DC Growth Machine update

I've written a lot about the "Growth Machine," which is a school of thought in urban sociology concerning the organization of local political and economic elites in favor of a pro-growth, real estate focused agenda.

Graphic from "Public-Private Partnership Model Used in the Taipei Central Station Project Research," Mou Chung Tseng, National Taipei University. 

Harvey Molotch's paper, "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," published in 1976, and later expanded into the book Urban Fortunes: Towards a Political Economy of Place, serves as the foundation for this theory.

-- ""Columbus Way" merely another example of "Growth Machine/Urban Regime" theory," 2019
-- "Minneapolis growth machine," 2015
-- "If you don't know urban political theory, it's likely that you don't understand local land use: St. Louis: DC; etc.," 2012
-- "Smaller town revitalization planning: No, Thomas Friedman is not a sage," 2018

Urban Regime theory is the political science equivalent.  I think GM is better for explaining why they do what they do, and UR is best on the how. 

In the paper, "Now What? The continuing evolution of Urban Regime analysis," political science Professor Clarence Stone writes:

An urban regime can be preliminarily defined as the informal arrangements through which a locality is governed (Stone 1989). Because governance is about sustained efforts, it is important to think in agenda terms rather than about stand-alone issues. By agenda I mean the set of challenges which policy makers accord priority. A concern with agendas takes us away from focusing on short-term controversies and instead directs attention to continuing efforts and the level of weight they carry in the political life of a community. Rather than treating issues as if they are disconnected, a governance perspective calls for considering how any given issue fits into a flow of decisions and actions. This approach enlarges the scope of what is being analyzed, looking at the forest not a particular tree here or there. [emphasis added, in this paragraph and below] ...

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.

Where GM theory is particularly insightful on various elements of the land use intensification agenda, from Downtown revitalization to sports stadiums and arenas, conference centers, and in particular, the role of local media--fully dependent of the success of the local region for its own success, being dependent on advertising revenues generated primarily from sales to local businesses--in cementing this agenda.

(This paper, applying UR theory as an analytical lens for understanding an infrastructure project in Turkey is pretty interesting, "Evaluation of Urban Decisions in the Context of Urban Regime
Theory: The Case of Konya Courthouse Project," International Journal of Engineering Inventions 6:9 [2017].)

In DC, the Federal City Council is the "governing coalition" described in UR theory ("THE DISTRICT'S POWER BEHIND THE SCENES: Washington Post-connected business group wields influence over city's legislative agenda" and "The DC Lobby," The Common Denominator).

The Washington City Paper has a brief piece ("Meet the Lobbyists, Developers, and Insiders On Bowser's ReOpen DC Committees") looking at the membership on Mayor Bowser's "ReOpen DC" initiative for planning and coordinating the reopening of DC's economy in the time of pandemic.

That's a good update of the GM membership list, alongside people participating in the Federal City Council, DC Chamber of Commerce, the Washington Board of Trade, the Greater Washington Partnership, and similar organizations.