Growth Machine Up-Links: Urban Renewal and the Rise and Fall of a Pro-Growth Coalition in a U.S. City

Abstract

Recent research examining post-Second World War urban renewal and redevelopment programs acknowledges the pervasive in uence of progrowth coalitions and the ideology of "growth" in local politics and decision-making. Yet few researchers have examined the role of state structures, political interests of urban planners and city oYcials, and the feedback eVects of past growth initiatives and con icts in shaping subsequent growth strategies and the composition of growth coalitions. I draw upon archival data and newspaper articles, real estate industry documents, and planning reports to examine the key actors, important decisions, and political struggles surrounding urban planning and redevelopment eVorts in Kansas City, Missouri from 1940 through the 1960s. I use the narrative concepts of path dependency and policy feedback to illustrate how past events and actions, important decisions, and political con icts can delimit future growth strategies and policy options, altering alliances between progrowth coalitions and local redevelopment agencies, and transforming the programmatic orientation of growth policy. Probing for the feedback eVects of past redevelopment con icts and institutional arrangements on subsequent growth strategies is useful for two reasons: First, it reveals how changing growth agendas and growth coalitions emerge not only in response to new socioeconomic conditions but also on the basis of previous growth policies. Second, it highlights an important "up-link" dimension (Molotch 1999) in the growth machine heuristic that connects local processes with the macrostructures of the state and the economy.

Services urbains et néolibéralisme. Approches théoriques et enjeux de développement

“…L'approche en termes de machine de croissance occulte toutefois la diversité des stratégies adoptées par les villes (certaines pouvant opter pour des stratégies de managed growth, slow growth ou même anti-growth) (Jonas & Wilson 1999 ;Fox Gotham 2000). Les critiques à l'égard de la théorie du régime urbain soulignent une division trop rigide et fixe entre l'État et le marché, et une occultation du rôle potentiel des gouvernements locaux et des associations « communautaires » dans les processus d'accumulation.…”