notice (not to be confused with community consent) has become apparent. But they still don’t seem to understand the planning issues or the perils of letting developers name the parcels to be sold and frame the options for providing public facilities. The local media have done a terrible job of covering public land issues and, as a result, major decisions with lasting implications are being made without much public oversight or even awareness. I find it hard to believe that the same citizens who overwhelmingly supported Adrian Fenty’s populist, neighborhood-centered candidacy expected his administration to be selling public lands out from under our schools and libraries to build more condos. Yet in West End and Tenleytown that’s precisely where we’re headed.
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In college, my European history professor referred to the Jesuits as the "shock troops of capitalism." Today we have new recruits.

5. If the City of Washington really wants to be considered a state, and world class, it needs to start acting like it. One way would be to have robust and transparent planning policies about land and capital improvements.

If Massachusetts can have a Capital Improvements Plan, why can't DC? See "Patrick's serious shopping list," from the Boston Globe. From the article:

DULL STUFF, this "Five-Year Capital Investment Plan" released by the Patrick administration last week. But don't be fooled: For the first time in years, a Massachusetts governor has laid out a coherent plan to spend the state's limited bond money and, in the process, enunciated a shift in priorities to favor higher education.

The plan totals $12 billion, with $2.28 billion the first year ramping up to $2.68 billion by 2012. These are gradual increases over what the state now spends on capital projects, which include university libraries, public housing, information systems, and other durable items. Paying off the bonds now takes up 7.65 percent of the state budget.

The Legislature has to authorize each project, but it has approved so many already that it's up to each governor to choose the ones that actually get built. Previous governors have tucked away a list of priorities in financial documents. Patrick, to his credit, clearly articulates his priorities in this plan.