Brilliant piece on Chicago's woes by Aaron Renn

Speaking of why I have so much respect for the Urbanophile blog (I had the privilege of meeting "Chicago" bloggers Aaron Renn and Lynn Stevens of Peopling Places when I attended the Main Street conference there in 2009-- Lynn and I were going to meet anyway and she brought Aaron along), Aaron has a piece in the City Journal (yes, the publication of the "conservative" Manhattan Institute).

It's on how he sees Chicago's situation--a city deeply in debt, with a shrinking population both for the city and regionally, lack of a particularly strong business sector powering claims to being a "global city," comparatively low per-capita GDP, and its role really being the center city (from the standpoint of center-periphery concepts in underdevelopment studies, although he doesn't cite this work) of the still declining Midwest (with the exception of those areas experiencing booms related to oil and natural gas production).

-- The Second-Rate City?:Chicago’s swift, surprising decline presents formidable challenges for new mayor Rahm Emanuel


He also mentions bureaucracy as stultifying local business development (he doesn't mention contracting, my bicycle facilities systems integration firm ran into the buzzsaw of Chicago contracting last fall), and the failure to systematize laws and zoning practices, but instead preferring the very personal practice of law and action according to "aldermanic privilege" -- kind of like so-called "state's rights" arguments to allow states to do mostly really terrible [and yes, occasionally good things, but very rarely] things like discrimination, instead each Aldermanic district does its own thing, mostly badly.  Along with corruption and the power of the political machine, these ways of dysfunction make it hard to re-generate organic growth.

It's kind of a Chicago specific chapter that would be great to include in an update of the book, The Future Once Happened Here, coincidentally authored by a Fellow of the Manhattan Institute, Fred Siegel.

A lot of people criticize Siegel's work, but I think it's not just inciteful but insightful, and if you don't understand what's up, and you're just focused on cheer-leading, you'll never really be able to improve your city and its economic position, in either its metropolitan, regional, or national context.

Likely people will take Aaron's article as personal criticism rather than critical analysis, and the problems present will continue to fester and only get worse.

Put on a happy face: DC's branch of the Growth Machine revisited

Song, Liza Minelli, "Put on a Happy Face," video


Washington D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams leaves a Metro train station after riding a train in Washington July 8, 2005. Williams rode the train to demonstrate safety in Metro stations after bomb blasts rocked the subway system in London on Thursday. REUTERS/Larry Downing

Even though former Mayor Anthony Williams was put into office by "the Growth Machine*," he did a lot of good for the city of Washington by refocusing municipal government on providing quality services, (re)building up the land use and transportation planning functions, creating a Department of Transportation separate from the DPW, embarking on streetscape programs, creating the Main Street commercial district revitalization program, and revitalizing the DC Housing Authority, among many other initiatives.

Not that Mayor Williams was perfect. Many quarters criticize him as leading the charge for gentrification and displacement (a/k/a a neo-liberalism agenda).

There were some problems with agency heads he picked, and he had some electioneering issues, and concerns came up over campaign funding and access to contracts and projects as well, although nothing like what's transpired over the past few years since he left office.

------------

* The Growth Machine thesis by sociologist Harvey Molotch posits that despite seeming intra-elite competition, for the most part, local economic and political elites are united in favor of a pro-growth agenda. See "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place" from the American Journal of Sociology, 1976. Political scientists have a competing theory, called the "Urban Regime."

I think that the GM thesis is better at explaining why the elites do what they do while the UR thesis is better at explaining how they do it. See the past blog entry "A superb lesson in DC "growth machine" politics from Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)" for a longer discussion of the two theories. From the blog entry:

In discussing Atlanta, Stone writes: "Land use, transportation, and housing formed an interrelated agenda that the city's major economic interests were keen to advance;" and

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.
-------------

In fact, I would have gladly voted for him for a third term (2006-2010, which was the period of Adrian Fenty's mayoralty).

But it's still a bit weird that he is now going to become the chief executive of the Federal City Council ("Former DC mayor Williams to lead Federal City Council" from the Washington Post).

The Federal City Council is what political scientist Clarence Stone would call the "governing coalition" of the DC Growth Machine.

I guess given how much the quality of local governance has declined since Mayor Williams left office, both during the Fenty regime, and now under Mayor Gray and the multiple ethics and governance failures of the City Council, the Federal City Council is looking to have a more mature and able hand "on retainer," to steady the course of local governance.

-- "THE DISTRICT'S POWER BEHIND THE SCENES: Washington Post-connected business group wields influence over city's legislative agenda," 1999, The Common Denominator

-- "The DC Lobby," 2002, The Common Denominator

-- ANALYSING THE CHANGE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Perspectives of the Regime Theory and the Growth Machine Thesis, 1998

-------------
As a close observer of the city but not yet involved in local civic affairs before Mayor Williams was elected, I think what is most interesting about his election is that few if any advocates and observers (including me) understood what a sea change his election would bring in terms of changing the city's investment climate, which had become increasingly risky under Marion Barry's leadership, despite his doing just about whatever real estate interests wanted (see chapter four of the book Dream City), culminating in the federal government's takeover of the city's finances in the mid-1990s, because the city was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Co-incident with this were two other key elements (1) the reaching of critical mass in terms of interest and willingness to live in the city despite all its problems (I joke but believe that this had to do with, in large part, tv shows like "Friends" and "Seinfeld" which were pro-city, while previous shows like "The Brady Bunch" were pro-suburban) and (2) the region, and especially DC, exiting the 10 year period of relative recession within the local real estate market--DC's housing market peaked around 1988 and then went into recession for about 10 years. (Also see my 2003 piece in the Philadelphia Daily News, "An outsider's version for saving Philly," which compared the urban revitalization climates in DC and Philadelphia at the time.)

Because government functions in planning especially, along with civil society and capacity building institutions withered during the Barry years, neighborhood advocates and city regulations were unprepared for the "velocity of change" in real estate development that would be unleashed by the election of Anthony Williams, and the creation of a more stable climate for real estate investment.

Not having good plans for Housing (including equity), but especially, not having fully robust planning and land use regulations in place in advance of the unleashing of pent up economic activity meant that residents were for the most part, without the tools in place that they needed to ensure that better projects would be created.

That can't be blamed on Anthony Williams.

And while the planning function was significantly improved under Mayor Williams, the city still lacks the right planning and regulatory framework necessary to better shape the changes that are going to continue to happen as the city continues to be an ever-improving place to live and work and play (if the elected officials don't f* it up too badly, but I am just not sure yet if the environment for improvement is strong enough to withstand rounds of bad decision making).

The debacle over Walmart is a perfect example. Neighborhood and union forces clamored for a "community benefits agreement," but really what the city need/ed/s is a "big box zoning overlay," to trigger extra-normal review of such projects to mitigate potentially negative impacts. Such provisions are still missing in the city's regulatory toolkit.

Meanwhile, faced with a similar situation in Montgomery County, Maryland, the County Council is considering legislation to add "big box review provisions" to their planning and zoning laws. See the Montgomery County Council press release "Montgomery Council Committee to Discuss Zoning Text Amendments on Large Retail (Big Box) Stores on Monday, March 26."

Understanding national government through the lens of Growth Machine and Urban Regime theories

It's frustrating for me to read the "local" newspaper's coverage, in this case the Washington Post, of structural failure in organizations for a couple reasons. First, they don't seem to have an understanding of how organizations work generally. Relatedly, they don't understand that organizations are systems and have processes to produce their output(s).

I rail about this all the time and won't repeat myself here, too much. Basically, journalists focus on individuals and have a kind of bias that the "system" (which they don't understand) "works" and when it doesn't it's an aberration that has been corrected and will not occur again.

The former director of the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) describes this as the "bias of the center" and it is discussed in this article, "Propaganda from the middle of the road: the centrist ideology of the news media," which was published in 1989, and which I still remember, because of importance of the concepts it discussed.

While Jeff Cohen was talking (this was a speech originally) about reporting on national and international politics, the trope is relevant to local news reporting too.

Second, newspapers and journalists for the most part fail to think about the intersection of politics and business and how it works in practical terms.

Regular readers are probably bored about my constant mention of the Growth Machine and the Urban Regime. From "A superb lesson in DC "growth machine" politics from Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)":

... the Growth Machine thesis, first laid out by sociologist Harvey Molotch, in the seminal article, City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place. From the abstract:

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine.

Political scientist Clarence Stone, a professor at University of Maryland has a competing thesis, that of the "urban regime." I don't think these theories are competing so much as different sides of the same coin. "Growth Machine" theory explains the motivation of "the land-based elite," and "urban regime" theory explains in detail how the land-based elite operates and functions.

Professor Stone was kind enough to send me his recent paper, "Now What? The continuing evolution of Urban Regime analysis," from 2005. He 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)

In discussing Atlanta, Stone writes: "Land use, transportation, and housing formed an interrelated agenda that the city's major economic interests were keen to advance;" and

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.

Extending the Growth Machine and Urban Regime Concepts to the National Arena

The reality is that things function similarly at the national level of government too. It's just that the Growth Machine is not organized in terms of place. Instead, it's organized by "capital" and business sector, and "the governing coalition"is made up of business people and their representatives, elected officials, and government workers and appointees. This coalition focuses the regulatory structure on managing the regulatory function in ways that maximize business success and profits by minimizing regulatory cost and rules and regulations.

The tension is between representing the people, what Foglesong in Planning the Capitalist City calls the "democracy" contradiction, and representing the interests of capital, what Foglesong called "the property contradiction" in terms of local urban planning and zoning practice, and what in this context I would call the "capital" contradiction.

As industrial sectors have been reorganized on a global scale and the extra-normal profits that used to be generated by oligarchic and monopolistic participants in home markets once relatively free of competitors from outside the home country have dissipated, industries have worked to significantly reduce costs and eliminate slack costs, ranging from labor to the cost of complying with rules and regulations.

To make profits in a hypercompetitive arena, many companies choose to take significant risks as well in terms of the health and safety of their operations figuring that either they will luck out and things won't go catastrophic, or that they can afford the cost if it does. (see Union Carbide and Bhopal, BP and its refinery in Texas, BP and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, GE and the Love Canal, GE and its practices with its appliance division, that peanut processor that went out of business due to contamination, mining disasters in Appalachia, etc.)

Industrial companies do this through trade associations and big lobbying budgets, and through the revolving door of people working for government then working for industry then working for government (e.g., Dick Cheney and oil industry policy, his sojourns in government bridged by working for Halliburton, the oil services firm).

So while the Washington Post believes that its expose of the U.S. Department of the Interior's branch which "regulated and promoted"--which yes is a contradiction that should have been fixed a long time ago-- the oil exploration and production industry is so significant that it deserves to be the top story of today's edition, for me it says very little that I don't already know. See "Lessons from oil agency's ties."

How is this any different from the so-called "iron triangle" described by political scientists in the 1970s with regard to policymaking (see this entry from Wikipedia, from which this image is also taken). Or the concerns that President Eisenhower raised about the growth of the military-industrial complex?

The real issue is the linking of politicians, government agencies and workers, and capital as organized by industrial sector or issue group as the governing coalition or "Growth Machine" that sets a common agenda and system for working together and provides the resources in people, money, and legal representation necessary to make it all happen.

What happened with the Minerals Management Service happens with virtually every federal government agency. Hey editors of the Washington Post, did you notice yesterday's front page article about the egg recall? ("Most eggs produced by a few firms : Safety inspections fall through cracks as industry consolidates ") Do you think this is a systematic problem with industry as it is organized in the United States or just happenstance, a number of freakish coincidences?