A large and influential group of American scholars studying urban and low-income housing policy have coalesced around the central idea that the best way to ameliorate the plague of urban poverty in the United States is to disperse (or deconcentrate) the urban poor into wealthier (usually outlying suburban) neighborhoods. This article refers to this group of scholars as the Dispersal Consensus (or DC for short). It finds that the DC's zeal to promote dispersal policies leads many of its members to engage in suspect and problematic practices, both in their research and policy prescription efforts. Such findings suggest that the DC's near hegemonic influence over the academic discourse of American urban and low-income housing policy should be challenged. This challenge will help stimulate a more open and productive debate regarding how best to ameliorate urban poverty (and related social problems) in the United States. We ought to come to a positive policy about moving poor people out of cities, where everything's so bad. 2 -Alice Rivlin, former Clinton Administration official and long-time Brookings Institution scholarCrisisanddesperationcanbegetrevelation.Suchperiodsforinstanceoftenexpose,withremarkable clarity, the essence (and strength) of peoples' deeply held beliefs and value commitments, as well as the implications of such beliefs and values. It is during such periods, rather than with the falling of dusk, that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings most sumptuously.In the academic world of American urban and housing policy experts, we saw such a revelation of beliefs and values during the crisis and desperation that was the city of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In response to this crisis and desperation, more than 200 social scientists-many quite prominent-quickly signed a petition endorsing the idea that "our goal . . . should be to create a 'move to opportunity'" for the thousands of low-income, displaced (mostly African American) former New Orleanians . Rather than supporting policies that affirmatively facilitate the efforts of the displaced to reclaim their homes and communities, the petition advocated polices to resettle the displaced in wealthier (often white, suburban)

Urban regime theory rightfully reigns as the dominant paradigm in the analysis of local governance. Nevertheless, regime theory has been hampered by its failure to engage economic questions in a sustained and systematic way, leaving it limited in both empirical and prescriptive terms. This article presents an agenda for research that allows for the engagement of economic questions in a way that enhances the strength of urban regime theory vis-a`-vis economic determinist theories of urban politics. It then sketches some possible paths this research might take, with most of the attention given to developing the rudiments of a new alternative economics for regime theory. It also illustrates how this new alternative economic paradigm can potentially generate the conditions necessary for bringing about a fundamental reconstruction of urban regimes.Urban regime theory rightfully reigns as the dominant paradigm in the analysis of local governance. Given its preeminence for more than a decade, now is a propitious point in time for regime theorists to further develop and augment its analytical and explanatory power. In this article I attempt to strengthen regime theory by moving it in a direction it has hitherto underemphasized. Specifically, I argue that regime theory has been hampered by its failure to engage economic questions in a sustained and systematic way.The root of this failure can be most easily understood from a sociology of knowledge perspective: Although regime theory has emerged as the leading paradigm of what has come to be known as urban political-economy, most of its practitioners have been political scientists-scholars trained in the analysis of the polity and instinctively drawn to examine political processes most intensely. As a result, regime theory scholarship has neglected in a relative sense a careful and rigorous examination of economic processes. This bias in the knowledge generated by regime theory has left it limited in both empirical and prescriptive terms. I develop this thesis by demonstrating regime theory's continuing weakness in comparison with its economically deterministic rival, as best expressed in Peterson's *Direct correspondence to:

Urban regime theory has emerged as the dominant paradigm for the study of local politics. The ascendancy of regime theory has made it the subject of intense critical scrutiny. While urban scholars generally find it to be a valuable theoretical advance, many have uncovered conceptual limitations. This article develops yet another critique of urban regime theory. It argues regime theory suffersfrom an overly rigid and largely static conceptualization of the division of labor between state and market and identifies three alternative conceptualizations of this division. This exercise demonstrates the possibilities for building alternative urban regimes. It therefore suggests an enrichment of established urban regime typologies. Specifically, the article points to the existence of three previously unidentified regime types. These three urban regimes challenge the enduring tension in urban governance between a city's economic aspirations for vibrant development and its political aspirations for a vibrant democracy.

Liberalism remains the dominant philosophical perspective underlying the development of urban public policy in the United States. At the heart of Liberal Urban Policy lies a Mobility Paradigm, which is marked by a strong emphasis on facilitating population movement as a means of addressing urban social problems. In this paper, I explicate the nature of this Mobility Paradigm across four key urban policy goals and then develop a critique of it. In its place, I offer one alternative-a Placemaking Paradigm-and discuss its contrasting conceptual attributes and policy implications. The Placemaking Paradigm points toward the nascent development of a Critical Urban Policy, which stands as an insurgent normative and empirical challenge to hitherto liberal dominance.

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