Contemporary Era Rewrite (Chaps 18, 19): Environmentalism, Migration, Big Sort, Immigration, Skills Demand, Gambling, Retirement, Bluestone and Harrison, CUED Sense of the Profession, Polycentric Suburbia, Post Suburbia/Diversity, Woodlands, Privatopia,New Urbanism, Carter and Reagan Devolution, Economic Gardening, New Markets

Transition Era Themes

Chap 18 Done

Appendix II

Chapter 19 Updated for Elgar

Environmentalism Complete

 

 

 

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Originally entitled “Great Forces at Work” this chapter’s topics are critical elements of our 21^st Century Contemporary ED/CD System. They appear prominently in this time period and continue into the future. We introduce five elements and make the case why they are fundamental: (1) change in the jurisdictional economic base caused by deindustrialization; (2) evolution of competitive urban hierarchies (a) polycentric, post-suburban metropolitan landscape, (b) non-hegemonic regional/state hierarchy and (c) comparative advantage/free trade global hierarchy; (3) new programs and strategies to address issues and problems generated by the dynamic forces and our three drivers of ED; (4) entry of State Government into sub-state ED;  and, (5) population migration driven by generational cohorts who geographically sorted themselves out and redefined economic growth in the process. Infused into each of these topics are our Two ED Ships, Progressivism and Privatism.

Our history lectures sternly that economic developers should take population mobility seriously. No one is arguing one should ignore the other two drivers, or that other forces not formally included in our model can affect ED, but population migration has been fundamental and a constant in our history. There have been periods when it seems economic developers have done little else than cope with the effects of population movement. Growth is consistently defined in terms of population increase and vice versa. One could make a strong case non-economic developers’ chief measure ED success or failure is population change. In ED the Census Bureau is far more important than the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

When most think of population mobility they think of the West—deservedly so. One has to be from another planet not to recognize the impact of settling a mostly unsettled land. But western population growth had to come from somewhere. Population mobility established the Hegemony as a monopolistic nineteenth century immigration froze the South into a region impervious to time and change. The Southern Diaspora/Great Migration was a driving factor in northern suburbanization and decline of the monocentric metropolitan landscape. The Great Migration changed the nature and political culture of Big Cities—and fueled the rise of new CD wings. Population mobility played a large role in the Seventies implosion of Big Cities. And the depopulation of the South too had its effects on southern economic development—and after WWII repopulation as well.

As we lay the foundations for our 21^st Century Contemporary Economic Development, it stands to reason that population mobility can exert its impact of economic development as did deindustrialization and reindustrialization. We will argue here that not only immigration, but a culture-infused generational cohort change has fundamentally reshaped our sub-state jurisdictional (and metropolitan) political cultures and policy systems in ways that contributed to the politicization of economic development, but has paralyzed many jurisdictional policy systems from coming to grips with the reality of economic decline. After 1970 generational cohort change substantially challenged the old definitions of “good” growth and offered an alternative definition of “good” ED.

 

“Good ED growth” is more complicated than the old “Bad Growth” and that complication has fundamentally redefined economic development. There is one small problem with this redefined growth—not everybody, certainly not every State, has jumped on board. To redefine or not to redefine growth has been a major wedge within 21^st Century economic development. Blue States have their Silicon Valley and Red States have Houston. It not only creates a Red and Blue State dichotomy, but it reaches into the metro politics of most of our metropolitan areas. What became evident by the end of the (20th) century was geographical ED variation resulted from not only the flow (volume) of people moving, but where they moved, and the consequences that followed. We “sorted” ourselves out, clustering in communities perceived as similar to ourselves, and reinforcing policy systems and cementing into place ED/CD policy, goals, processes and strategies.

 

In this chapter, we discuss three types of population mobility, leaving aside from “frictional” mobility within metropolitan areas: immigration, southern regional change and generation cohort change. We shall briefly discuss each. Before we do, however, we will introduce the Big Sort, which characterized much of the post-1970 population movements, and which facilitated the increasing polarization and politicization of American economic development.

 

 

Foundations of Contemporary Practice and Policy Emerge

 

MIGRATION

 

Immigration

(see Arizona and California)

 

Normally, a writer starts off immigration with the usual platitudes: the nation is a nation of immigrants, E Pluribus Unum, a teeming nation of nations (Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass), My great grandparents from both sides (Ireland and French-Canadians) were immigrants—Irish side was Potato famine—and Lace Curtain; Canuck side was from Quebec and came sometime in the 1870’s. My mother did not speak English until she was twelve, and we all went to an ethnic Catholic school system. I was the first male that got beyond the eighth grade and graduated from high school. It took three generations (about 85 to 100 years) for that achievement. I stand on a lot of shoulders.

 

Still Gramps was an entrepreneur; he formed his own painting business that went bankrupt during the Depression when the bank shut down taking his payroll with it. Dad was a worker who labored in a host of jobs ranging from the CCC, to a Silver Star medic in the Battle of the Bulge, to a mental hospital male nurse. Mom graduated from high school and was the first to get a booking college certificate. She worked all her life at a series of part-time bookkeeping positions. I grew up in a postwar veteran’s housing development. While my first employment was at MacDonald’s, I went to driving a cab and incorporating Champion Cleaning Company whose sole contract was cleaning out a four –floor factory where my Dad was union steward. They paid for four years of my college, which my Gramps was able to get a friend to admit me to because I could not afford Boston College or Merrimack College or Suffolk University where I had been admitted.

 

So with that background let’s talk about immigration and economic development.

 

 

To add to this bleakness, history over the years has been enveloped in a fog, an ideological Progressive fog that ignores how disruptive and frankly how difficult immigration was in our history. That history, taught in our schools, instead choosing to wrap immigration around platitudes and moral values that inhibit, nay prevent any frank treatment in the policy literature. But immigration has proven very disruptive to our policy systems during the First Migration.

 

Remember political machines, anti-Catholicism, Know-Nothings, Boston Yankees and Irish, the immigrant-laced labor struggles, the blatant, extreme and legal discrimination shown to Asian immigrants (detention camps, quotas and all sorts of anti-immigration laws)—and outright violence. Immigration seems benign now, but economic and community developers at the time didn’t think it all that great. The post-1880 rise of American community development was tied at the hip to the plight of immigrants, and Alinsky worked in Irish and Polish neighborhoods. So called suburbanization was driven by pressure from immigration—before the Great Migration started. A cheap labor force was often sickly, and politically volatile.

 

So, in case you have been sharing a remote island with a rather old Japanese WWII Navy survivor, you might  not know immigration is controversial during the Contemporary Era—BTW, it was less controversial, but still controversial in the Transition Era as well. So let’s start off by offending everyone. The politically correct perspective is that immigrants are wonderful, the more the better, who cares whether they are illegal, they are here. Those who oppose immigrants are racists, excuse me “nativists” and “know nothings”.  As for the populist perspective—just turn the past statement on its head, plus build a wall to keep them out, and deep-vett those you do allow in. Immigrants are disruptive and they take away jobs from Americans. This is pretty zero-sum stuff. Why? Because it strikes at the heart of our national identity—with an intensity not matched since the Civil War.

 

And then is a very strange, incompatible, if not conflicting series of myths ranging from political machines, the Last Hurrah, the FDR coalition, the rise of labor unions (and socialist movements), a Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and even Tom Gjelten’s recent “A Nation of Nations”[i] which I use extensively in this section. Our foreign policy, American exceptionalism, reflects this immigrant tradition, and as the reader already knows, my Chapter One model relies heavily on population migration, i.e. including immigration. The awkward unspoken issue of whether slaves should be considered immigrants—obviously compelled against their will and considered as property, and 3/5ths of a state franchise exclusively composed of whites bespeaks an unsolvable limbo that I leave it to African-Americans to answer. Native Americans are another matter. They lost, yet preserved a separate sovereignty whose benefit to them is quite unremarkable, at least economically-speaking.

 

Who should we let into America affects the nature of our American identity. It used to be we were an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant nation, then that changed to European Judeo-Christian nation during the First Immigration (1880-1924). The expectation was that we will speak/write English/American English that is. The post-1965 Second Immigration challenged that identity definition and by the Contemporary Era demolished it almost entirely. That issue is one that has permeated our Transition and Contemporary Eras as the Democrats constantly remind us that somehow in 2050 the nation will be majority Hispanic and Hispanics vote Democrat. As a Democrat, I should be happy, but I’m not. The projection is divisive and stupid. Still I cannot ignore that immigration changes the local political culture, and often can topple local and even state policy systems. It already has as this book will testify.

 

In any case, a nation of nations means we do not construct our governance and our national identity on a single ethnic/racial culture, heritage, but on an “idea”, a commonality that unites us a nation—the skeleton of our nation is a “shared identity” we used to call patriotism. It included our capitalist economy, a willingness to compromise in a government characterized by checks and balances. Assimilation and upward class mobility, an “aspirational” spirit which allowed us to preserve our unique culture heritage, even language (I can swear in French) while “blending” into a single national identity that allows us to fight from a foxhole shared with a different fellow entirely. The Second Immigration’s timing was horrible, however. It came at a time when that fabric which wove together our shared national identity, came under serious attack.

 

Affluence they say changed us all, and by the Contemporary Era a globalism had developed that submerged and depreciated national self-interest in favor of world peace, anti-colonialism, and the promotion of democracy. The legitimacy of the nation-state is now up for grabs. At the same time our politics reflected a movement to “identity” politics which as defined as I write centers around concepts such as “white privilege”, inequality, and intersectionality that struggle against misogyny, racism, and the issue du jour. In short, immigration which naturally tears at the heart of the shared American identity has become one important wedge that divides us as a people, as a nation. Economic and community developers are going to be pressed to take sides in this struggle.

 

That ED and CD policy reaction to immigration will be purely rational, professional constructs seems rather unlikely in this atmosphere—and it hasn’t been during both Transition and Contemporary Eras. Privatist and Progressives can always argue about tax abatements and business climates, but the world does not come to an end. Immigration, especially when combined with an incremental evolving identity politics and secular free trade globalism and American economic/community developers struggle to find their way amid horribly torn state and local policy systems that broaden the definition of “disaster management”. Indeed, some readers, I suspect, even question whether there is such a thing as “American” economic/community development at all.

 

The Federal Government Changes the Rules

Federal immigration law radically, yet unintentionally, changed in 1965. The new law was thought at the time by many who voted for it as allowing more immigrants into the U.S., but those immigrants would be from the traditional American ethnic First Great Immigration homelands. It would not be Anglo-Saxon per se, but it would be European, and certainly white, Judeo-Christian, albeit Catholic. Immigration would be more of the same—only more so. Oops!

 

Gjelten’s “Part Two” is the best recent work that outlines the long story of “immigration reform”. His view stresses the role of JFK (Irish vs. Yankee legacy), the greatest generation’s different perspective on the outside world, its, and Congressional politics of the 1950’s and 1960’s. That goes a long way to explain why, and how, the older 1920’s laws were reversed. It does little to explain how the rise of immigration altered the American state and local policy system during the Transition Era, or how the arrival of hordes of immigrants injected new dynamics in regional, local and state political cultures. That was significant enuf, but what also changed was the entrance of a new generation with new attitudes about foreigners, minorities, and civil liberties—and more secure (or oblivious) to the threat of economic competition. The Second Great Immigration, like the First, played out over half a century.

 

The last years of the Classical Era were marked by incredibly huge and sustained internal migrations mostly from the depressed South. Left unspoken was the WWI aftermath 1920 and 1924 “immigration reform” that shut down the First Great Recession. As opposed to “open” immigration, the post-1920 federal immigration policy imposed quotas on the annual number of immigrants admitted. The quotas were 2% of each nationality foreign-born resident in the U.S. in 1890. The 1890 date favored northern and western Europe, and admitted at lower rates southern and east European Catholics and Jews. Italians were limited to 3,845, and Germans to 50,000. Given that Asians were prohibited at the time, and Caribbean and African immigration were negligible, their numbers were so low they barely registered on anybody’s scale (non-Western Hemisphere limited to 165,000 annually). Hispanics, i.e. Mexicans were cheap labor, mostly confined to Border States who depended on their participation—they were ok.

 

Immigration to America dropped off sharply. Fewer than 300,000 people were allowed into the country in 1925, less than half the number of the preceding four years [and dramatically below pre-WWI levels], and 45 percent of them that year were from Canada and Mexico. The number of Italians and Poles dropped by an astounding 90 percent …. With some modifications, the attempt to maintain America’s nineteenth century ethnic character through immigration controls remained official policy for decades.[ii]

 

The politics behind the immigration rewrite consisted of a bunch of strange bedfellows indeed. JFK and LBJ provided the presidential leadership, Brooklyn-born Emanuel Celler (mostly German-Jewish), Mississippi’s staunch segregationist James Eastland—and his protégé Senator Ted Kennedy, the civil rights movement, and the conservative immigration sub-committee chair, Ohio’s Michael Feighan. There were others, of course. Debate at the time centered about a few key issues, one of which was the insistence of a large “cut-out” for admitting family members of existing citizens, and the admittance of immigrants that would be economically “advantageous” on the basis of skills and training (and early ancestor of H-1B).  A compromise was reached to favor family members (the “brothers and sisters” provision it was nick-named).

 

The notion that this proposed legislation would potentially let in an entirely diverse racial and ethnic horde, while always lurking in the shadows, reflected JFK’s earlier view that “I see no reason to believe … (that future immigration)  would exceed five years from now, by any great amount, perhaps not at all, the average for the past ten years”[iii].. In other words, the biased past was projected onto the immigration future. Did they ever get that wrong! The Hart-Celler (Immigration and Nationality) Act passed—with strong bipartisan support on September 22, 1965, signed on NYC’s Liberty Island. At the signing, LBJ set the tone of its passage:

 

The bill corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation. The bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here. This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country—to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit—will be the first to be admitted to this land[iv].

 

The rest, as they say, is history—recounted in the below sections.

 

 

 

Immigration:  Doors of Entry: Front, Back, and Side

 

The Second Great Immigration took a decade after the law’s passage to show up; it started in the 1970’s.

To place American immigration in some context, global migration “more than doubled“ between 1980 and 2010—by 2013 estimates were over 232 million international migrants were on the move. Analytically, one can classify migration paths into four “corridors” according to the so-called “North-South” distinction (N-N, S-S, N-S and S-N). South to North (moving from developing to industrialized nation), the corridor that constitutes the principal US inflow, is the second-largest (35%) of the four global North-South corridors. That corridor picked up steam after 1990 and accounted for 59% of all immigrants to industrialized nations (from 53% previous). The largest of these flows is from Mexico to the USA (estimated at 13 million between 1990 and 2013[v].

 

Together Canada and the United States have 5 percent of the world’s people and almost a quarter of the world’s migrants. The United States has 20 percent of the world’s migrants, and is the only industrialized country where one-quarter of the migrants are unauthorized[vi].

 

Transition Era Surge: How Many and Where

The 1970 census reported immigrants/foreign-born at their lowest level in the 20^th century: 4.7% (9.6m). By 1980 that figure increased to 6.2% (14.1m) — a net increase of 4.7 million. “During the 1970’s, the origins of most immigrants changed from Europe to Latin America and Asia”. Average annual immigration leaped from 330,000 in the 1960’s to 450,000 in the Seventies—to 735,000 in the 1980’s and over 1mm in the 1990’s.[vii] In 1960 when it all began, 84% of immigrants living in the U.S. were both in Europe or Canada—only 6% from Mexico, less than 4% from South and East Asia, and 3.5% from the Caribbean and Latin/South America[viii].

 

The issue of when Transition Era illegal immigration began and how many there are is more challenging—and data most spongy. Alongside the 1965 immigration reform was the failure to renewal the two-decade plus farm laborer Bracero program. Since illegal immigration is logically biased toward those neighboring countries from which one can exit and travel to the USA in volume, Mexico has led the parade in illegal exports. A 1952 law made it a crime to “harbor” illegal aliens, but not a crime to employ them. Whatever illegal immigration that occurred during the 1970’s, by 1980 it was estimated that about 1.5 million illegals were in the USA, and a considerable number were likely disposed Bracero workers[ix].

 

A post-1980 Mexican economic crisis, combined with a relatively healthy American economy prompted a considerable rise. By 1986 an estimated 3.2 million unauthorized aliens were resident in the US. This rise is an important factor in the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act was introduced/approved in Congress. That act called for (1) amnesty for those in the USA for more than five years, (2) crackdown on illegal employment of by American business of unauthorized aliens, and (3) hardening of the borders and enhanced border security to inhibit illegal entry. Three million gained citizenship, but the entry if illegals continued and by 1990, it was back to about 3.5 million,

 

Simpson-Mazzoli carried with it significant overlap with some elements of economic and community development, and it made border security and raids of places of employment major issues in Border States. By 1995, there were estimated about 5.7 million illegals and 8.6 by 2000. By 2006, with our economy in high gear, the number reached its estimated high point of about 12 million. Since 2009, the number has fluctuated around 11 million—until after 2014.[x]

 

During the 1970’s net immigration—legal and illegal—was estimated at more than 7 million (Massey). The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) apprehended more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants and estimated 4 million eluded capture. Immigration during these early1970’s thru 1980’s hit Miami, Los Angeles, New York City and Honolulu (14%) the hardest. Miami’s foreign-born population was 54% in 1980, Los Angeles 27% and New York City 24%, Chicago and Boston about 15%, as was San Diego. Houston was 10, San Antonio about 8%, Tampa 7% and Dallas, Phoenix, Albuquerque between 5-7%. Atlanta was only 2% (Mohl, Miami: the Immigrant City 149-50). It is important to understand not only who and how, but when, immigration struck the nation’s cities and metro areas. Immigration after 1990 was more intense,

 

Where these immigrants settled differed markedly from the First Great Immigration.

 

As Gjelten observes in the First Great Immigration immigrants arrived in volume at port city entry points (i.e. Ellis Island in NYC). Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia handled the largest volumes—and the South did not garner any noticeable volume—ever. Immigrants settled either (1) in inner city (Big City) neighborhoods, characterized with the oldest and most distressed housing, or (2) quickly moved from the port city to sparsely-settled rural areas to establish homestead farms—especially in the upper Midwest. That did not happen in the Second Great Immigration.

 

Depending upon how one looks at it, there were no formal “entry ports”—any airport or border crossing would do. This geographic diffusion was further enhanced by the 1965 law that directed many immigrants to localities where their sponsoring resident families lived—and that centralized much immigrant into a few select states where Hispanics and Asians already lived. Quota or non-family-related immigrant were free to go where they chose—and they did—to the dismay of many a suburb that offered relatively cheap housing and entry-level job opportunities. Fairfax County in Virginia, for example, garnered a large number of immigrants during both Transition and Contemporary Eras. The push and pull of available jobs, the side door immigration that entered through university enrollment, and the various ED worker visa programs that technology and tourist-related firms regularly used, and incremental flow of immigrants into internal migrants diffused both Transition and Contemporary Era immigration nationally into every state of the Union.

 

To be sure, the First Great Immigration inner city neighborhood pattern also appeared, Los Angeles a prime example, Miami as well. This led to arguably inevitable tensions with Blacks with a major urban riot occurring in both cities during the Transition Era. During the Transition Era considerable attention was paid to bridge this tension, perhaps the most known being Jesse Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition”. In the 1990’s, California’s plebiscite (initiative and referendum)-style democracy generated a serious “white” backlash ostensibly against “illegals”, but instead motivated a greater Hispanic shared identity that led to a radical transformation in several California local policy systems—and in the Contemporary Era radically altering the state-level policy system as well.

 

Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and, above all California—border states- logically attracted the most unauthorized immigrants, and more than their share of Mexicans and Central Americans. Miami (and South Florida) on the other hand became the Capital of the Caribbean due to a number of large periodic refugee flows (not usually included in immigration figures). Some municipalities during these periods conducted formal population recruitment ED strategies and developed immigrant communities. Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, if only through the volume of immigrants, also developed “colonias” or concentrated urban settlements of immigrant population. In short, concentrations of ethnic immigrants did develop and a handful of states attracted most of the Second Great Immigration’s immigrant population. Still we acknowledge a nation-wide diffusion of immigrants to every state in the Union, a diffusion that gradually has increased during the two Eras. This is in marked contrast to the First Great Immigration.

 

Diffusion is more characteristic of the Contemporary Era as the Transition Era exhibited a greater concentration in several states. In 1990, seventy-three percent of immigrants were concentrated in only six states. Those six states held sixty-eight percent of all foreign-born retained that concentration through 2010 when they held sixty-five percent of foreign-born. In order of population volume (2010), the states were:  California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. Between 2000 and 2010 the states with the largest numerical immigrant growth were (in rank order): California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts[xi]. California’s in 2010 was residence to more than one of four (27.2%) of the nation’s immigrants and New York and Texas are nest with about 11% each. They were followed by Florida (9%) and New Jersey and Illinois (5%, 4% respectively). Together these six states are home to nearly two-thirds (65%) of the nation’s 2010 immigrant/foreign-born population[xii].

 

One might distinguish, however, high-volume states from states, states with high 1990-2010 growth rates, with states having high rates of foreign-born to native-born. The latter is an important indicator of the “felt”, i.e. “perceived” impact of immigration on the state and local policy system. When one does this, one can see the difference between California and Texas, Nevada and New Mexico—and can see how more diffusion, even at the state level, during the Second Great Migration. Using any one of these indicators can yield a very different picture. In that this study emphasizes policy system and culture change, I tend to rely on rates of foreign-born to native—and high volume numbers of people. However, one defines it, California, New York, Texas and Florida are in a league of their own.

 

In terms of percentage of state residents who were foreign-born (2010), however, California led the pack (27.2%), followed by New York (22.2%). New Jersey (21%), Florida (19.4%), Nevada (18.8%), Hawaii (18.2%), Texas (16.4%). Arizona “only” 13.4% and New Mexico (9.9%) while the Atlantic coastal states off from Massachusetts (15%), Maryland (13.9%) Connecticut (13.6%), and Rhode Island (12.8%) held high rates of foreign born in excess of the national average (12.9). West Virginia in 2010 had the lowest rate (1.2%) and nineteen states with rates lower than 5%. States along the Mississippi River and Mountain States were disproportionately included in lowest rate states. Excepting Texas and Florida, states in the former Confederacy held rates lower than the national average[xiii]. That diffusion occurred, is evident from Wyoming, who in 2010 possessed the fewest immigrant population for any state (15, 843), but grew 424% since 1990. In 2010 only 2.8% of Wyoming’s population were foreign-born. West Virginia, with America’s lowest share of foreign-born to native (1.2%) still grew nearly 150%. between 1990 and 2010—taking in twice as many immigrants as Wyoming[xiv].

 

Having said this, and acidly observing there is always a statistic that can convey almost any finding, the highest rates of growth in the Contemporary Era (2000-2010) (from obviously a very low base) were the same states—Alabama (92%) growth rate and many other low-volume southern, Mountain and Mississippi Valley states. From 1990 to 2010, however, the nation’s immigrant population essentially doubled, with North Carolina (525%), Georgia (445%, Arkansas (430%, Tennessee (389), with South Carolina and Kentucky 337% and 312% respectively the highest growth rates. The only non-southern post-1990 top growth state was Nevada at 385%. Middle American states also from a low base, grew moderately above the national average: Nebraska (298%), Utah (280%), and Colorado (249%, Minnesota (235%), Iowa (222%), Indiana (219%), Oklahoma (215%), and Arizona (208%) The only East Coast state above the post-1990 national immigrant growth average was Delaware (223%).

 

 

The Who and Where

 

The nation’s foreign-born population (9.7 million in 1970) quadrupled to exceed 40 million by 2010. In absolute numbers of foreign born in 2010 were the highest ever in our nation’s history. But in 1910 14.7% of the nation was foreign-born; while in 2010 it was 12.9%. In 2014, according to PEW, there were 42.2 million immigrants, making up about 13.2%–so the gap continues to narrow[xv].

 

With my emphasis on policy systems and political culture, it has been unfortunate that “the Who” of immigrants has often been reduced to “smush” agglomerations such as Hispanics and Asians, etc. This suits the media, and the simple souls who stress ideological policy-making to rectify equally smush problems such as discrimination, protectionism, and inequality. Place of origin, starting with continents helps us narrow down on cultural impacts as well as political pressures on policy systems. Asian and Hispanic immigrants developed distinctive patterns, best understood by nation of origin,[xvi].

 

 

Overview: Of immigrants who entered before 1980, Europeans constituted 24%. That changed to 8.4% between 2000 and 2010. Latin Americans (Mexicans, Caribbean, and Central America) previous to 1980 were slightly over 45% and that rose to nearly 54% during 2000-2010. Asians were nearly 24% pre-1980, and a bit less than 30% between 2000 and 2010. South Americans were 5.4% pre-1980 and 8% 2000 to 2010. Of all immigrants captured by the ACS in 2010 (nearly 40 million), Europeans were 12%, Asians 28%, Latin Americans about 53%, and South Americans nearly 7%[xvii].

 

From 1980 thru 2010, Mexico sent over 25 million to the United States (out of 40 million total immigrants), about 62.5%). China, Hong Kong and Taiwan was next with 4.6 million or about 11.5% of total immigrants. The Philippines were third with 4.1 million (10.25%) and fourth-place India sent 3.25 million or a little over 8%. Vietnam and El Salvador were neck and neck for fifth and sixth, and Cuba seventh just beat out Korea (eighth). Canada and the United Kingdom were 11^th and 12^th. After that Caribbean and South American nations (and Germany, Poland, Russia) filled out the remaining of the top twenty nations.

 

Hispanics: Immigration and Migration

 

Being defined as Hispanic/Latino is mostly based on language of nation of origin.  Much demographic (and partisan) commentary reference the projected “fact” that by 2050 or so, blacks, Asians and Hispanics will be “majority”. Perhaps so, but broadly-defined smush demographics leave much to be desired in terms of actual impacts on policy systems. National origin is an important indicator of distinctive cultural heritage and opens the door to variations in matters affecting policy-making.

 

PEW Research, reporting from 2013 data, asset there were nearly 54 million Hispanics (17.4%) in the U.S., with Mexicans (64%, 34.5 million) the largest national group. They were followed by Puerto Ricans (9.5%, 5.1 million) and tied for third Cubans and El Salvadorians (3.7%, nearly 2 million each). Dominicans, Guatemalan and Colombians range from 3.3, to 2.4, 2%). The remaining nations of origin (seven nations including Spain) range from 1.5 to .5% and constitute the internal national diversity of Hispanics.[xviii]

 

It is clear Latinos as a terms reflects considerable diversity, a diversity that challenges our immigration topic, Puerto Ricans are American citizens (99%), and three in four Hispanics (76%) are either U.S. born (65%) or naturalized citizens (11%).  Only Hondurans and Guatemalans have rates as low as 50%. Mexicans are younger, Cubans older, but Hispanics as a category are much younger than the general U.S. population (28 to 37 years old). South Americans can be wealthier, more educated and more dispersed throughout the nation than Mexicans or Puerto Ricans. Sixty-eight percent of Hispanics above five speak only English or speak English “very well”—obviously Puerto Ricans possess the highest rate. Over one quarter of Hispanics are below the poverty line (2010) compared to 16% of the general population. Central Americans suffer from the highest rates[xix].

 

In terms of immigration Hispanics are sub-divided into four geographic categories: Mexico, Caribbean, Central American and South America. Mexicans enjoy the largest share by far, followed by Caribbean, Central and then South Americans. Mexicans have been constant, albeit increasing numerically since 1970, but South Americans in particular are a Contemporary Age phenomenon. All sub-groups had the highest rates between 2000 and 2010. That has changed after the census, as reported by PEW, and Asian immigrants have exceeded for the first time the raw number of Hispanic immigrants. Central Americans seemingly had the greatest decline.

 

Geographically, the high volume states are not clones of each other in terms of Latino composition. California, sui generis, has 39% Mexican of its foreign-born populations, but only 1.7% Caribbean, yet 26.7% Central American and 8.5% South American. Texan immigrant population, on the other hand, is 22% Mexican, 2% Caribbean, 12% Central American and nearly 5% South American. New York immigrants are only 2% Mexican, but 26.7% Caribbean, only 8% Central American and nearly 21% South American. Florida, like NY only has 2.4% Mexican, but 41% Caribbean, 11% Central American, and more than 26% South American. New Jersey, however has half as many Mexicans (1%) than NY, 5.6% Caribbean, about the same Central Americans (4.3%) and 20% South Americans—reasonably similar to NY. Illinois, with less than 1% Caribbean, 1.7% Central American, and 1.9% South American, is the third ranking state in terms of Mexicans (6%), after California and Texas—more than Arizona’s 4.4%.—which BTW has .3% , .9%, and .6% Caribbean Central American and South American respectively. Two-thirds of Mexicans live in California, Texas and Illinois—three out of five in California and Texas[xx].

 

Internal Migration: Puerto Rican Migration

Puerto Ricans are born citizens of the United States. They are Americans since 1917. The movement of Puerto Ricans is an internal migration and is placed under the “immigration” topic only because Puerto Ricans are an element of America’s Hispanic/Latino population. Inclusion as an Hispanic/Latino is salient to this ED/CD analysis. In 2013, PEW estimated there were 5.1 million Mainland-resident Puerto Ricans (3.5 million on the Island); in 2017, some estimates ranged to 5.3 million, reflecting a post-2013 surge in Island migration. These numbers make Puerto Ricans the second largest Hispanic grouping (Mexicans) and 1.7% of all Americans; they account for about 9.5% of American Hispanics. Over 70% of Mainland Puerto Ricans were born I on the Mainland, and about 1.5 million were born on the Island (29%)[xxi].

 

For various reasons Puerto Rican mainland residents have been early and significant participants in the development of post-WWII community development, are important players in many jurisdictional policy systems, and are a principal potential beneficiary of mainstream ED targeting. Treatment of Puerto Rican Territorial ED/CD should be considered similar to that of a state. The application of relevant federal ED-related legislation to the Territory has resulted in enormous impact to the Island, and has been charged with being a major factor in migration to the Mainland. In recent years, the drift to Territorial bankruptcy (or whatever it may be called) has prompted higher rates to emigration from the Island—as well as including a rather significant ED dimension as well.

 

Significant migration to the Mainland started in the 1920’s (to New York City especially). Mainland PR population grew by nearly 350% during the 1920’s. Between 1940 and 1960, Mainland population increased by over 1100%, adding about 825,000 to 1940’s 70,000 base. Almost all of this period’s migration went to NYC, New Jersey and to New England urban centers. Mainland migration was a central city/urban phenomenon, but was dispersed to second and third tier cities also. The effect on the neighborhood composition and character of the urban jurisdictions was often profound. Major Puerto Rican CDOs, and cultural entities, are too numerous to list, but in communities where they are resident, Puerto Ricans have been significant participants in American sub-state ED/CD.

 

Neighborhood succession, usually characterized by high levels of concentration/segregation, and the relative poverty/low education level of the migrants arguably created more disruption than opportunity. The Ford Foundation Gray Cities experiment, the investment that produced many concepts and key principles underlying several post-WWII CD approaches, were in response to NYC/Hartford Puerto Rican juvenile delinquency and gangs. Both as competitors and allies, Puerto Ricans shared many of the same neighborhoods (East Harlem, South Bronx, Brooklyn’s Bushwick, and Fairhill Philadelphia) with African-Americans; both lived in segregated, poverty, discrimination, low-opportunity neighborhoods that were heavily involved in the post-Great Society rise of community development. While a majority of Puerto Ricans self-identify as white, well over forty per cent are Black or mixed racial background.

 

That Puerto Ricans and Blacks lived in the same neighborhoods, suffered different, but severe discrimination from the larger American society, and displayed remarkably similar demographic and behavioral characteristics, but were inconsistent allies and chronic “rivals” with each defending its own “turf” is testimony to their different cultures, and evidence supporting “invasion” so critical to concepts of neighborhood succession. A distinctive Puerto Rican culture, a subject of a considerable literature, legacy and heritage, is a well-accepted literary, social, historical and entertainment “category”, and that culture has impacted ED and CD strategies and programs, and has always, and likely will always, affect the making of neighborhood and jurisdictional ED/CD policy.

 

Residential concentration has facilitated the elections of Puerto Ricans to key political bodies, and powerful institutions since 1937. When Corey Booker ran for New Jersey senator (2013), he was succeeded as mayor of Newark by Island-born Puerto Rican Luis Quintana—the fourth mayor of a large American city (Miami, Hartford, and Camden).

 

Puerto Rican settlement has been mainly an East Coast urban phenomenon.  New York (City) was the principal initial migration, and even today is arguably the “home base” of Mainland Puerto Ricans. New York City politics has accommodated Puerto Ricans as an active player in its policy process, and neighborhood EDOs, as well as public unions reflect the City’s Puerto Rican base. From the City migration entered into New Jersey and from there to Philadelphia. New England cities also experienced post WWII Puerto Rican migration as did New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Post-1980 Puerto Rican migration has opened up new residential bases in several southern states, especially Florida. Central Florida (Orlando and Tampa) today house nearly 19% of all Mainland Puerto Ricans, and the South including Florida about 31%. The state of New York still holds the honor for housing most Mainland Puerto Ricans—about 21%. Chicago and Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island also house a substantial number of Puerto Ricans in their major cities. In terms of states where Puerto Ricans are the largest Hispanic component, Connecticut (57%) is the highest, followed by Pennsylvania (53%). Massachusetts and Connecticut hover around 40%, which are noticeably higher than NY and NJ, around 33%. Florida’s Puerto Ricans are only 27% of the state’s Hispanics. Looked at from another angle, the states with the largest Puerto Rican populations relative to total population are (in order of rank, 2010): Connecticut (7.1%), New York (5.5%), New Jersey (4.9%), Florida 4.5%), Massachusetts (4.1%), Rhode Island (3.3%), Hawaii (military service) (3.2%), Pennsylvania (2.9) and Delaware (2.5%).

 

The cities with the most Puerto Rican residents are (in order of rank, 2010): New York City (723,621)—almost 9% of the city population), Philadelphia (121, 643), Chicago (102,703), Springfield MA (50,798), Hartford (41,995), Newark (35,993), Bridgeport CT (31,881), and then Orlando (31, 201), the fastest growing. Tampa, it is noted, is seventeenth with 24,057. It is obvious that the older now-traditional urban centers still retain a considerable number of Puerto Ricans, often the poorest and minimally educated. Puerto Ricans in the southern states are older, more affluent, often retired middle class, and are dispersed throughout the metro areas, as opposed to the central cities. It is also true the Puerto Rican middle class has also moved to the suburbs even in the traditional older Puerto Rican settlements. Holyoke Massachusetts has the highest percentage of Puerto Ricans as a percent of its total population (44%), a close tie with Buenaventura Florida, with 44% as well. Next are several Florida suburbs with 35% or higher—residential retirement enclaves. Generational cohort migration is a significant factor in post-2000 Contemporary Era Puerto Rican migration.

 

Asian Immigration: Asian includes a lot of the world’s geographies—ranging from the Middle East, to India, to Southeast Asia, China, Japan and East Asia. To compound the issue the dissolution of the USSR after 1990 created a number of new Asian nations (Central Asia) that were formerly classified as European. Refugee “immigration”—refugees are not included usually in immigrant statistics—further affect the impact of new populations on our jurisdictional policy systems. America’s colonial and pre-1965 historical legacy has also compounded our analysis. Hawaii and California do not share the sane Asian-American history as the remaining forty-eight states. Both possess an historical legacy that created an Asian population previous to the 1965 legislation.

 

Chinese and Japanese entered into San Francisco and California during the 19^th century—San Francisco’s “Chinatown” is well known as are Japanese internment camps during WWII. As early as 1918, 180,000 Asian-Americans lived in the USA (including 100,000 Japanese, 60,000 Chinese and 5,000 Filipinos)[xxii]. American colonialism/imperialism led to our “adoption” of Hawaii (which adopted in 1906 a worker recruitment program that brought an estimated 100,000 Philippines to replace its former East Asian recruitment program) and imposed a colonial government on the Philippines (see an “Internal Migration” below for Puerto Rico).  One can also argue our nation’s involvement with Vietnam (which some date back to the 1950’s) has overtones of imperialism/anti-communism. World War II and post-war occupation of Japan produced many naturalized citizens who fought with us or who married GIs.

 

Still, the passage of the 1965 legislation transformed Asian-American immigration. Asian immigrants increased from less than 500,000 in 1960 to about 12.8 million in 2014. While growth rates have slowed since 1980 Asia in that year was the second-largest region of birth for post-1980 immigrants. In the last several years, with the slowing of Mexican/Hispanic immigration, Asian immigrants are now the largest annual number of recent immigrants. The largest countries of origin as of 2014 (see above) India, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Korea-accounting for 68% of total Asian immigration. Eastern Asia (Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan) comprise 31% of Asian immigrants, South Central Asians (India, Pakistan/Bangladesh, Iran and Nepal) are 27.7%, South East Asian countries 32.6% (the highest), and Middle East (excluding Iran and Pakistan) about 8.3%.[xxiii] These are vastly disparate cultures, religions, and historical legacies.

 

Reflecting the bimodal (concentration/diffusion) post-1965 immigration settlement pattern, nearly half of Asian immigrants have settled in just three states (California (32%), New York (10%) and Texas (7%). In that Asians immigrants are often highly educated (half of Asian adults had a college degree or higher in 2014—76% of Indian—employment location and student status have impacted locational choice.  Since the Great Recession the number of Asian students have doubled (led by China, nearly 500% increase, Kuwait (540%) and Saudi Arabia 1730%)[xxiv]. Accordingly New Jersey and Illinois (Chicago) also rank high. Most states have less than 1% of Asian immigrants (major exceptions being states with Ivy League or prestigious universities). Montana, Vermont, West Virginia Wyoming, North Dakota have “trace” amounts of Asian immigrants—suggesting an urban bias.

 

In terms of absolute numbers, the single most popular location for 2009-2013 Asian immigrants has been Los Angeles Metro area (nearly 1.6 million) and New York (also 1.6 million). San Francisco Metro is third (over 700,000) and Washington DC and Chicago fourth/fifth at about 440,000. Houston and Dallas led Texas. Our preference to use proportion of total population as an indicator of potential impact on local policy systems and ED policy-making suggest that the San Jose is the top Metro area for 2009-2013 Asian immigrants (419,000, with 22.5% of the Metro population) and San Francisco Metro is second (over 16%). Los Angeles is third with over 12% of the Metro total population. New York, by comparison is less than 8% as is Washington DC and San Diego; Houston and Dallas about 5% and 4%. Asians, particularly Indian, are employed in high-skilled jobs and have entered the US on temporary H-1B visas for specialty occupations. Of the 2014 approved H-1B petitions, 70% were born in India, followed by Mainland China (8%)[xxv]. New York, Dallas and San Jose are the top three H-1B beneficiaries, at least in 2013[xxvi].

 

Refugee/Asylum Migration

While most eyes are focused on immigration, legal or otherwise, the entry of refugees/asylum has cumulatively injected a reasonably large number of foreign born into a few metropolitan areas. The U.S. is the world’s admitter of refugees—at least until the 2015-16 Syrian-African/European migration.  Since 1983, somewhat less than 3.5 million refugees/asylum entered into the USA. Following after a large-scale refugee increase that resulted from Castro’s Cuban takeover and the Vietnamese exodus after its 1975 fall, Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980.

 

The reader is referred to our discussion of Miami for a more detailed sense of the impact of refugees (Cuban in Miami’s case) on selected municipalities in the early Transition Era. Cuban post-1960 refugees dramatically transformed the character and the future of Miami-Dade and indeed southern Florida. Today Miami refers to itself as the “Queen City of the Caribbean”, is considered by many as a “world class” or global city as a direct consequence of its repopulation by Cuban refugees. While Miami-Dade is not the typical “refugee” municipal experience, it does strongly suggest the impact of large number of refugees in a single jurisdiction may impart consequences and characteristics to the local policy system and politics that depart somewhat from those inserted by more traditional immigration. It is possible that refugees tend to be more “insular-inward looking”, concentrated/ segregated in residency, more disposed to “identity politics”, and hold over considerable time periods an attachment to the “motherland” that affects the refugee’s level of participation/commitment to the U.S. local policy system.

 

That act formalized the US refugee program, and adopted the UN’s 1951 Convention and subsequent 1967 Protocols (which we signed in 1968) as the definition of a refugee. The importance of definition is demonstrated by the decision to consider the Miami-bound Haitian Boat refugees as “economic” and not political” refugees which placed them outside of the UN definition—and hence could be intercepted and returned to their homeland.

 

In any case, from 1980 on, the President, in “consultation” with Congress, set the annual number of refugees allowed into the United States. The 1980 was amended by the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The annual refugee cap has varied. Its peak was 1992-3. Higher annual rates were allowed previous to 9/11 (2001) than after, so it is wise to distinguish between the Transition Era and our Contemporary Era. Also, it is the refugee program which was the target of the controversial President Trump “travel ban executive orders/ court decisions” of 2017 (Executive Order 13780).

 

Through 2004, thirty metro areas, most with large foreign-born populations, handled most refugee resettlements. As described earlier, New York and Los Angeles settled the largest number, but the ethnic background of each was markedly different. Chicago was third, mostly European, but also a noticeable number of Asians and Middle Easterners. Washington DC resettled a large number of African refugees, and Minneapolis with a large number of Southeast Asian refugees. Boston, San Diego and Houston also accepted many refugees. Seattle (the fifth largest metro in this Era), San Jose, Minneapolis-St Paul, Sacramento and Portland in the later Transition Era increasingly became serious refugee gateways, and St. Louis also accepted a meaningful number, chiefly Bosnian refugees[xxvii].

 

The Transition Era exhibited three distinct, yet overlapping, “refugee” periods. During the Transition Era resettled refugees were about 10% of the immigrants entering into the U.S. The Cold War period which ended with the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union was characterized by large numbers of Soviet refugees. Peaking at 60,000 in 1992, nearly 500,000 Soviet residents entered the USA between 1983 and 2004 (the largest grouping during the Transition Era)—by 1994, however that number was reduced to less than 30,000 annually. New York (City) metropolitan area was their prime destination.  A second refugee grouping entered through Los Angeles during these years, however. Several waves of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees were admitted. Totaling approximately 367,000 through 2004, Vietnamese were the second largest Transition Era group. Laotians and Cambodians were fourth and fifth largest. Their annual rates ranged from 35,000 to 52,000. Settling in communities when earlier Southeast Asian refugees had settled (California, Los Angeles and Orange County). While continuing to accept large numbers of refugees, New York and Los Angeles dropped noticeably in the Contemporary Era[xxviii].

 

The second period began after 1992 when Yugoslavia disintegrated and the Balkans entered into an extended period of “civil war”—and religious/ethnic genocide. About 155,000 Balkan residents were admitted previous to 2000. Refugees from the various areas of former Yugoslavia were the third largest grouping during the Transition Era, around 168,000. In the Late 1990’s a third period emerged, characterized by a more diverse flow of refugees, principally from widespread civil war and ethnic conflict in Africa. Somali, Sudanese, Liberian and Ethiopian refugees constituted the largest groupings, but there was significant flows from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. About 127,000 refugees flowed from the latter three nations, and fifteen African nations, Somalia the largest, sent a slightly higher number[xxix]. Several second and third tier cities accepted high rates of refugees and led the “per capita”-based refugee resettlement: Fargo ND, Erie PA, Sioux Falls SD, and Binghamton NY. Half of the Iranian refugees settled in the Los Angeles metro area, and no surprise, half of the Cubans settled in Miami, one in five Somali went to Detroit. Laotian refuges went disproportionately to Fresno, Minneapolis-St Paul, and Cambodians to Los Angeles. Chicago and St Louis accepted the highest rates of Yugoslavian-based refugees[xxx].

 

The Contemporary Era–Jointly administered by several federal agencies, the refugee resettlement program, works with, is dependent upon the voluntary participation of states, cities, and church/-based and community development agencies. The federal government distributes refugees according to family ties, job availability, and acceptance by a state and local CDO group. The federal government assumes financial responsibility for the first 90 days, and then the locals take over. The refugee is eligible for “long-term residency” or a “green card” after one year. The refugee must find employment after six months—which is usually handled by the CDO. Most refugees are woman and children, however. With a green card, refugees are free to move to wherever they want. There was a marked slowdown in the vetting and entry of refugees following 9/11 and for several years thereafter.

 

After its peak in 1993 (142,000), the annual cap declined to its nadir in 2002 and 2003 (around 30,000 actually resettled). Rising to around 70,000 it was raised to 80,000 in 2008 and stayed around that through 2011, when it was reduced to 76,000, and 70,000 in 2012 and 2013 respectively. It remained at 70,000 through 2015. In 2016 the Obama administration raised the cap 50 85,000 and 110,000 in 2017. Targets were set to resettle 40,000 Near East and South Asian (Burma, Bhutan) refugees. Latin, Caribbean, and Central Americans were the lowest grouping. The largest refugee grouping resettled thus far in the Contemporary Era, over the decade after 2006, Burmese were the largest single refugee group (163,000 or 23% of those resettled), followed by Bhutan (13% or nearly 93,000). In the Obama years, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iraq, Syria, Burma, and Somalia were the major groups[xxxi].  On a per capita-resident basis, Nebraska led the pack, followed by North Dakota, Idaho, Vermont and Arizona[xxxii].

 

In 2015 almost 70,000 refugees were admitted, and the 2016 increase to 85,000 (+23%), while noticeable was not a return to the levels of past years. Given the ISIS crisis, past utilization by Burmese/Bhutan was reduced from about 36% to 16%. The increase flow of Syrians, from 2% to 15% was dramatic, as was the increase of Democratic Republic of Congo from 12% to 17%. By 2017, fifty-five percent of resettled refugees/asylum seekers were settled in ten states—California (10% and Texas (9%) lead the pack, with NY, WA, OH, MI, and AZ each accepted 5-6%[xxxiii].

 

In hindsight, the increase in accepting asylum seekers (the distinction is “refugees” are vetted in the country to which they initially fled and after a review which often requires 18-24 months is approved by U.S. bureaucratic decision-makers, while asylum seekers literally arrive at the port of entry without such vetting) proved unsettling to the incoming Trump administration. In 2015, the Obama administration approved a record-breaking 26,124 individuals, mostly from ISIS-affected regions. In 2014 about 23,374 were admitted. The initial asylum seekers family members (over 7,000) were admitted afterwards. Interestingly, the flow-pattern differed considerably from the refugee flow pattern. Twenty-four percent of these 2015 asylum seekers were from the People’s Republic of China and over 25% from El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala. Just over 6% came from Iraq and Syria[xxxiv]. The Trump administration reduced by executive order the Obama administration’s 110,000 refugee cap to 50,000—which by the time of its issuance was almost reached. Since the cap reduction was never contested, the Trump strictures would have potentially affected about 7,000 refugees from all nations.

 

The Federal Government: Borders, Dream Act/DACA, and H-IB (et al) Visas

 

Immigration obviously triggers the involvement of the federal government, as it enjoys constitutional responsibility for that policy area (putting aside for the moment, sanctuary cities). In particular, this section will introduce Protecting/Administration of Border Areas and Entry Points—as well as the administrative process (including vetting in national of origin) that applies to immigrants has been an increasing (especially post-1980) factor in state and sub-state matters—in major entry points and, border states where the border patrol, drug enforcement, and customs are deeply involved. Federal border policy, the effectiveness of its application as well as the policy itself, has become a major issue in California, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico—also Miami and Florida. The reactions to this will be detailed in discussion of key states such as Texas, California and Arizona.

 

The Dream Act/DACA: Secondly, the federal government has attempted to respond with its own legislation to deal with complications and impact of the considerable post 1965 immigration. The Dream Act (Sens Durban and Hatch), for example, has been a major issue, affecting ED/CD since it was first introduced in the 2001 Senate. Since 2001 many Dream Act bills have been introduced, the House passed on2 (216-198) in 2010, but other bills have failed, for example in a 2005 Senate cloture vote (52-44). The Act was included in several comprehensive immigration reform acts (2006 and 2007), and was also inserted into other legislation (Defense, for example) in various years.

 

Each bill and annual version of the Dream Act included its own language and provisions. While the Dream Act was considered by many to be a de facto “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, it was never its formal intention to do so. Essentially, most bills included a provision to grant “conditional legal status” for a six year period provided the immigrant satisfy other provisions such as attend community college, enlist in the military, or complete a four year college degree, for which they would not be eligible for Pell grants, but could apply for work study and student loans. If, the registered lived up to these conditions, permanent residency could follow after the six year conditional status. Applicants had to also satisfy age, and that they had already resided for more than five years in the USA. They had to graduate from high school/GED and no hold a criminal record.

 

The actual terms and conditions were tweaked over the torturous legislative history, and the Dream Act/DACA became linked with other aspects of immigration policy, such as workforce legality, verification by employer and college, and precisely what constituted a criminal record. The military loved the bill as it addressed a chronic need for enlistees, but states were conflicted as the Act overlapped with local school administration, Medicaid, driver’s license and a host of other programs.

 

Given the inevitable distortions induced by the polarized media and the hyper-partisanship associated with immigration, it was unlikely those outside the immediate policy/program had any clear idea as to what the Dream Act actually “was”, and, for that matter, what DACA (or DAPA) was. The overlap with ED appeared minimal, but in fact it did become an ED-related issue in several states. Many Community Developers and CDOs were noticeably involved with the Act and DACA administration.

 

After 2009, with the election of President Obama and a Democrat control of all three policy-making branches, a bi-partisan effort was made to approve a strong version of the Act—it failed and the attempt was remade in the 2010 Congress as well. That too suffered the same fate. The House did pass the bill, and it did not reach the necessary 60 vote minimum in the Senate. So in 2011, Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, introduced yet again a strong version of the Dream Act. It ran afoul of key conservative Republicans (McCain and Graham) who had in the past been advocates for immigration legislation. In the midst of Senate negotiations, California passed its own Dream Act (July). The 2011 legislation did not pass.

 

With his reelection imminent, on June 15, 2012, President Obama ordered agencies involved in key elements of the Dream Act would (deportation, Immigration Services) implement the provisions of a new, unapproved by Congress, federal program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, (DACA)—an administration program to implement a number of key Dream Act elements—including a controversial provision to allow the federal government to issue 2 year work permits to undocumented/illegal immigrants under 36 years of ag. The unilateral implementation of an unapproved program generated a counter action by Arizona’s governor Jan Brewer denying driver’s license and welfare benefits to illegal immigrants who benefited from the DACA program. Law suits from a number of parties (including U.S. Immigration and Custom agents) followed.

 

A turbulent history resulted but it did not stop the flow of illegal immigrants that applied for DACA. As of January 2017, approximately 740,000 immigrants were registered and received benefits from DACA. Its constitutionality, however, appears fragile (usurpation of Congressional authority/ issuance of work permits)—even Obama originally felt he lacked the authority at its inception stated it was temporary. In 2015 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals placed a “stay” (an injunction) on DAPA, which the Supreme Court left in place after their review in 2016.

 

H-1B: Temporary Worker Visas—the Side Door

 

Illegal immigration captures the headlines and was arguably the primary driver of policy during both the Transition and Contemporary Era. But legal and illegal immigration numbers significantly understate the entry of foreign workers and visitors to the United States. There is, as the Population Reference Bureau argues, a sizable “side door”[xxxv]. Not included in these statistics are “green cards” or temporary visas that allow foreigners to travel, study, or to live in the USA and work (up to five years) and creates a path to naturalized citizenship. They estimated between 2006 and 2010 (the Contemporary Era) over 40 million temporary visitors and workers entered into the US.  Oversight of the temporary visa problem is erratic and is frequently criticized for not keeping track of expiration dates on temporary visas—creating a gray area—but one that frequently falls off the economic developer’s radar.

 

The H-1B visa program commenced in 1990 as part of the 1990 Immigration Act. Its purpose was to access on behalf of employers high skilled foreign workers for “specialty” occupations unable to satisfy their requirements/needs from American sources for a temporary period of time. The “specialty” as defined by the legislation meant such occupations required at least a bachelor’s degree (exception being fashion models—Gisele can apply Mr. Brady).  An H-1B visa is for three years, renewable for another three year term. There are other smaller visa programs (for example O, L-1 and L-1B) that fill niches in employer-specific occupational situations. The program distinguishes between academic/nonprofit research positions and those with a private employer. Until 2004, the former were “uncapped” (see below).

 

There is a rather complex and “bureaucratic” process to qualify a specialty occupation and submit an individual application. A network of agencies, chief of which are DOL, Homeland Security, and State (which issues the visa) is involved—there is a fee of course. Half of the fee is transferred to DOL’s Employment and Training Administration to fund programs intended to address skill shortages. Bookings singles out the Workforce Alliance of South Central Kansas (Engineering Excellence Project-KEEP) as a successful recipient of an ETA grant and who developed a program model of benefit to the region)[xxxvi]. Over the years, the program has been tweaked by several pieces of legislation, none of which exacted any serious impact on the program itself.

 

The program has a “dual purpose” and accordingly permits, with employer sponsorship, application for permanent residency (green card). Since there has historically been a considerable backlog in such applications and final determination (plus quota restrictions based on national origin) some allegations have been made the program encourages recipients to stay illegally until their application is resolved. Approval of applications is sometimes achieved through a “lottery” administered by USCIS (which was unsuccessfully challenged in a legal action), and in other years it seems approval is on first-come basis—with USCIS publishing when the cap has been reached. Unopened applications are then returned.

 

There is an annual cap imposed on H-1B visas, initially set at 65,000 but was raised several times, reaching a 2001-2003 peak at 195,000 (Twenty-First Century Act of 2000). Since 2004 through 2011, the 65,000 cap was restored with a second cap of 20,000 for workers with an advanced degree from U.S. colleges. Since 2003, the cap has been reached and demand (applications) has exceeded the cap. In 2008, there were almost 405,000 applications for 85,000 visas About 70,000 employers annually file applications for H-1B worker slots. Half requested only one worker, and 94% less than ten. Fifteen employers filed at least 1000 applications, and another sixteen between 500-1000[xxxvii]. On April 3, the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service (which administers much of the H-1B program—and issues the visas would “temporarily” suspend processing for H-1B visa applications. On April 18, President Trump signed a “Buy American, Hire American” executive order which among other features called for federal agencies to submit reforms to the H-1B program.

 

Technology, Accounting Corporate Personnel Contractors, and Investment Banks (also CVS) are some of the heaviest traditional users. Foreign-owned firms are also heavy users. In 2010-11 Microsoft led the pack with 4109 applications—and Tata Consultancy (Indian-owned) was second with 3179. In that year, sixty-four percent of the applications were for STEM-related occupations. There is noticeable difference in nonprofit research and private employer applications. Private firms stress computer/ software related skills, engineering and financial analysis. Nonprofit top occupation was life sciences[xxxviii]. Firms file the applications on behalf of employees and pay the fees.

 

Virtually every metropolitan area has firms/nonprofits that submits an H-1B application, but logically heavy users dominated the process. The heaviest application submittal, again logically, originates from the most populated metro areas, New York being the heaviest (53,000 in 2010-11), followed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and Washington D.C (ranging from 18,000 to 14,000 in the same year). The top nine (next in line being Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Houston—and Seattle 10—ranging from 14,000 to 9,600) file half the H-1B applications.[xxxix].

 

If one measures the intensity of application submittal to per capita population (more helpful in understanding the issues and underlying patterns), New York drops from the pack and San Jose goes to number one, followed by Columbus Indiana (Cummins), Durham NC (Duke/University of NC) and Trenton NJ (Princeton) and Ann Arbor (Univ. of Michigan). This suggests smaller metros participate in the H-1B process. Brookings also suggest it hints private firms use H-1B to overcome constraints in specialty occupation labor supply for the smaller metros. Rochester Minnesota (Mayo Clinic) ranks No. 1 in geographic areas submitting applications for “uncapped” H-1B which concentrate on health and life sciences/research occupations. Within the “private firm” pattern, Brookings uncovered two sub-patterns: (a) product-based firms (Google, Amazon, and Cummins—with a wide range of occupations requested) are geographically concentrated, usually from corporate HQ, while (b) service/client-based companies (Tata Consultancy, Fujitsu, Qualcomm and Accenture) are dispersed and sent from their client’s metro area—also applications are concentrated with a narrow range of occupations requests)[xl].

 

From this we glean the H-1B application process includes at least three distinct sub-patterns. Twenty-seven metros in 2010-11 were topped by private/corporate submittals—nine to the top twenty metros that submit the highest number of applications are corporate. Another twenty-seven metros compete in the “uncapped” research/nonprofit submittals—and they are home to top research universities and research entities (Durham NC, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New Haven and Buffalo top the rankings). The third sub-pattern includes metros with a combination of the previous two sub-patterns. Washington, Chicago, Boston, Houston and Philadelphia lead in this sub-group. In all three patterns, STEM occupations constitute 92% of the occupations desired.

 

While no aggregate study of approved applications exists[xli], sporadic one-year studies do provide glimpses into the H-1B impact. Recode[xlii] asserts in 2015 about 80% of the approved applicants in 2015, and 82% in 2016 came from India (126,692) and China (21,657). Tata Consultancy and Wipro dominate the client-serving (and foreign-owned) users, Google and Facebook the corporate. They confirm other data which supports our previous discussion that applications issued equal 85,000 per year and about 100,000 renewed annually. Research on 2012 approvals found that Indians were 64% of the approved applicants and China was in second place[xliii].

 

In 2017 Senator Ron Johnson (R-WIS) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo) submitted legislation, “the State-Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act, that would allow states to start visa programs for foreign guest workers—in effect transferring the H-1B (and other visas, see below) to the states. The legislation would allow 500,000 visas to be issued, 5,000 per state, and the remainder apportioned on the basis of state population. Indexed to growth, each state could decide, if it chose to participate at all, which occupations, skills and industries it would admit. This could include farm labor, as well as H-1B’s specialty occupations.

 

As one might expect, there have been several concerns (including Congressional hearings and legislation) which have persisted through the long life of the program.  The obvious bottom line is whether American workers are being “discriminated” against either because they are too expensive, or foreign workers are more desired by the corporate user. Interestingly, these criticism are not applied to those workers utilized by nonprofit universities and research institutes. Other concerns include whether the program is a backdoor, or even informal way to create a path to citizenship, than through the immigration process. Given that it is asserted by many that about one million legal immigrants enter into the US each year, the H-1B (and the refugee/asylum) programs could allow about 15% additional residents.

 

There is a lesser known H-2 A&B visa program which admits temporary non-agricultural workers. H-2B has been capped in recent years to 66,000 annually—divided into two six month periods. Hospitality, ski resorts, and tourist industries, as well as construction and landscaping sectors have benefited from this program. It has escaped the attention of the Policy World and research institutes, for reasons that are not known, but one suspects not “honorable”—that is until it was discovered Trump hotels took advantage of the program. This program also were expanded by 15,000 when President Trump took office. Specific nations are admitted as eligible to send applications.[xliv] The program started in 1987, but it was not until 2000 that approved applicants reached 60,000 annually. Its peak was 2008 (above 94,000), but that is more evidence of the previous bubble/boom that led to the 2008 Great Recession. By 2015 it recovered sufficiently to admit nearly 70,000.[xlv] This program suffers from the same criticisms and concerns mention in H-1B, with the addition of “slave” labor for low-paid, hard-working positions, for example on cruise/resort ships and Martha Vineyard restaurants.

 

All this “temporary”, “non-immigrant” visa “stuff opens the door to the incredible number of visa programs that exist (including H-1 and H-2) and admit individuals to the United States each year. In 2016, for example, the last year for which data exists, 10,381,000[xlvi] were admitted to the US. I hand counted eighty-five different visas. B1/2 and BBC (temporary business visas, called by some the “nanny visa”—which is unfair) admitted over one million in 2016, H-2A over 134,000, J-1 (au pair, exchange students) 340,000. Student visas (F or M) admitted nearly 500,000 in 2016.

 

Summary

Immigration on this scale is a shock to jurisdictional policy systems in any number of policy areas. Until the Great Recession times were “good” and the economy’s capacity to “absorb” immigrants, mostly into low wage employment, seemed remarkable considering post-Great Recession job growth has been anemic at best—taking the better part of the following decade to recapture lost ground. It is testimony to the immigrants themselves they were able to make it and raise families during these years. Economic developers, if one dwells on the literature, focused on the highly talented, well-educated segment, prized for their creativity, advanced degrees and hard work, as well as risk-taking entrepreneurism. This fit in well with high-tech/bio-health/information cluster-targeting common to the 1990’s and after.

 

The impact, perceived or actual, on America’s Forgotten People, however, was unacknowledged during these Eras—in fact dismissed is too mild a term, negative reaction to these impacts was attributed to parochialism, obsolescence of skills and lifestyles, and racism. Community developers, on the other hand, took up the difficult task of empowering and integrating these hosts of ethnics into the community/neighborhood in which they settled. Mainstream economic developers centered their interest of the several federal visa programs which were used by technology firms, tourist businesses, agricultural companies, and research universities.

 

Immigration changed neighborhoods, created homogenous ethnic suburbs, and augmented high end and low-wage labor forces. Regarding political cultures, Hispanic “el Norte” has already changed the cultural face of America. Hispanics are the largest “minority”, they elect representatives to all levels of government, have diffused, and settled in concentrated areas. They are one of Woodard’s Eleven Nations.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, “Imagine there’s No Border, City Journal, Summer 2016, pp.44-53 Vol 26, No3,

1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act (transferred enforcement of immigration laws to private employers)

George Borjas, We Wanted Workers, Norton, 2016

 

 

Generational Cohort Migrations

 

Big Sort: Change in Policy Systems and Political Culture

 

The Big Sort

ED/CD is a policy area whose policies/strategies/programs are produced by a policy system. The Big Sort is less about what created the types of policy systems in vogue during any particular period, then how they came to be distributed across regions, states, and metro areas. Big Sort population mobility is only one factor, an important one after 1970, but still only one factor. Because of the Big Sort our two cultural ships could dock in jurisdictions (and neighborhoods) within each metro area. Post-suburban jurisdictional demographic homogeneity, however, could easily result in metropolitan heterogeneity. This is a testimony to local democracy is also a prescription for polarization. Yet one more force has injected politicization and polarization into ED/CD policy-making. What is this Big Sort? Why is all this stuff happening?

 

Bishop argues that since 1965 or so, we have incrementally evolved into a “post-materialism culture”. Borrowing from Inglehart’s (Inglehardt and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy) (Inglehardt, the Silent Revolution) provocative research, we left post-WWII moderation, characterized by a bi-partisan consensus, public civility and non-ideological, expert-driven decision-making, for the current cultural mind frame. Inglehardt borrowed heavily upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and he held that the booming post-WWII economic growth created a ‘worldview” (augmented by each successive generation) that increasingly replaced the previous, longstanding worldview. With few aware of, and with nobody’s permission, a new kind of politics gradually formed after 1965. The new society was more about personal taste than attachment to any specific public policy. It was more concerned with self-expression, aspirations and personal belief than with social-economic class issues (Bishop 103-4). People who knew their basic needs were satisfied gradually adopted different values from those who lived with scarcity.

 

Some individuals or groups, of course, did not adopt the new culture and instead sought to retain the post-WWII traditional culture either as a defense against worsening economic tides, or some measure of stability, continuity and meaning in a rapidly changing world. For Bishop, religious orientation was especially important in this bi-polar cultural evolution. Woodard asserted that the cultural values and traditions of the Eleven Nations played a role as well. This geographic cultural Big Sort is the inherent driver of our politicization and polarization[xlvii]. How did this occur in our jurisdictions?

 

Bishop explained migrants choose one jurisdiction over another, creating a “political segregation of American communities”. Borrowing from Gimpel’s studies and Patchwork Nation (Gimpel and Schuknecht), Bishop found that “most of America and most Americans were engaged in a thirty year movement toward more homogeneous ways of living”; both political segregation and polarization resulted (Bishop 11). Facilitated by the car and discretionary income that freed households from “want and worry” allowed them the opportunity “to reorder their lives around their values, their tastes and their beliefs. They were clustering in communities of like-mindedness” (Bishop 12). Mobile people selected neighborhoods and cities whose lifestyle and values reflected their own. Obviously, the household locational decision involves many factors. Certainly price is one of them, “like-mindedness” is another. Big Sort population mobility produced concentrated power bases for the two political parties.

 

“Lacking the understanding and ties [issues, patterns and traditions that characterize a jurisdiction] … new residents will import and then act upon their own partisan affiliation and viewpoints. If a volume of migration is high enough, a place’s political distinctiveness can be washed away rather quickly as the native population is overwhelmed … by newcomers” (Gimpel and Schuknecht 382).

 

Not all of Woodard’s eleven American cultures completely adopted the more secular, more Progressivist worldview. Some adopted only parts, or injected different meanings and definitions. Some nations change more deliberately than others. The various old political cultures that floated our two ships thus far through this history, in one way or another became a part of this Big Sort polarization. The post-1970 Big Sort population mobility “docked” migrants into demographically unsinkable communities and jurisdictions

 

Big Sort Background

Bishop’s Big Sort provides a helpful backdrop to the reader—and a neat icon-like expression that guides our analysis of the interplay between political culture, population mobility, and policy system/policy output change. A few observations and caveats concerning the Big Sort are advisable. The book is focused on politics/voting behavior which can be helpful to us, but for the most part is not a primary objective of the history. More limiting is its close association with Richard Florida’s the Rise of the Creative Class (Florida). The two books share much as do the authors. A great deal of Bishop relies on the application and legitimation of Florida’s Creative Class. This history finds that linkage limits our analysis greatly—and for the most part we do not rely on the association of creative class migration with the Big Sort. To the extent it has utility for the history, it comes from its overlap with our generational cohort concept.

 

Secondly, as might be evident from our past chapters, population migration inherently involves some level of “-sorting”—it is not limited to post-1965 Big Sort. Also as “Go West Young Man” implies, population migration has been historically associated with young, new households, and frequently men—with women and families more in a second wave. This has been captured by our generation cohort concept. The rising Sunbelt has caught a great deal of this generational mobility—to the extent that post-1970 generational cohorts have been integrated by many commentators into the redefinition of “western” economic growth, and the refocus of ED attention to the neighborhood. One reason we discuss Del Webb’s Sun City is to alert the reader that one characteristic of post-1965 population mobility is that older generations can be an important element in our “Big Sort” and that intra-county migration by all age cohorts can play a meaningful role in our ED history.

 

Necessarily it is also sensitive to economics, jobs, and occupations—the economic base of jurisdictions. New sectors and industries have driven migration, and so gold miners follow gold rushes and educated computer programmers settle in “tech centers”—not to mention oil rig roughnecks to fracking agglomerations. New sectors, as often as not, tend to agglomerate and clusters of associated sectors also concentrate in regions and jurisdictions. World War II industrial decentralization deliberately created new industrial bases through migration. The Great Migration and the Southern Diaspora exhibited close linkage between war production and the automotive/aerospace industries. The Nineteenth Century ethnic immigration sorted itself out with farmers going some places and industrial workers others—the latter mostly in the industrial cities of the hegemony. The earlier Yankee Diaspora and the other “national” migrations also sorted themselves out geographically and jurisdictionally.

 

Population mobility, our post-1965 Big Sort especially, necessarily involve “place”, geographies, jurisdictions, states, regions, and nations. Obviously migration is a two-sided coin, with winners and losers. In an era of great population growth, which historically has been for much of our history, the more nasty effects of losing people can be obscured, muted, or even eradicated. When migrating populations are not replaced by new migrants, however, a very serious economic development problem is created. This has been a major aspect of the post-1965 Big Sort. Some individuals choose for many reasons to remain in their original settlement area with very serious ED implications as these geographies can enter a period of chronic economic and demographic decline. Again, the inherent “sorting” involved in population migration means that aggregations of similar people move out while a different aggregation of demographic groups can chose or be forced to remain. The theory and practice of ED might well be very sensitive to these variations and distinctions. It ought not concentrate exclusively on the winners, or pin labels on the losers.

 

The interplay between the various elements of migration “sorting” (i.e. age, education, occupations, sex, and place) often make it difficult to “sort” out the various independent variables associated with both change and various dependent variables. One can see this in Moretti’s “the New Geography of Jobs” (Moretti) as well as several of Florida’s works. Aggregate data analysis can suggest many “storks in chimneys”, for example, twentieth century young migrants often possess more education than preceding generations; how that translates into ED strategy and initiatives, particularly as it is applied to those who remain at original settlements can be very complicated. Also, the attachment of “character” or values to demographic, even occupational categories can be a perilous enterprise indeed. Creativity can be an element of advertising, for example, but might not be encouraged in accounting. They both, however, can hold a college degree.

 

Bishop: migration as lifestyle choice

Bishop asserts the Big Sort that he discovered created “inequality” (which he never defined, or even indexed). He posited that “the Big Sort was creating greater inequality among cities—in patents, incomes, and levels of education[xlviii]—we wondered whether there was a relationship between culture and economic success”. Using Putnam’s Making Democracy Work” civic culture he concluded there was a NEGATIVE relationship between the health of the local civic culture and the well-being of the economy. The tighter the social ties, the fewer the patents, the lower the wages, and the slower the rates of growth.

 

Using another Putnam database, the DDB Needham Life Style Survey he found that the civic culture of high-tech cities was the reverse of low-tech cities. He believed this represented a post-materialist culture (Bishop 141-4). The difference between the two was prevalence of Generation Xers (possessing the past-materialist culture). “Educated young people in the ‘creative class’ would flock to places where they would not be bound by old ideas or tight social ties”. While we may agree the cultural variation was precipitated by migration of Generation Xers I have no idea whether old ideas/tight social ties or the existence of jobs by rising sector gazelles—or any other confluence of multiple factors– prompted the migration. That the cultural values and proclivities of a young generation traveled with them as they fled their parents and/or pursued economic opportunity, is, for me, an open question fifteen years later.

 

Bishop joined Gen Xer’s “culture” and migration to Romer and Solow’s knowledge-based innovation. Arguing that Solow’s third driver of economic productivity (the first two being the traditional land and capital), technical knowledge with Romer’s finding that cities grew according to their ability to arrange the three factors to “innovate” successfully. Having physical capital (a harbor) and capital was not sufficient, a city had to creatively create more value through ideas and processes (innovation) that produced growth. Cities made ideas and incremental innovation possible. The culture of a city either facilitated this innovation or it didn’t.

 

The process for innovation was, Bishop asserted, at heart a social process, best advanced through face-to-face contact and sharing. The lack of social ties and weakness of old ideas facilitated this innovation process. What distinguished growing cities from declining cities was “their life style” that derived from their culture—Gen Xers moved to cities for their life style. These cities were Edward Glaeser’s consumer cities” (Glaeser and Gottlieb, Urban Resurgence and the Consumer City) and Florida’s “creative cities”. And Clark’s “entertainment cities” (Clark).

 

The way Americans sorted themselves created a new kind of cultural separation. People living in different cities literally had different ways of relating to family, to government, to strangers, and to religion. This gave people choice. There were places they could enjoy the comfort of strong families, bustling civic groups, near universal political participation, and abundant volunteering. And there were cities that offered anonymity, the opportunity for self-invention, and the economic benefits [innovation] of loose ties. (Bishop, p. 153).

 

Over three decades people separated themselves by education, income, race, and way of life. The best educated abandoned old manufacturing cities … and rural communities … and moved to high-tech cities. Finally, people segregated by the way they wanted to live … willing to pay a premium for the lifestyle found there … Prospects for prosperity deviated wildly, as innovation sprang from some cities, but not others. And all this migration created political imbalances that grew more pronounced by the year. (Bishop, p. 155)

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Retirement Migration:

 A little-mentioned, hidden-in-plain-sight population movement with lots of implications for ED is Retirement Migration (a generational cohort migration). Yes, Florida and Arizona captured more than their fair share of this; indeed, one retirement community (Villages, FL) in 2014 was the fastest growing census area in the U.S. Retirement Migration had a heart attack after the Great Recession but during the period discussed in this chapter (1970-2000) robust rates of migration affected places like Myrtle Beach SC, Austin TX, and Sunbelt locations like Las Vegas. Left in its wake was smaller cities in the industrial Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.  New retirement communities (a post-suburbia development) sprang up throughout the Sunbelt, epitomized by the proverbial Del Webb community—which started in the 1950’s.

 

Retirement destinations and the community left behind are obviously the most affected. Having said all this, however, most pre-2000 retirement age households (90%) did not relocate—they were the most stable population group in America—only 9% about 4.5 million changed communities during these years. Among the states with the most 60+ age in-migration was New Hampshire and Idaho.  Older Americans change communities, but they change houses (25%) more frequently and that means neighborhoods in both central cities and post-suburbia feel the effects of retirement migration. School districts beware! Assisted Living Centers take note!

 

Sun City and Del Webb

Del Webb’s path-breaking retirement community, Sun City (AZ), twenty miles outside of Phoenix opened in January 1, 1960. By no means the first retirement city in America, Sun City captured our attention and was the first major retirement community dedicated entirely to retirees. Residents could live out their lives apart from the non-elderly. By 1980 its population reached 40,500 (38,000 in 2010), and Webb had started yet another retirement city (Sun City West) next door.

 

As an example of private entrepreneurial and planned community city-building, Sun City was also a financial success (Findlay 160). At face value Sun City could be considered as an example of generational cohort mobility, and a new type of suburb built as a planned community by a private developer, which it most certainly was. For us it is also provides an early insight into the dynamics that would propel Bishop’s Big Sort.

 

Bishop believes the Big Sort started after 1965, gathering momentum after 1980 and taking off during the 1990’s (Bishop 129-30, 133). Bishop focuses on younger cohorts, so elderly/retirement-prone cohorts did not attract much attention from him. Sun City and Webb are never mentioned. Indeed, he saw older Americans clustering “in the least dynamic (economically and technologically, at least) cities …producing the fewest patents”. Bishops’ Big Sort had more to do with Richard Florida’s young generational creative classes than older has-beens playing shuffle ball and golf. This history employs a much more inclusive definition of the Big Sort.

 

Sun City and its developer were offshoots from Phoenix postwar development. Phoenix migrants tended to be younger than the national average, despite area recruitment programs which consistently targeted the retirement demographic. Elderly and near-elderly were usually less mobile before 1960 –about half the national rate of 15-16%. The elderly “aged in place” or stayed where they were. This meant nursing homes/continuing –care facilities, retirement subdivisions, but most simply stayed in their traditional home—prompting neighborhoods, filled with 65+ residents.  In the Phoenix context, planned unit (residential family subdivisions) were commonplace.

 

One heretofore conventional Phoenix subdivision developer, Del Webb, a co-owner of the New York Yankees, more stumbled into Sun City as more an experiment. Webb had gotten his start building war production housing throughout the West. Indeed, Webb, an early member of the “Donald Trump did he really say that?” Club, when asked what his proudest achievement was cited his building of Japanese internment centers “which moved the Japs out of California. We did it in 90 days back in the war” (Findlay 177), As America aged in the postwar years (in 1950 8.1% were over 65 years of age—by 1980 that had climbed to 11.3%, over 25 million), a new dynamic grouping, relatively affluent, potentially mobile, and growing in number each year. Webb in the middle 1950’s incorporated a subsidiary (DEVCO) to put something together for “age-segregated housing”.

 

The initial notion was if the new venture was to succeed it had to be of sufficient scale and quality—meaning a commitment of resources and investment—that it captured the imagination of its market. It had to market a dream, a vision and the actual development had to demonstrate to the potential buyer that the dream was real—it existed and could be seen before the home was purchased. In Bishop’s Big Sort terminology, Webb was marketing not just a home-but a lifestyle and that lifestyle had to be in place alongside the home itself. “Sun City provided the elderly with an unprecedented degree of self-sufficiency and segregation by offering [potential purchasers] a complete, predictable and isolated landscape” (Findlay 173) thirteen miles outside of Phoenix. Thoroughly planned to preclude sprawl and speculation, Webb’s approach corresponded closely to that of J.C. Nichol’s 1920 model. One resident owner had to be older than 50 and no resident children under 20.

 

So before marketing, the golf courses were built, water and infrastructure put in place, commercial strips, recreation centers, motels, and shopping districts in construction—only then did he offer five different models available for purchase. On New Year’s Day, 1960 he opened his models for inspection and purchase. Thousands showed up, a two-mile traffic jam resulted. Two hundred and fifty homes were sold in the first three days, and another one hundred and fifty by the end of the month. By the end of the year, 1300 homes were sold and by the end of 1963 7,500 residents lived in 3,600 houses (Findlay 174).

 

DEVCO made it easy to buy its homes—and it used promotion, publicity that Findlay describes a relentless advertising campaign. For the first decade, DEVCO targeted working and lower middle class elderly. Homes were not especially expensive. More than anything the advertising campaign marketed Sun City as “a Way of Life”—a DEVCO marketing jingle urged the elderly to “Wake up and live in Sun City. For an active new way of life. Wake up and live in Sun City, Mr. Senior Citizen and Wife. Don’t let retirement get you down. Be happy in Sun City” (Findlay 177). Life at Sun City was the reward for a life of hard work; separate yourself from loneliness, congestion, air pollution, high taxes, “big city problems” and just enjoy yourselves with people like yourself. Sun City was “paradise on a budget”. Sun City attracted the young, healthy elderly, minorities were few and far between, but the white aged who bought loved it.

 

As the decade wore on, and additional Sun Cities were platted in California, and then adjacent to Sun City, Sun City’s growth tapered off. DEVCO itself didn’t sense where the market demographics and dynamics would take them and their age-segregated concept. Units actually sold tended to be bought by more affluent elderly than originally marketed. They wanted more house and services—if fewer units were going to be sold in the future, they ought to be more expensive and marketed to more affluent. So after 1966 through 1978 more models at different price ranges were offered, a more stylish community was presented for new neighborhoods, larger lots, circular streets, parks, underground wires, waterfalls and a private supper club on a lake. Sun City cohorts were wealthier with each passing year. Sun City’s 1968 population of 11,000, grew to 25,000 in 1972 and 44,000 by 1978—Arizona’s eighth largest city. Early buyers were from Arizona and California, but the upper Midwest soon took over; in 1989 one of five buyers was from Illinois—some thought of it as a Chicago suburb (Findlay 190-5). By 1978, Sun City was built out.

 

By that time, it was evident to developers across the nation that the unnoticed Big Sort included elderly and near-retirement cohorts. Phoenix in 1983 attracted nearly 100,000 winter “snowbirds”, second homes became popular in places like Vermont, Dutchess County, NY—and Florida, the myths and stereotypes speak for themselves. Places like “Dreamland Village”, Golden Hills, Leisure Village, and Carefree abounded in Arizona and California especially—all planned, age-segregated communities. Many a city subdivision also followed the Sun City model in miniature. Webb moved onto other concepts, and built them in cities from coast to coast—including age-segregated communities for young, single adults, and for young families (Findlay 195-213).

 

Bishop may have conceived the Big Sort as a generational movement of “creatives” mostly to selected large cities, but by 1980 developers across the nation were building planned communities and subdivisions for households of similar lifestyles and economics. American city-building had ventured into new territory, and economic developers had a new targeted population recruitment strategy to diversify the community, pay its bills—and grow. New suburban policy systems emerged, policy systems less concerned with job creation, than lifestyle and people-attraction, with an economic base based on personal services, retail, housing-centered services, and entertainment now sprinkled the metro landscape.

 

 

Creative Classes, Generational Cohorts and Migration

Boomers & Progeny: It Depends on What Growth Is?  Of recent years, generational cohort mobility has focused on Generation X and Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class” (Florida, 2003) but before they came along there were the boomers. In the Seventies/Eighties the baby-boomers in their early/middle twenties (1970’s) exacted a huge impact on economic development—they did it by redefining growth. Growth, a noted previously, was heretofore the core of what American economic and community development were about. Questions concerning growth’s definition, however, assumed a great importance during the 1950’s when poverty (inequality) was rediscovered. The rise of community development also redefined growth by urging inclusion of groups left out of it. CD as a strategy of income redistribution and identity politics was an ED response, largely affecting low-income distressed neighborhoods in Big Cities and the rising Sunbelt. The entry into society (and economy) of the baby-boom generation in the Seventies, however, produced a serious assault on growth’s definition.

 

In particular, boomers who moved into the Sunbelt pressured the establishment to change growth’s definition to fit their environmentalist/quality of life concerns–and, in some locations advanced issues today associated with “identity” (race/ethnicity, feminism and sexual). The first redefined the “what” of growth, the latter the “who”. Neighborhood level was home base. On the fringes of Sunbelt cities/suburbs boomers challenged the dominant business/CBD growth nexus (Abbott’s “neo-progressives”) discussed in Chapter 15. This is when “anti” or “slow” growth first appeared—when “growth management” became a byword. Boomers held new ideas about cities and communities found in books such as Jane Jacobs (1961), Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), and Michael Harrington’s, the Other America (962)”—and they learned the art of political mobilization from protests and anti-war movements.

 

Young boomers entered the post-industrial workforce as professionals, professors/teachers, government and nonprofit workers, entrepreneurs and corporate managers (Rowe, 2001). Molotch describes them as “cosmopolitan in outlook, pecuniary in interest”; they viewed cities [and neighborhoods] “more as residential environments than as economic machines”. Abbott labels these folk as “quality of life liberals” who worried that” breakneck development was fouling the air, eating up open space, sacrificing neighborhoods … and deferring costs of [pollution] to future decades” (Abbott, How Cities Won the West). Among other aspects, they were considerably less inclined to support economic growth to catch up with the city down the road (urban competitive hierarchy).

 

They also expected more from business than jobs and taxes. Spared the misery of the Depression and the horrors and loneliness of war, they expected more out of life—quality of life liberals followed an existentialism not associated with their parents or Abbott’s neo-progressive business elites. While eastern cities coped with fiscal distress and racial change, Sunbelt cities were coping with growth. Women became engaged in political life, facilitated by grass-roots neighborhood-level politics that tapped into traditional concerns of family, school and home. Western neighborhood-level and city-wide alliances proved a training ground for women soon to be elected mayors of western cities. Oklahoma City elected Patience Latting in 1971 and over the next twenty years, women mayors were elected in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, Galveston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Phoenix, Santa Barbara, San Jose, San Francisco, Modesto, Stockton and Spokane. By 1987, women were mayors in twenty-six western and southwestern cities whose population exceeded 50000—half of the nation’s total women mayors in that year (Abbott, How Cities Won the West).

 

New ED/CD strategies were associated with this cultural change (new urbanism, smart growth)-and tools (growth management)—try using eminent domain after 1980; NIMBY, BANANA and a host of other complimentary euphemisms came from that folk; so, did NEPA, SEQRA and a host of federal and state regulations that reshaped ED redevelopment, and created a new strategy, brownfields. Even tourism was attacked as the “Devil’s Bargains” (Rothman, 1998).  On the other hand, many young native-born westerners wanted to limit exploitation of the environment by extractive corporations, and were incensed with the paternalism and insensitivity of federal bureaucracies to local economic use of federal land. For them the federal government was increasingly viewed as a colonial power, its land management practices arbitrarily limiting growth and land use by fiat. This blossomed into a “Sagebrush Rebellion”—a rebellion which at its roots questions who controls western local economic development (Cawley, 1993).

 

Examples of our generational cohort policy shift appear by the 1970’s, coming in several forms. In 1976, Denverites contested the city’s involvement in the Olympics—which was supported by the entire panoply of the city’s political and ED establishment. Future Senator Patricia Schroeder, and Governor Richard Lamm, leaders of the opposition, raised 77000 signatures (1972) for state and city constitutional amendments prohibiting public funds for purposes “that would only benefit tourism, business and real estate”. The Privatist Sagebrush Rebellion exploded in 1979 when the Nevada legislature demanded 49 million acres of federal land (86% of Nevada’s total land area) be transferred to the state.

 

Environmentalism

 

Let’s start out by firmly stating this history does not “pin the definitional tail” on what is meant by “environmentalism” (“E”). That is a task better left to others. In this history “environmentalism” is at times a “movement”, a set of values, beliefs and priorities in a jurisdictional political culture, an economic development strategy, as a significant value priority of post-WWII generational cohorts/Big Sort, and a key factor in the definition and priority afforded to economic development’s traditional ultimate goal—economic and population growth. Environmentalism, it must be added, fundamentally altered many a jurisdictional policy system.

 

To add to the justifiable confusion, “environmentalism” comes in many forms and has intruded into economic development through ED’s Venn diagram of related policy areas such as energy and transportation, has heavily influenced our three drivers, in particular the jurisdictional economic base through consumer demand, government regulation, and formation of new sectors and industries. Population migration has also been affected by environmentalism through density development, zoning and various codes. The reaction to environmentalism has entered into the three competitive hierarchies and their flip side: business climate.

 

Old ED/CD strategies have been “tweaked” to include an environmental dimension, and new strategies, programs and tools have been devised in response to it. For example, pollution control, a form of environmentalism, has prompted a “brownfields” ED strategy, and prescribed state and federal environmental reviews that have massively affected “shovel-ready” siting, eminent domain, and traditional development/redevelopment ED strategies.

 

Just how much environmentalism has altered state and local economic development is probably lost on most contemporary economic developers. Environmentalism has been around for a half-century, and the great “intrusions” into economic development are well over twenty-five years in the past. Today people throw around expressions such as “smart growth”, sustainability, climate-control, SEQR/NEPA, density development, energy efficiency—and a host of others—without realizing that the author was forty years old before he heard of any of them. Between 1960 and 1990, most of the great battles and ruffled feathers occurred. As I write entire states (West Virginia) are battle grounds, occupations and jobs, clusters, industries, sectors are classified as “good or bad” by many simply by their relevance to environmentalism as defined by its movements, beliefs, and future forecasts. The intensity of commitment to “environmentalism” has been liken by some commentators (including Big Sort’s Bishop) to a secular religion.

 

Why and Impact of Environmentalism

It is hard to ignore or downplay the effect of environmentalism, however, defined, in our economic development history. What prompted this rise of postwar environmentalism? Part of the answer might be suggested by the disparity in incomes of those who tend toward environmentalism and those that support greater economic growth. The other part of the answer is that American (global) industry has ventured into new production processes and products since the Second World War and consumer demand encourages cheaper products that enhance lifestyle.

 

The chemical revolution in agriculture, the proliferation of synthetic materials, the development of atomic energy, the increased scale of power-generation and resource-extraction technology—all created new environmental hazards (Rome 5).

 

It is no secret the more one makes, the more environmental one is—or can be. This distinction has played out on the global scene as well as in domestic American politics. The simplistic, perhaps, conclusion is that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is involved. The more one can satisfy basic needs, security and jobs for example, the more one can move on to larger self-actualizing and altruistic forms of self-fulfillment. Wealth in other words paves the way to the rise of environmentalism. Hindsight over the last half-century does suggest some level of support for this position. Recessions are not the best time to seek solutions for global warming. Emerging nations postpone for several decades before they implement international agreements.

 

The unprecedented affluence of the postwar years encouraged millions of Americans to put a premium on environmental elements of ‘quality of life’ (Rome 5).

 

Nowhere was this premium more evident than in the American West. That region may well have been the mainspring of the early environmental movement—for two reasons. First, from western scholars came many of the earliest cogent critiques that led to the development not only of a “western literature”, but a new disciple of environmental history (Donald Worster (Worster) stands out as an environmental pioneer)[xlix]. The environment was an integral, core and defining aspect of what the West was. The environment was a core element of the Western identity—and western history.

 

Second, the sheer natural wonder that was the American West was under serious and substantial pressure from war year’s population and industrial expansion, and postwar jurisdictional policy systems prevalent in most non-Pacific western cities that pursued pure economic and population growth, seemingly oblivious to the harm caused to the natural environment. Post 1965 incremental movement of new generational cohorts into the West in short order provided leadership and constituency for early forms of environmentalism such as growth management—and even anti-annexation/urban renewal, and pro-neighborhood quality of life.

 

Evolution of Environmentalism; Waves or Forms

Environmentalism as understood in 2017 resulted from the cumulative and incremental evolution through several waves/forms and events starting in the Fifties and continuing to the present.  Environmental scholars acknowledge the different forms, waves, or movements that dominated each decade since the 1960’s. Samuel Hay’s (Hays) presents a three stage chronology from the early 1950’s to the middle 1970’s.  The earliest, mid-1950’s to early 1960’s were outdoor recreation, open space and wilderness preservation. The second stage was dominated by pollution and pollution control (air and water) which lasted until the early 1970’s when the third stage, focused on energy (nuclear to energy conservation) and endangered species.

 

The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill (and Exxon Valdez and Alaska Pipeline 1989) exerted a huge impact on California/Alaska politics, planning, and economic development. Allitt asserts that Ralph Nader’s 1974 “Critical Mass 74”, the first nationwide anti-nuclear conference, brought together for the first time activists, Hollywood celebrities, scientists, politicians and academics in an environmental movement (Allitt 106). Karen Silkwood, Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl now Fukushima have kept nuclear power an active, controversial and dynamic movement through the more recent global warming/climate change movement.

 

That movement first hit the headlines in the late 1980’s (1988). At that time computer models and projections (James Hansen) asserted the first link of “greenhouse gases”, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, melting polar ice caps, coastal flooding, disease, and famine—resulting from change in climate. In the same year the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the home base of the movement. Global warming picked up momentum in the 1990’s, Al Gore and Kyoto Agreement in 1997, the “hockey stick graph (1998)[l], the Nobel Peace Prize to Gore and the IPCC in 2007, and the post 2012 Obama administration advocacy has pushed other environmental movements off the media/celebrity/electoral internet agenda—at least for a while.

 

Each of these waves/forms/movements endure, ebb and flow, and importantly evolve their focus and concern. Nuclear war, nuclear winter, global cooling in the Fifties/Sixties alerted researchers to ozone depletion, global surface warming, and climate change in the late eighties. Carl Sagan, a NASA scientist at the time, launched his career (1983) with a crusade against global cooling. Over population, famine and political instability was an early form of environmentalism which in recent years has morphed into concern for genetically modified (GM) seeds and crops. Endangered species, wildlife and wilderness were very serious concerns in the early and middle decades, but today we now talk about “eco-tourism” and a federal “national monument strategy”.

 

Pollution and pollution abatement was a very important form/wave that exerted a very profound impact on ED during the 1970’s through 1990—today it pales in significance to climate change despite its emergence as a Number One state and local crisis in the last few years. Nuclear power as an energy source has been a constant environmental concern, but has in the last decade given ground to fossil/carbon-based fuels. Suburbs were seriously thought of as anti-environmental (Rome)—but that proved to be a lost cause and whatever one thinks of them they are here to stay. In the Sixties and Seventies we talked about “growth management” and open space—and planners still do to some extent—but sustainability is much more in vogue (even though I confess I really don’t grasp why? The concept is so obvious and apple pie-like).

 

The point is obvious: environmentalism is an umbrella which over time, and within any period of time, includes many forms and movements—it is an example of our dreaded “smush” variable. NIMBY, BANANA and the joys of public hearings have become standards for economic developers. The reality that many adherents have adopted one or another of these forms as their “secular religion” or their prism for evaluating all economic development strategies, programs and tools has transformed the practice and the policy-making of our profession and policy area perhaps more than any other factor in the last half-century. Predictably, despite the rather huge impact each form of environmentalism exerted on ED, travelers on each of our Two Ships have developed their own reactions. There are a Privatist and a Progressive perspective on the smush brought about by environmentalism.

 

Smush simplification or not, however, the Two Ships generally do not react in the same way to an environmental issue. Most Privatists do not reject the various environmentalist manifestations and sensitivities. The Privatist business community if much to fractured to present a hostile united front; since the Reagan years significant elements of the Republican Party, for example, are quite sensitive to environmental issues—Privatists can share the same concerns as environmentalists. Yet, the stereotype conveyed by our media friends is that “environmentalists see their critics as greedy special interest groups that show no signs of conscience as they plunder the earth. Counter-environmentalists … see their adversaries as the enemies of economic growth [who] stop social progress and stifle initiative under an avalanche of bureaucratic regulation” (Allitt 8).

 

Environmentalism probably, of all ED-related issues, save tax abatement to business, inflames the Progressive discomfiture with profit and capitalism—and tosses in a tinge of anti-industrialism to boot. Conversely, while mostly sympathetic to a better environment, Privatists stress out over government regulation and expanding bureaucracies which, they believe, all too frequently use fear to increase their budgets and facilitate regulatory legislation. Regulatory bureaucracies usually trigger concerns with one or another of the competitive hierarchies. Big Sort polarized policy systems does little to bridge this gap.

 

Allitt (Allitt 1-8) suggests another key difference that Progressives tend to see “environmental crises” and apocalyptical compressed time frames that required urgent and often dramatic action by government. The dark side has been a tendency toward “Puritan jeremiads” against the wealthy and other sinners. Privatists, on the other hand, appear as optimists. Not to worry, economic growth, innovation, figuring out how to make a profit in solving the problem will lead to a solution. This does little to comfort agitated Progressives who counter that until they asserted the environmental problem business Privatists had done little or nothing to prevent it or make it go away. Progressives also observe government regulation has produced positive results in emissions reduction and endangered species, nuclear regulation and the like, and that big business has stifled innovation rather than disrupt existing profits. Media sensationalism and Hollywood celebrities do little to calm troubled water, and as I write during the 2016 election, with the disappearance of moderates in both parties, extreme partisanship and populism had rendered this issue into a cornerstone chasm between Red and Blue states.

 

Background

To best assess the impact of environmental movements on economic/community development, a good place to start is the passage of key federal legislation. Admittedly the issue of states as innovator of federal action is an important qualification—California was a national leader, often leading the federal government or at least providing a template and a track record. It is our hope that case studies in the several chapters ahead can help with this gap. But in the period under discussion (1960-1990) the federal government was in its most active intergovernmental leadership phase—and the feds have been a consistent primary force in environmental legislation. Federal legislation, often supported by subsequent Supreme and federal court decisions—and grants—and regulations/mandates carried across all regions, states and jurisdictions.

 

It is not unlikely the reader will be mildly surprised at the time line revealed by a simple chronological listing of key environmental legislation. Federal action, I suggest, comes earlier than most might realize. Also noticeable is the “forms or waves” discussed earlier. The real disruption to ED/CD was mostly over by 1980, certainly early 1990’s when a great deal of its impact was digested at the state and local levels. Below is a chronological listing of key federal legislation and important events.

 

• Atomic Energy Commission in civilian administration 1947
• Water Pollution Control Act of 1948
• October 1948 air pollution killed 20, hospitalized hundreds Donora PA
• Air Pollution Control Act of 1955
• Price-Anderson Act of 1957 (limited utilities liability for nuclear accident)
• 1962 Rachael Carson Silent Spring
• Clean Air of 1963, 1967
• Wilderness Act of 1964
• Highway Beautification Act of 1965
• 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill/Cuyahoga River fire
• National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
• Formation of Union of Concerned Scientists 1969 (Nuclear Power)
• April 22, 1970 First Earth Day
• Clean Air Act of 1970 (EPA created), 1977
• By Executive Order, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration October, 1970
• Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 (Superfund). 1977, 1987
• Yom Kippur War/OPEC gas and oil crisis
• Endangered Species Act of 1973
• Safe Water Drinking and Water Quality Act of 1974
• 1974-77 Alaska Oil pipeline
• 1975-1979 Tellico Dam (Tennessee), TVA and the Snail Darter
• Resource Conservation Recovery Act of 1976
• 1978 Love Canal
• National Energy Act of 1978 (initial subsidy for ethanol)
• 1979 Three-Mile Island – movie China Syndrome 1979
• Alaska Natural Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980
• Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation/Liability Act (CERCLA) 1980
• Spotted Owl v. Hodel (1988)
• Exxon Valdez Easter 1989
• Clean Air Act of 1990 (acid rain, ozone depletion, auto gas emissions)

 

Between the April 1970 First Earth Day and CERCLA in 1980, twenty-eight environmental laws were approved by Congress and the President[li]. The collectivity of this legislation, as amended and expanded, is substantially the core of federal environmental legislation in 2017. In the chapters to follow the impact of these enactments and events will serve as a backdrop for our discussion of the incorporation of environmental issues into political culture, generational cohorts, jurisdictional policy system change, and—of course—the policy and practice of state and local economic/community development. Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Carter and the bipartisan Congresses of this era laid the foundation for contemporary economic development that followed after 1990. While not often praised, the legislation, it can be argued, was surprisingly effective in accomplishing its purposes—although many readers will strongly disagree with that last statement.

 

In the chapters that follow, environmentalism spurred a profound impact on our policy area and the practice of the profession. Usually, states would enact their version of the above legislation, and set up how local EDOs would act. Environmental impact statements, for example, would become a primary element/phase in ED development and redevelopment—and a surprising intrusion into many other ED activities as well. There was a noticeable difference in regional impacts as these laws were implemented. The effects on jurisdictional economic bases were equally notable although subtle and often unnoticed outside the industry/sector. Land use-related economic development, and basic material, energy and manufacturing sectors were profoundly disrupted during this period.

 

 

======================

 

Deindustrialization

Agglomerations run out of steam, and the industry/sector profit cycle proved very real. How to fix a broken agglomeration, excuse me, cluster will remain one of life’s ED/CD mysteries. Below we give the beast its name: Deindustrialization.

 

Like a Sledgehammer: Bluestone and Harrison

“Deindustrialization” is associated with Bluestone & Harrison’s (B&H) Deindustrialization of America (Bluestone & Harrison). They defined deindustrialization as plant closedowns, disinvestment, mobile capital and runaway plants. B&H’s deindustrialization lay squarely within our Progressive-Communitarian tradition. Playing off the June 30th, 1980 special issue of Business Week, Business Week’s issue rang out like an alarm in the night warning: “The U.S. economy must undergo a fundamental change if it is to retain a measure of economic viability let alone leadership in the remaining 20 years of this century. The goal must be nothing less than the reindustrialization of America … to rebuild America’s productive capacity is the only real alternative to the precipitous loss of competitiveness of the last 15 years, of which this year’s wave of plant closings across the continent is only the most vivid manifestation”.Invalid source specified.

 

Deindustrialization was happening precisely as Schumpeter (Schumpeter, 1942) had predicted—only he called it “creative destruction”. As described by B&H, Schumpeter asserted “capitalist economies can only evolve to higher levels of prosperity through a ‘process of Creative Destruction’ … like a forest with its cycle of decay and renewal, must undergo constant transformation [or] the economy and the entire society surrounding it will stagnate and eventually crumble….Disinvestment, and lots of it, provides the only engine for reinvestment somewhere else”. (Bluestone & Harrison 9) Disinvestment—and reinvestment—in falling and rising sectors and industries is how capitalism grows. Capital disinvestment/reinvestment is a conscious decision, a corporate strategy to maximize profits.

 

The visible manifestation of capital disinvestment is a closed facility and/or a runaway plant. Community jobs are lost, accompanied by tax base reductions, and workers on the streets. Creative destruction has geographic consequences which were not acceptable to B&H. In their view, the national productive capacity was crippled by conscious corporate decisions who chose short-term profits and shareholder returns in preference to reinvestment in existing productive facilities, their workers, and the community. Instead, corporations relocated investment into unproductive and unnecessary mergers, foreign investment, and profit-making financial speculation that “shuttered factories, displaced workers” creating “ghost towns”. (Bluestone & Harrison 6) Disinvestment causes deindustrialization. This is the “runaway shop”. The root of B&H’s disinvestment lay in the “fundamental struggle between capital and community” (Bluestone & Harrison 19)–the “capital mobility option“. Capital mobility severs the bond between workers, community, unions, the firm and corporate management.

 

B&H advocated a Progressivist, if not socialist, definition of deindustrialization that fell within the CD approach—it was people and community-centered, and anti-corporate. Worker and community are left “holding the bag” forced to deal with the pathologies, despair, and wrecked families. Disinvestment and runaway plants violate the social contract, a breaking of promises made to the community by the firm when it first located. Disinvestment and closed plants are corporate strategies to “discipline labor” and generate regional war from which tax subsidies could be exacted for new facilities. In place of Schumpeterian disinvestment B&H advocate a place-based ED that is concerned with the effects corporations have on people and communities.

 

B&H urged upgrading business retention. The special vulnerability of branch facilities, the realities of global competition and capital mobility necessitated a watchful eye and aggressive role by economic developers. B&H urged developing a constant relationship with corporate decision-makers and an “early warning system” be devised to anticipate problems. They called for worker lay-off pre-notification early warning system and advocated enhanced workforce training focused on dislocated workers and skills retraining. Advocacy of worker ownership (ESOP) as an alternative to plant closing brought visibility to a new concept.

 

Great Reindustrialization Debate: Platform for 21^st Century ED Strategy

Scientific Management Background: Pre Elgar Chapter 22

While scientific management and Frederick Taylor[1] are sometimes reduced to synonyms, the movement even in the early 1900’s was always more than Taylor and it certainly didn’t end with his death in 1915. Henry Ford and “Fordism” demonstrated the power of the assembly line and Taylor’s negative, at times almost vicious, depiction of worker motivation sparked further research which discovered the “halo effect” proving conclusively that positive human motivation could increase production, The Hawthorne studies, completed at the Western Electric Cicero Illinois factory, following Taylor’s death have been called the “seed bed of the Quality revolution”. All of these developments occurred during the transition years and should be considered as derivatives of scientific management.

 

Of particular note, was the work of Walter Shewhart, an engineer who today is considered the father of statistical quality control.  Shewhart also worked, as did Taylor, at Western Electric, and its Hawthorne Works and he later worked for Bell Telephone. A leader in his field, he wrote several impactful works, and was a founding member in American Society for Quality and a leader in the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) His works and reputation came to the attention of two physicists in 1938. One of these physicists, W. Edwards Deming and Shewhart became collaborators on applying Shewhart’s work to increase productivity. The result, called today by various names, including PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act), the Shewhart cycle or the Deming circle is the foundation of continuous improvement of processes. Continuous improvement became a cornerstone principle of Deming who applied it to World War II production, and in the 1950’s carried it to Japan and was credited with launching the post-World War Japanese manufacturing miracle. That, however, is a story for another chapter. In many ways, Shewhart was the force that carried scientific management, under new titles, into the twenty-first century.

 

The Reindustrialization Debate

For many economic developers, B&H defined the problem and finally gave a name to the “beast: with no name that had been devouring Big City jurisdictional economic bases. B&H did not arise “out of the blue”; it was only one of many strategies/definitions put forth in the ED Policy World. The “Disease with No Name” had not lacked for theoretical responses to deal with its consequences. During the Seventies, most solutions advocated a strategy to “reindustrialize” America. B&H were part of that “reindustrialization” debate—indeed B&H’s Part IV discussed the “Great Reindustrialization Debate” stating their contribution to it was “Reindustrialization with a Human Face”.

 

For our purposes this history identifies five related, but quite different strands of thought engaged in the Seventies Great Reindustrialization Debate.

 

• The oldest, harkening back to the 1930’s originated within the American manufacturing itself (Shewhart, Deming, Drucker);
• The second, deeply buried in the bowels of economic theory focused on oligopoly and asserted innovation was a coequal driver of economic growth along with supply, demand and investment (Lucas, Solow, Romer, and Krugman);
• A third, evolved classic Keynesian economics into Neo/Post Keynesian Liberal Economics focused about growing/declining industry sectors, comparative advantage, productivity, strategic planning and global competitiveness (Thurow, Rubin, Rohatyn, (Krugman also), (1986) Markusen, Michael Porter, and the Business Week Special Issue of 1980);
• The fourth strand, originating with Hayek stressed supply-side (savings and investment) was adopted by the newly-elected Reagan administration (Gilder, Laffer, Butler);
• And finally, our CD (B&H) advocates who “named the disease”: deindustrialization caused by disinvestment and mobile capital, inherent features of a capitalism that built and threw away communities and workers in their quest for profit. (B&H, Reich, Birch and later Markusen).

 

The unifying threads that ran implicitly or explicitly through all five was Joseph Schumpeter’s 1942 “creative destruction” and knowledge-based innovation.

 

From these strands came much of the 21^st century contemporary ED strategies which are commonplace at the time of writing. Porter (clusters/corporate strategy), Solow-Lucas—Romer innovation/knowledge-based economics, Gilder’s supply-side, limited government capitalism, B&H (deindustrialization) neo-liberalism, and Birch (small business) are the most well-known. In retrospect, the Neo-Keynesian strand, stressing comparative advantage/free trade, sector-driven economic growth arguably exerted the most impact, and become cornerstones of “21^st Century global competitive hierarchy.

 

Schumpeter and Deindustrialization

Deindustrialization repudiated (but did not deny) creative destruction. In its repudiation, B&H deindustrialization reflected core assumptions of American community development. In so doing it formulated an alternative to other strands listed above, which accepted or were congruent with creative destruction. These latter strategists worked within the comparative advantage/free trade global hierarchy while those who followed the road blazed by B&H are likely to decrying Neo-Liberalism that created inequalities/abuses such as the “two city/luxury city” ED, and drifted to a “protectionist” position advocated by many American unions. Schumpeter’s creative destruction has evolved into a fault line of American ED/CD.

 

B&H’s deindustrialization alternative is more apparent if we contrast B&H with Lester Thurow’s, Zero-Sum Society (Thurow).

 

As reported by B&H Schumpeter believes: “capitalist economies can only evolve to higher levels of prosperity through a ‘process of Creative Destruction’ … a healthy economy requires perpetual reincarnation. The old industrial order, like a forest with its cycle of decay and renewal, must undergo constant transformation to provide the material sustenance for fresh enterprise. If this fails to occur, the economy and the entire society surrounding it will stagnate and eventually crumble…. Disinvestment, and lots of it, provides the only engine for reinvestment somewhere else (Bluestone & Harrison 9).. Lester Thurow’s Zero-Sum Society argued disinvestment in declining sectors and reinvestment in growing sectors is normal and a required feature of a healthy capitalist economy. That is what he means by Zero-Sum.

 

For Thurow America had to disinvest in declining “sunset” sectors if it were to compete effectively internationally: “To have labor and capital to move into new areas we must … withdraw labor and capital from old, low-productivity areas. But … disinvestment is what our economy does worst. Instead of adopting public policies to speed up the process of disinvestment, we act to slow it down with protection and subsidies for the inefficient” (Thurow 77). Classical economic models stress the need to shift from sunset to sunrise sectors as creative destruction moves into new industries and locations. There is no “runaway shop” in this approach to ED which is compatible with comparative advantage.

 

B&H simply do not accept disinvestment. Disinvestment for B&H’s is the principal cause of deindustrialization. “The essential problem with the U.S. economy can be traced to the way capital–in the forms of financial resources and of real plant and equipment–has been diverted from productive investment in our basic national industries into unproductive speculation, mergers and acquisitions, and foreign investment. Left behind are shuttered factories, displaced workers, and a newly emerging group of ghost towns” (Bluestone & Harrison 6). Corporate leadership chose short-term profits and shareholder returns in preference to investment in existing productive facilities, their workers, and communities Do ‘sunrise’ sectors make up for the losses elsewhere and make the whole process worthwhile? No!

 

Boomtowns like Houston, Texas that have doubled in population since 1960 have had their highways, water, sewer, and school systems stretched to the limit, as capital has rushed in to take advantage of the ‘good business climate’. The lopsided development that goes along with such frenzied capital investment, almost invariably leaves              its mark: abject poverty counterpoised to extravagant wealth, a despoiled environment and crime rates that eclipse even those in the deindustrialized regions from which capital is fleeing”… the creative destruction process has become synonymous with our conception of the ‘throwaway’ culture…the pace of capital mobility has become so fast that people and communities are carelessly discarded to make room for new ones (Bluestone & Harrison 11-2).

 

This is the nature of B&H’s disinvestment. It bears little resemblance to that of Schumpeter. The “root” of B&H’s disinvestment lies in the “fundamental struggle between capital and community” (Bluestone & Harrison 19). It is what we now call “the mobility of capital”.

 

It is at this point that we truly see the implications of B&H and their clear break from mainstream liberal-classical economics. There is in B&H a core belief disinvestment severs the bond between workers, the community, unions and firm and its corporate management. To avoid disinvestment B&H’s treatment of sunrise industries injects a strong government involvement, in their words “public-private partnership” “Partial public ownership of subsidized private corporations is a minimum requirement” and “planning agreements” with claw backs if public goals are not achieved. This, to us, exposes best (1) B&H communitarian roots, and the (2) clear, unambiguous rejection of comparative advantage.

Deindustrialization: a Retrospective View

A sober view of B&H has since emerged which takes into account decades of coping with deindustrialization. First, we didn’t actually deindustrialize[lii]—if by that we mean suffer a severe loss of manufacturing employment. Citing BLS data 14.9 million worked in 1960 manufacturing, increasing to 17.3 million by 1970 and 18.6 million by 1980. In 1990 manufacturing employment was still at 17.9 million, falling to 17.2 million in 2000. The collapse occurred during the 2007-9 Great Recession when manufacturing employment dropped to 11.6 millionInvalid source specified..

 

While not challenging the reality of plant closedowns, runaway plants, manufacturing unemployment, or even disinvestment, we had not, as a nation, thrown millions of manufacturing workers on the streetsInvalid source specified. when B&H wrote their book. What did happen was manufacturing’s share of the total workforce declined significantly after 1980 (an 11% decline between 1980 and 1990 alone). Non-manufacturing sectors, i.e. service, office and FIRE sectors left manufacturing in the dust. Manufacturing “declined” because the service sector skyrocketed. More precisely, manufacturing stagnated after 1980, and facilities that could not compete globally downsized and some eventually closed down. As suggested, after Breton Woods expired, comparative advantage hierarchy acquired a definitely nasty edge augmented by a recessionary and inflationary U.S, economy.

 

Second, B&H’s concept of “plant closedown and runaway plant” was painted too broadly. For example, B&H’s opening Chapter 2 sentence portrays the Chance-Vought Division of United Aircraft that moved from Connecticut to Dallas as a “runaway plant” and “capital flight” (Bluestone & Harrison 25-6)—despite our earlier description of that movement as not only ordered but financed by the Dept. of Defense as a key part of their industrial decentralization policy. There is no denying that a lot of plants moved, downsized and closed in the period previous to 1982, we have in past chapters spent a good deal of time in that description, but a simple “body count” of jobs lost and companies relocated over an extended period of time can be quite large, imparting a false sense of simplicity to what was a very complex, uneven and multi-faceted series of phenomena.

 

What was to be done with mature firms, sectors, industries and the regions in which they concentrated was not at all evident once the problem had a name. Assuming the reader accepts in some form our profit/ oligopoly life cycle, deindustrialization and/or mature profit life cycle do not come with known solutions. That is why oligopoly and mergers occur as consolidation and productivity prolongs survival. In the Contemporary ED World, a sort of permanent innovation has become the magic bullet to resolve its woes. Good luck with that; agglomerations age. As they age, they exhibit a propensity to become mobile, downsize, merge, closedown and runaway. They need to find new meaning, competitiveness and profitability, before they go not-so-gently into the night. Stage 4/5 firms are vulnerable, and their workers depend on them for paychecks and occupational survival. Economic developers cannot escape this. Should they be helped to survive as long as they can, providing what payrolls they can—or let to go to find their way into the night. This history has uncovered no magic elixir or miracle cure.

 

Deindustrialization/Profit Life Cycle has emerged as a fundamental tension in our contemporary ED/CD, Cowie and Heathcott rightfully acknowledge the costs of closedowns to communities and most importantly to workers; many, maybe most, will never recover. As Bluestone asserts in his Forward, this was a very tumultuous time for our jurisdictional economic bases—and as he would insist—for the workers and communities left behind. Such trauma tears at the political culture, crushing the identity and resilience of affected workers, but community, its residents and decision-makers as well. Worse, it pushes the young away into distant jurisdictions. The fabrication of Stone-like “stories” is real; they haunt the implementation of ED and have created a Third Ghetto where economic assimilation is next to impossible (Wilson, 1996). Disinvestment inserts a wedge between ED and CD that can develop into a fault-line.

 

 

New Strategies

 

 

The reader who has suffered through this history may by this point have realized that through the 1980s, slowly, surreptitiously, incrementally a variety of “Great Forces” transformed economic development as a policy area and profession, so that by the early 1990’s it evolved into what is our present-day “Contemporary Economic/ Community Development. Providing a taste of what lies ahead in a future book, this section briefly outlines a number of selected strategies, programs, and tools that were developing previous to 1990, but flowered after that period. Chosen for inclusion are economic gardening, casino gambling, and new urbanism.

 

Casino Gambling: Don’t Bet on It!

Economic developers have an awkward relationship with gambling, particularly casino gambling. This is somewhat strange in that economic developers typically claim credit for virtually any economic growth within their jurisdiction. Casino gambling is mostly a State-driven ED program, with the state doing most of the negotiation and garnering a goodly share of tax and fee proceeds. Legal gambling (all forms) in 2012 generated nearly $100 billion in revenues. Casino gambling in 1991 produced $9 billion in revenues; in 2013, casino revenues were in excess of $50 billion[liii]. In 2012, an incomplete (not including for example tribal gambling) assessment by the casino industry[liv] asserts nearly $8 Billion dollars were paid to governments in twenty-two states. I’ll wager it has increased since then. In fact, the onslaught of online gambling, and with New Jersey and Nevada (and Maryland), doubling down approving new facilities in 2012-2013 promises yet a second wind to gambling’s continued growth

 

Taxes generated from casinos and lotteries have been an increasing mainstay of state governments and education systems; the jobs provided by casinos are significant and well-appreciated by the public as a whole. ED community college workforce programs train casino dealers and offer certificates. Casinos are reliable visitor destinations, spinning off their fair share of hotel rooms and retail sales. Casinos have proven to be an economic development home run—and a moral disgrace to the profession. If tax receipts are any guide, casino (and other forms of gambling) are the most successful and lucrative single economic development program in America.

 

Casino attraction usually requires controversial legislative approvals at state and local levels.  Casino attraction has been a gubernatorial prerogative-initiative. The usual ED recruitment programs are largely inappropriate to casino attraction. Also consider the rather sad image of providing a tax abatement to a casino? How long it can continue, with a casino on almost every street corner, is anyone’s guess, but the odds are the casino gambling has a few years left.             The last thing we attempt is a history of gambling in America or a comprehensive analysis of casino gambling and economic development. Economic developers, however, should have some familiarity with this strategy, if only because in the sad event the bubble eventually bursts, economic developers will be tasked to clean up the mess–and maybe blamed for it as well.

 

First things first. Gambling in America has a long-standing tradition, dating from colonial America, to “Maverick on the Riverboat Queen”, Para-mutual horse racing, and, of course, the ubiquitous state lottery[lv]. Casino gambling as a wide-spread state ED strategy, however, is relatively recent. Casino gambling skyrocketed after 1989 but got started in 1931when Nevada legalized casino gambling. In 1947, Bugsy Siegel opened up the Las Vegas Flamingo. From 1966-1970 the quirky Howard Hughes purchased Las Vegas properties and transformed them into legitimate business corporations; in 1973 Harrah Entertainment was the first casino to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. New Jersey, in 1976, saw an opportunity and legalized Atlantic City as the nation’s second legal location for casino gambling. The Mirage Hotel & Casino opened in Las Vegas in 1989 (3000 rooms) and the era of Las Vegas as a world-known tourist destination commenced. By 2003, Las Vegas had 61 casinos, amassing $5.3 billion in revenues and attracting 35 million visitors annually to fill in excess of 100,000 hotel rooms. At its peak Atlantic City held 13 casinos, generated $4.3 billion in revenues with 32 million visits housed in 12,000 hotel rooms[lvi]. In 1989, however, casino gambling got complicated.

 

Since the 1980’s the Cabazon (Indian) Band (near Indio, California) had been struggling with the state of California over the operation of bingo games and poker halls (i.e. casinos)[lvii].The legal struggle reached the United States Supreme Court in 1986. The Court’s decision, that the federal government, not the state, had the power to regulate gaming on a tribal reservation–upholding tribal sovereignty, but in the process potentially making gambling and casinos legal upon any Congressional action. Congressional legislation (Indian Gaming Regulatory Act), signed by Reagan, in 1988, provided for casino gambling subject to a “compact” (i.e. tax) be agreed to with the state. The legislation launched the Native American casino industry, an industry which in 1988 garnered an estimated $100 million to an industry which in 2012 achieved nearly $20 billion in revenues. By 2011, twelve states authorized twenty-eight casinos and a total of twenty-five states had authorized Native American casinos.

 

Shades of Mark Twain, riverboat gambling (the third form of casino gambling) started in Iowa and Illinois in 1991 and then spread to Indiana, Missouri and Mississippi. Land-based casinos followed in Louisiana and Michigan who authorized such casinos by 2003.Since 2003 when nine states had authorized non-Tribal land-based casinos, twenty-three states authorizing (22 with operating casinos) have placed a bet on land-based, non-tribal casinos. At least eight others were considering authorization, and a number of states were approving legislation to increase the number and type of casinos in their states. The industry claims to employ over 332,000 workers (170,000 in Nevada with over 400 casinos) ($13 billion in wages), generates (not including Native American casinos) in excess of $37 billion in revenues, and paid an estimated $8.6 billion in taxes to states. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Chicagoland, Detroit and Connecticut are the top five markets–all generating more than $1.2 billion annually in revenues[lviii].

 

The issues, salient to economic developers, arising from casino gambling are several. The historically volatile nature of the public’s willingness to accept legal and public gambling is testified that casino gambling is usually credited to be the “Third Wave of American Gambling”. The other two waves eventually went down for the count. Scandal, crime, individual misuse, and shifts in public and private morality provided plenty of opportunity for casino gambling’s deck to be reshuffled. The “close” contractual and regulatory relationship of state governments with interstate-international casino companies[lix] raise issues of potential concern. The dependence of states, localities and even school systems and unions on revenues and taxes merits additional concern. The overall effect of casino revenues on state finances is beyond our ken and purview–but clearly could lead to unfortunate realities under certain conditions. Casinos were approved and depend upon a public acceptance largely linked to goals traditionally perceived as economic development-related. The public perception of economic development is indirectly tied to casino gambling.

 

In 2015 it was estimated that total spent on all forms of gambling in the US (including lotteries) as in excess of $104 billion dollars, from which state governments share was about $20 billion. Lotteries comprised about two-thirds of the state receipts (2015) and casinos less than $9 billion (31%)[lx]. Casinos on Indian reservations are not included in US statistics and in 2015 they generated nearly $30 billion in revenues from 459 casinos in twenty-eight states which compared to $38.3 billion revenues from US commercial casinos. California, dominated by Indian casinos placed second to Nevada in revenue. Pennsylvania’s commercial casinos garnered the most at $3.2 in 2015, surpassing the struggling Atlantic City.

 

Las Vegas depends more on tourism spending than gambling which peaked in 2007 and has not yet recovered to its prerecession high of $ 6.8 billion. As of 2015 only three states had (New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada) had legalized online gambling—attracting an estimated 10.8 million gamblers and $6.8 million in revenue most of which was offshore and extra-legal. Legalized online gambling yielded only $160 million in revenues. BTW slots generated aout75% of casino revenue. In 2015 only Hawaii and Utah had no legal commercial or Indian casinos, lotteries or other forms of gambling. Rhode Island according to the Rockefeller Institute collects in excess of $457 per resident from gambling-the highest state rate, but NY collects the most money overall from all forms of gambling to fund the state government ($3.2 billion)—Pennsylvania is second ($2.4 billion).

 

Market saturation and economic downturn, the industry is cyclical, will also play a factor in its long-term evolution. Casino gambling, especially destination gambling (as opposed to day-trip gambling) is real estate driven. The ultimate impact of the internet and its forms of gambling have yet to play out. A downturn in casino gambling can have serious consequences on local real estate markets and unemployment rates—witness Atlantic City in 2016. All this is true of many industries and sectors, but the casino gambling sector is a sector which may, or may not respond to normal sector competitive dynamics and counter-checks.

 

New Urbanism

It had to happen sometime. At some point, one always knew suburbs would become “chic” and “the place to be” to those who really mattered in society. New Urbanism, which today describes itself more as “neighborhood”-style development, took center stage with the building of a small resort village in Florida’s Panhandle. In truth, New Urbanism began in 1981 from a Cooper-Hewitt Museum exhibit on suburbs managed by a Columbia University professor, Robert A. M. Stern and the periodical Anglo-American Suburbs. Most of the exhibit featured stuff we have discussed in earlier chapters: Forest Hills Gardens and other Garden Cities (Rybczynski 17-8). That is an important tidbit to know because a core thrust of New Urbanism was its rejection of modernism and post-modernist planning and architecture (our friend Le Corbusier) in favor of a return to “a blast from the past”. To be fair, the New Urbanism was also a rejection of the subdivision style suburban sprawl–and although it was pre-McMansion, it would have rejected them also.

 

New Urbanism has a little of something for almost everybody. It could tap into nostalgia for Howard’s and Unwin’s past, the extravagance of the City Beautiful, and accommodate green technologies, smart growth principles and solar energy conservation. Most importantly, it implied a return to the honesty and simplicity of small town America–in the modern age. Much of the New Urbanism, particularly in the nineties, identified with a modern variant of city-building. In some measure this was due to its first demonstrated success at Seaside Florida developed by developer Robert Davis and his two architects, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany.

 

Duany and Plater-Zyberk worked for Stern and Anglo-American Suburbs and were at the Cooper-Hewitt exhibit. The Seaside project began in 1982 as a new resort community, planned to include 300 houses, and approximately 300 cottages, and shops, retail etc. The Seaside concept embraced density and design as central principles and that became translated into an entirely new and picturesque new-style community:

 

Seaside is different. Narrow streets radiate from a central green as in a New England village. The houses are vaguely Victorian, with tradition pitched roofs, porches and white picket fences. The lots are small and the buildings are extremely close together, bordered by heavy undergrowth. Sandy footpaths provide shortcuts behind the gardens. The casual atmosphere and the cottage like houses recall an old-fashioned beach community. (Rybczynski 19)

 

Doris Hayden describes Seaside in different terms:

 

In a remote location, reachable only by car, they developed a master plan for a small pedestrian-oriented resort of neo-traditional vernacular houses set in indigenous landscaping. The project was specifically designed to recapture a pre-automobile way of life. The developer wanted a place for ‘extended’ porch-sitting, leisurely strolling, and sharing time with those you care most about (Hayden 205-16)

 

Seaside, after a sort of rough start, took off by the end of the decade. In 1990, Time Magazine included it in its “Best of the Decade” issue; between 1988 and 1990 Duany and Plater-Zyberk contracted and started design on more than two dozen New Urbanist communities. Seaside was the location for filming the Truman Show. In 1993, they, along with others, formed the Congress of New Urbanism, which quickly moved into an image of being the cutting edge of architecture and planning (Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Spock). The Walt Disney Corporation hired (1994) another developer to construct a New Urbanist community, Celebration, outside of Orlando. It too has been an enormous success

 

New Urbanism, no matter how popular and trendy it may be, does have its critics. Some criticism simply taps into the diversity of consumer and household tastes. New Urbanist communities and neighborhoods do not suit the fancy of all (lack of privacy is a major concern). That leads into a more serious concern that New Urbanism attracts white, upper middle class, affluent households and these communities are simply not affordable on any scale to even middle-class folk. Diversity is not New Urbanism’s middle name. Nevertheless, New Urbanist design principles have since been incorporated into hundreds of completed projects, ranging from public housing, malls and, gentrificating neighborhoods. New Urbanism does offer a realistic, proven business-model alternative to large lot suburban subdivisions. Moreover, in reviving much of the neighborhood living focus of Perry’s early twentieth century neighborhood movement, it returns to a more humanist sense of community, many feel, has been honored only in the breach.

 

 

 

Federal Government Carves out a Role: People v. Place

Community mobilization and CDC neighborhood community economic development strategies blurred if Alinsky’s IAF was any indication. Neighborhood-level CD could not escape its place-based approach to empower, mobilize and revitalize deteriorated geographies populated by low-income and minorities in an era of Deindustrialization. That meant assimilation requiring movement to other geographies, potentially at cross-purposes with its place-based focus. People-based and comprehensiveness remained cornerstones, but were linked with revitalization of deteriorated, mostly central city neighborhoods. It was difficult enough to change people, but to change neighborhoods physically and economically at the same time was no small feat, with or without Reagan. More and more the likelihood a Third Ghetto may have developed—a ghetto that no longer had believable hope that a job was achievable.

 

The national atmosphere that sustained aggressive community organizing began to lose steam previous to Reagan’s election—or more precisely Privatist anti-tax referenda (and organizing) captured the media and public’s attention. Reagan deemphasized and defunded HUD-style housing and CD programs. That, of course, set back local CDCs. Reagan and Bush moved in a different direction providing assistance directly to people. Reaganism had stolen CD’s thunder. Two programs in particular, earned income tax (EIC) & low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) (expanded by the 1986 Tax Reform Act) dramatically reshaped federal anti-poverty and low-income housing approaches. Reagan initiatives were not limited to distressed neighborhoods; those eligible got benefits wherever the low-income person resided.

 

LIHTC provided incentives to private investment in low-income affordable housing. Today it is estimated more than 90% of low-income affordable rental housing utilizes LIHTC. LIHTC is not linked to distressed central city neighborhoods. EIC (which actually started in 1975) provides tax credits to qualifying low-income families with children. At least 26 states have added their own EIC tax credits as well (2012) (as have some sub-state jurisdiction: Montgomery County, MD, NYC and San Francisco). Both programs have incrementally expanded several times since their creation. To think these federal “direct to people” programs as Privatist CD would be controversial; both fall in a cultural limbo (or gray area). Still, as early as 1990, a major study of CDC financing reported 94% of CDCs that responded received more than $50000 annually from LIHTC[lxi]for program support.

 

The same could be said for Hope VI, a page-turning public housing redirection that is usually credited to the Clinton administration, but actually grew out of the 1989 Congressional National Commission on Distressed Public Housing. The Commission’s recommendations/action plan called for a radical redirection of federally-supported public housing. Congress and the new Clinton Administration concurred, approving legislation that among other reforms provided substantial funds for demolition of severely distressed public (high-rise) housing. Remembering that public housing was an Age of UR outputs, HOPE VI represents real page-turning legislation. Snuck into the legislation as one of its three goals was “to provide [replacement] housing that will avoid or decrease the concentration of very low-income families”Invalid source specified.. This countered CD’s place-based distressed neighborhood focus.

 

Clinton continued Reagan-era federal direct-to- people anti-poverty/welfare programs. EIC was expanded, and minimum wage increased. Clinton’s main focus was welfare/AFDC reform (TANF). With a reenergized EIC, the emphasis was to “make work pay”. Families and households got a meaningful lift from EIC, mitigating some of the dour effects of TANF. TANF was the newest block grant on the block and its passage was treated with some skepticism by community developers. “TANF significantly reduced the number of people on welfare rolls, although those concentrated in high-poverty inner-city neighborhoods were least successful in leaving welfare. It is not clear, whether the lot of former recipients has improved. Many simply went from the ranks of the ‘welfare poor’ to the ‘working poor’ with no betterments of their living standards.” (Dreier 129-30) By this point it was clear this form of intergovernmental transfer was preferred to Great Society categorical grants.

 

One could see in Clinton’s signature 1993 Empowerment Zone legislation the need to break up concentrations of poverty by connecting people to opportunities, not only in suburbs, but across the nation. Clinton’s Empowerment Zone (EZ) (1994) designated 11 zones, each eligible for $100 million in grants and tax credits for investment and hiring of low-income residents; also 95 “enterprise communities” eligible for more limited grants and credits, and 4 “enhanced enterprise communities” were also created. The EZ initiative satisfied Clinton’s electoral covenant with cities, but its reliance on private sector market incentives was not well-received by many community developers. In linking low-income to opportunities wherever such opportunities might be, EZ pursued a bottoms-up, locally-driven comprehensive set of programs in distressed inner city neighborhoods—“community-building partnerships for change”—but it challenged physical/economic neighborhood revitalization. EZ, however, included the usual “comprehensive” array of social programs (housing, education, job training, and human service programs) and was coordinated by a “community service board”, with residential membership as well as governmental and agency leadership.Invalid source specified.

 

The ambiguity between place-based people community development and deconcentrating poverty made some community developers wonder if Clinton and they were on the same page. [EZ asserted that it] seeks to invest in people and places, recognizing the old dichotomy as false”. Many community developers were not sure it was false. In 1995 this tendency toward dispersion, rather than “gilding” the ghetto, was made more explicit in Clinton’s 1995 HUD 1995 Urban Policy Report. Asserting that

 

America’s cities have been in trouble. Poor families and poor inner city neighborhoods have become disconnected from the opportunities and prosperity of their metropolitan regions, the nation, and the emerging global economy. A vicious cycle of poverty concentration, social despair, continued outmigration and fiscal distress in central cities undermines the ability of metropolitan regions to compete … Moreover, the polarization of urban communities—isolating the poor from the well-off, the unemployed from those who work, and minorities from whites, frays the fabric of our nation’s civic culture.

 

A later pilot program, “Moving to Opportunity” provided Section 8 vouchers to 7500 residents from six inner-city neighborhoods “to escape ghettos and move to better neighborhoods”. Another pilot program, “Bridge to Work” provided enhanced transportation access for poor inner-city residents to jobs in the suburbs (Dreier pp.129-30).

 

New Markets

In his second term Clinton struggled with a resurgent Republican Party, Contract for America, and attempted impeachment. If anything were to be accomplished, it would be bipartisan, and likely involve corporate America and more Privatist forms of ED (physical redevelopment and financing). Foundations and philanthropies provided a convenient meeting ground and a forum for incubating new ideas for public/private central city low-income neighborhood reinvestment. The New Markets Tax Credit (Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000), Clinton’s last major urban initiative, developed out of this nexus.

 

The American Assembly a bipartisan business-led think tank, issued a report after its 1997 annual meeting. During that meeting debate, triggered by Michael Porter’s research on the potential of inner city redevelopment, urged business to invest in inner cities to foster something called “community capitalism”. Community capitalism was a fancy name for business investment, and job creation in distressed communities, with government and the neighborhood community playing a supportive role. Access to capital and provision of technical assistance to investors by knowledgeable intermediaries were essential requirements. The American Assembly sent out its report to the White House where it caught the attention of Al Gore—who was contemplating a run for the Presidency. New Markets Tax Credit in the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000 was the reaction.

 

New Markets was a vehicle to provide investment (equity or near equity) to distressed low income communities (and presumably neighborhoods)—both urban and rural. An annual “allocation” of tax credits is made by Congress and its administration handled by Dept. of Treasury’s CDFI Fund. CDFI awards tax credits to Community Development Entities (CDEs) who award them to specific qualified businesses making a fixed asset investment in defined low-income geographies. Advantages include lower interest rates and less strident terms and conditions—without New Markets such projects would likely not have sufficient financing available. Thru 2014, New Markets dispersed over $38 billion to leverage $75 billion in new investment to troubled geographies. The program formally expired in 2014, but lingers on in several bills at time of writing. New Markets certain targeted geographies of concern to community developers. It is hard to envision, however, it being described as a community development program—again exposing Clinton’s awkward dance with community development.

 

Economic Gardening

The 1987 recession prompted the folk in Littleton Colorado[lxii] to take a second look at their economic development program. The two “big boy” firms in the community of 41,000, Martin Marietta and Marathon, were cutting back employment and that was very bad news. So the economic development staff and several members of the city council reviewed the efficacy of their past ED efforts. Up to that time, Littleton had joined with state and regional programs that recruited firms, especially from vulnerable California. The results were best described as “erratic”. On top of that, the city top urban renewal project (an upscale retail center) was languishing and well on the way to its eventual “belly up”. Since bad new comes in threes, the final knock on the head was a home improvement company, a recipient of a tax exempt bond financing went bankrupt and closed. In 1987 it seemed nothing was working well (Woods and Gibbons).

 

Deal-making and tax abatement seemed especially worthless as long-term ED tools. Staff and council members began a review of the various programs “out there” and they came across David Birch’s, the Job Generation Process and a research paper by Paul Romer, “Increasing Returns in Long-Run Growth” From Birch they were impressed with the power and importance of small business as the creator of jobs; from the latter they gleaned that the real driver of successful companies was innovation and knowledge (creative ideas)–both of which were “sustainable”–no depletion of existing resources. Because Littleton was at its core a farming community, the team adopted the metaphor, economic gardening.

 

We presented the city council with an image of a garden: when you plant a garden, you do not know which of the vegetables will produce the greatest yield, so you fertilize and water all of them equally. To contrast this strategy with the corporate and deal-making strategy, we used a big-game hunting metaphor. As every hunter in Colorado knows, you can go for many years without bagging a trophy elk. Similarly, economic hunting can be an exciting strategy, but the better odds are with economic gardening. (Woods and Gibbons 3).    

 

After finding qualified staff the first economic gardening program started in 1990 when they offered a customized data search service to area firms. The insight came from interviews with individual firms. The need for data by firms for one thing or another was high and the program immediately “exploded”. By 2010 this program had expanded to four full time staff and had extended its scope to search engine optimization, social media, GIS, and graphic design and dealt with 300-400 service requests annually and an additional 100 customized consulting. There is no picking of winners or targeting key sectors or clusters for the business intelligence service. Littleton’s job growth in this period was from 15,000 to 30,000; unemployment remained below the national average. How much of that was attributable to economic gardening itself is less important that it provided a base for the strategy’s attractiveness.

 

Economic gardening, however, is not a search engine optimization program. It is asking your existing firms what it is the community can do for them, then sorting through the requests, and selecting those the community can realistically and provide. It’s more than a retention program; it is a growth-oriented program as well. It is focused on small firms and abandons for the most part the big “supply-side” tools. It disavows deal-making and attraction-recruitment. No one claims this strategy fits all communities. Littleton officials suggest suburbs are most conducive to its charms and rural areas may have a tough time developing the expertise needed to run the programs. There is no reason it couldn’t be an element of a larger ED program—save for its philosophical origins

 

Casino Gambling: Don’t Bet on It!

Economic developers have an awkward relationship with gambling, particularly casino gambling. This is somewhat strange in that economic developers typically claim credit for virtually any economic growth within their jurisdiction. Casino gambling is mostly a State-driven ED program, with the state doing most of the negotiation and garnering a goodly share of tax and fee proceeds. Legal gambling (all forms) in 2012 generated nearly $100 billion in revenues. Casino gambling in 1991 produced $9 billion in revenues; in 2013, casino revenues were in excess of $50 billion[lxiii]. In 2012, an incomplete (not including for example tribal gambling) assessment by the casino industry[lxiv] asserts nearly $8 Billion dollars were paid to governments in twenty-two states. I’ll wager it has increased since then. In fact, the onslaught of online gambling, and with New Jersey and Nevada (and Maryland), doubling down approving new facilities in 2012-2013 promises yet a second wind to gambling’s continued growth

 

Taxes generated from casinos and lotteries have been an increasing mainstay of state governments and education systems; the jobs provided by casinos are significant and well-appreciated by the public as a whole. ED community college workforce programs train casino dealers and offer certificates. Casinos are reliable visitor destinations, spinning off their fair share of hotel rooms and retail sales. Casinos have proven to be an economic development home run—and a moral disgrace to the profession. If tax receipts are any guide, casino (and other forms of gambling) are the most successful and lucrative single economic development program in America.

 

Casino attraction usually requires controversial legislative approvals at state and local levels.  Casino attraction has been a gubernatorial prerogative-initiative. The usual ED recruitment programs are largely inappropriate to casino attraction. Also consider the rather sad image of providing a tax abatement to a casino? How long it can continue, with a casino on almost every street corner, is anyone’s guess, but the odds are the casino gambling has a few years left.             The last thing we attempt is a history of gambling in America or a comprehensive analysis of casino gambling and economic development. Economic developers, however, should have some familiarity with this strategy, if only because in the sad event the bubble eventually bursts, economic developers will be tasked to clean up the mess–and maybe blamed for it as well.

 

First things first. Gambling in America has a long-standing tradition, dating from colonial America, to “Maverick on the Riverboat Queen”, Para-mutual horse racing, and, of course, the ubiquitous state lottery[lxv]. Casino gambling as a wide-spread state ED strategy, however, is relatively recent. Casino gambling skyrocketed after 1989 but got started in 1931when Nevada legalized casino gambling. In 1947, Bugsy Siegel opened up the Las Vegas Flamingo. From 1966-1970 the quirky Howard Hughes purchased Las Vegas properties and transformed them into legitimate business corporations; in 1973 Harrah Entertainment was the first casino to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. New Jersey, in 1976, saw an opportunity and legalized Atlantic City as the nation’s second legal location for casino gambling. The Mirage Hotel & Casino opened in Las Vegas in 1989 (3000 rooms) and the era of Las Vegas as a world-known tourist destination commenced. By 2003, Las Vegas had 61 casinos, amassing $5.3 billion in revenues and attracting 35 million visitors annually to fill in excess of 100,000 hotel rooms. At its peak Atlantic City held 13 casinos, generated $4.3 billion in revenues with 32 million visits housed in 12,000 hotel rooms[lxvi]. In 1989, however, casino gambling got complicated.

 

Since the 1980’s the Cabazon (Indian) Band (near Indio, California) had been struggling with the state of California over the operation of bingo games and poker halls (i.e. casinos)[lxvii].The legal struggle reached the United States Supreme Court in 1986. The Court’s decision, that the federal government, not the state, had the power to regulate gaming on a tribal reservation–upholding tribal sovereignty, but in the process potentially making gambling and casinos legal upon any Congressional action. Congressional legislation (Indian Gaming Regulatory Act), signed by Reagan, in 1988, provided for casino gambling subject to a “compact” (i.e. tax) be agreed to with the state. The legislation launched the Native American casino industry, an industry which in 1988 garnered an estimated $100 million to an industry which in 2012 achieved nearly $20 billion in revenues. By 2011, twelve states authorized twenty-eight casinos and a total of twenty-five states had authorized Native American casinos.

 

Shades of Mark Twain, riverboat gambling (the third form of casino gambling) started in Iowa and Illinois in 1991 and then spread to Indiana, Missouri and Mississippi. Land-based casinos followed in Louisiana and Michigan who authorized such casinos by 2003.Since 2003 when nine states had authorized non-Tribal land-based casinos, twenty-three states authorizing (22 with operating casinos) have placed a bet on land-based, non-tribal casinos. At least eight others were considering authorization, and a number of states were approving legislation to increase the number and type of casinos in their states. The industry claims to employ over 332,000 workers (170,000 in Nevada with over 400 casinos) ($13 billion in wages), generates (not including Native American casinos) in excess of $37 billion in revenues, and paid an estimated $8.6 billion in taxes to states. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Chicagoland, Detroit and Connecticut are the top five markets–all generating more than $1.2 billion annually in revenues[lxviii].

 

The issues, salient to economic developers, arising from casino gambling are several. The historically volatile nature of the public’s willingness to accept legal and public gambling is testified that casino gambling is usually credited to be the “Third Wave of American Gambling”. The other two waves eventually went down for the count. Scandal, crime, individual misuse, and shifts in public and private morality provided plenty of opportunity for casino gambling’s deck to be reshuffled. The “close” contractual and regulatory relationship of state governments with interstate-international casino companies[lxix] raise issues of potential concern. The dependence of states, localities and even school systems and unions on revenues and taxes merits additional concern. The overall effect of casino revenues on state finances is beyond our ken and purview–but clearly could lead to unfortunate realities under certain conditions. Casinos were approved and depend upon a public acceptance largely linked to goals traditionally perceived as economic development-related. The public perception of economic development is indirectly tied to casino gambling.

 

In 2015 it was estimated that total spent on all forms of gambling in the US (including lotteries) as in excess of $104 billion dollars, from which state governments share was about $20 billion. Lotteries comprised about two-thirds of the state receipts (2015) and casinos less than $9 billion (31%)[lxx]. Casinos on Indian reservations are not included in US statistics and in 2015 they generated nearly $30 billion in revenues from 459 casinos in twenty-eight states which compared to $38.3 billion revenues from US commercial casinos. California, dominated by Indian casinos placed second to Nevada in revenue. Pennsylvania’s commercial casinos garnered the most at $3.2 in 2015, surpassing the struggling Atlantic City.

 

Las Vegas depends more on tourism spending than gambling which peaked in 2007 and has not yet recovered to its prerecession high of $ 6.8 billion. As of 2015 only three states had (New Jersey, Delaware, and Nevada) had legalized online gambling—attracting an estimated 10.8 million gamblers and $6.8 million in revenue most of which was offshore and extra-legal. Legalized online gambling yielded only $160 million in revenues. BTW slots generated aout75% of casino revenue. In 2015 only Hawaii and Utah had no legal commercial or Indian casinos, lotteries or other forms of gambling. Rhode Island according to the Rockefeller Institute collects in excess of $457 per resident from gambling-the highest state rate, but NY collects the most money overall from all forms of gambling to fund the state government ($3.2 billion)—Pennsylvania is second ($2.4 billion).

 

Market saturation and economic downturn, the industry is cyclical, will also play a factor in its long-term evolution. Casino gambling, especially destination gambling (as opposed to day-trip gambling) is real estate driven. The ultimate impact of the internet and its forms of gambling have yet to play out. A downturn in casino gambling can have serious consequences on local real estate markets and unemployment rates—witness Atlantic City in 2016. All this is true of many industries and sectors, but the casino gambling sector is a sector which may, or may not respond to normal sector competitive dynamics and counter-checks.

 

New Urbanism

It had to happen sometime. At some point, one always knew suburbs would become “chic” and “the place to be” to those who really mattered in society. New Urbanism, which today describes itself more as “neighborhood”-style development, took center stage with the building of a small resort village in Florida’s Panhandle. In truth, New Urbanism began in 1981 from a Cooper-Hewitt Museum exhibit on suburbs managed by a Columbia University professor, Robert A. M. Stern and the periodical Anglo-American Suburbs. Most of the exhibit featured stuff we have discussed in earlier chapters: Forest Hills Gardens and other Garden Cities (Rybczynski 17-8). That is an important tidbit to know because a core thrust of New Urbanism was its rejection of modernism and post-modernist planning and architecture (our friend Le Corbusier) in favor of a return to “a blast from the past”. To be fair, the New Urbanism was also a rejection of the subdivision style suburban sprawl–and although it was pre-McMansion, it would have rejected them also.

 

New Urbanism has a little of something for almost everybody. It could tap into nostalgia for Howard’s and Unwin’s past, the extravagance of the City Beautiful, and accommodate green technologies, smart growth principles and solar energy conservation. Most importantly, it implied a return to the honesty and simplicity of small town America–in the modern age. Much of the New Urbanism, particularly in the nineties, identified with a modern variant of city-building. In some measure this was due to its first demonstrated success at Seaside Florida developed by developer Robert Davis and his two architects, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany.

 

Duany and Plater-Zyberk worked for Stern and Anglo-American Suburbs and were at the Cooper-Hewitt exhibit. The Seaside project began in 1982 as a new resort community, planned to include 300 houses, and approximately 300 cottages, and shops, retail etc. The Seaside concept embraced density and design as central principles and that became translated into an entirely new and picturesque new-style community:

 

Seaside is different. Narrow streets radiate from a central green as in a New England village. The houses are vaguely Victorian, with tradition pitched roofs, porches and white picket fences. The lots are small and the buildings are extremely close together, bordered by heavy undergrowth. Sandy footpaths provide shortcuts behind the gardens. The casual atmosphere and the cottage like houses recall an old-fashioned beach community. (Rybczynski 19)

 

Doris Hayden describes Seaside in different terms:

 

In a remote location, reachable only by car, they developed a master plan for a small pedestrian-oriented resort of neo-traditional vernacular houses set in indigenous landscaping. The project was specifically designed to recapture a pre-automobile way of life. The developer wanted a place for ‘extended’ porch-sitting, leisurely strolling, and sharing time with those you care most about (Hayden 205-16)

 

Seaside, after a sort of rough start, took off by the end of the decade. In 1990, Time Magazine included it in its “Best of the Decade” issue; between 1988 and 1990 Duany and Plater-Zyberk contracted and started design on more than two dozen New Urbanist communities. Seaside was the location for filming the Truman Show. In 1993, they, along with others, formed the Congress of New Urbanism, which quickly moved into an image of being the cutting edge of architecture and planning (Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Spock). The Walt Disney Corporation hired (1994) another developer to construct a New Urbanist community, Celebration, outside of Orlando. It too has been an enormous success

 

New Urbanism, no matter how popular and trendy it may be, does have its critics. Some criticism simply taps into the diversity of consumer and household tastes. New Urbanist communities and neighborhoods do not suit the fancy of all (lack of privacy is a major concern). That leads into a more serious concern that New Urbanism attracts white, upper middle class, affluent households and these communities are simply not affordable on any scale to even middle-class folk. Diversity is not New Urbanism’s middle name. Nevertheless, New Urbanist design principles have since been incorporated into hundreds of completed projects, ranging from public housing, malls and, gentrificating neighborhoods. New Urbanism does offer a realistic, proven business-model alternative to large lot suburban subdivisions. Moreover, in reviving much of the neighborhood living focus of Perry’s early twentieth century neighborhood movement, it returns to a more humanist sense of community, many feel, has been honored only in the breach.

Pre Elgar Chapter 22 Draft

New Urbanism: Déjà vu all over again/previous version of above final

It had to happen sometime. At some point, one always knew that the suburbs would become “chic” and “the place to be” to those who really mattered in society. New Urbanism, which today describes itself more as “neighborhood”-style development, developed, amazingly, from the creation of a small town resort village in the Panhandle of Florida. In truth, New Urbanism began in 1981 at an Cooper-Hewitt Museum exhibit on suburbs managed by a Columbia University professor, Robert A. M. Stern and the periodical Anglo-American Suburbs. Most of the exhibit featured stuff we have discussed in earlier chapters: Forest Hills Gardens and the Garden Cities in particular[2]. That is an important tidbit to know because a core thrust of the New Urbanism was its rejection of modernism and post-modernist planning and architecture in favor of a return of “the blast from the past”. To be fair, the New Urbanism was also a rejection of the subdivision style suburban sprawl–and although it was pre-McMansion, it would have rejected them also.

 

So New Urbanism has a little of something for almost everybody. It could tap into nostalgia for Howard’s and Unwin’s past, the extravagance of the City Beautiful, and accommodate green technologies, smart growth principles and solar energy conservation. Most importantly, it implied a return to the honesty and simplicity of small town America–in the modern age. Much of the New Urbanism, particularly in the nineties, became identified with a modern variant of city-building. In some measure this was due to its first demonstrated success at Seaside Florida developed by developer Robert Davis and his two architects, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany.

 

Duany and Plater-Zyberk had worked for Stern and Anglo-American Suburbs and were at the Cooper-Hewitt exhibit. The Seaside project began in 1982 as a new resort community which was planned to include 300  houses, approximately 300 cottages, and shops, retail etc. The Seaside concept embraced density and design as central principles and that became translated into an entirely new and picturesque new-style community:

 

Seaside is different. Narrow streets radiate from a central green as in a New England village. The houses are vaguely Victorian, with tradition pitched roofs, porches and white picket fences. The lots are small and the buildings are extremely close together, bordered by heavy undergrowth. Sandy footpaths provide shortcuts behind the gardens. The casual atmosphere and the cottage like houses recall an old-fashioned beach community.[3]

 

Doris Hayden describes Seaside using different terms:

 

In a remote location, reachable only by car, they developed a master plan for a small pedestrian-oriented resort of neo-traditional vernacular houses set in indigenous landscaping. The project was specifically designed to recapture a pre-automobile way of life. The developer wanted a place for ‘extended’ porch-sitting, leisurely strolling, and sharing time with those you care most about…[4]

 

Seaside, after a sort of rough start, took off by the end of the decade. In 1990, Time Magazine included it in its “Best of the Decade” issue; between 1988 and 1990 Duany and Plater-Zyberk contracted and started design on more than two dozen New Urbanist communities. Seaside was the location for filming the Truman Show. In 1993, they, along with others, formed the Congress of New Urbanism, which quickly moved into an image of being the cutting edge of architecture and planning[5]. The Walt Disney Corporation hired (1994) another developer to construct a New Urbanist community, Celebration, outside of Orlando. It too has been an enormous success

 

New Urbanism, no matter how popular and trendy it may be, does have its critics. Some of the criticism simply taps into the diversity of consumer and household tastes. New Urbanist communities and neighborhoods do not suit the fancy of all (lack of privacy is a major concern). That leads into a more serious concern that New Urbanism attracts white, upper middle class, affluent households and that these communities are simply not affordable on any scale to even middle-class folk. Diversity is not the New Urbanism’s middle name. Nevertheless, the New Urbanist design principles have since been incorporated into hundreds of completed projects, ranging from public housing, malls and, increasingly in an age of gentrification, neighborhoods.

 

But, New Urbanism does unequivocally offer a realistic, proven business-model alternative to large lot suburban subdivisions. Moreover, in reviving much of the neighborhood living focus of Perry’s early twentieth century neighborhood movement, it does return to a more humanist sense of community that has, many feel, be honored only in the breach. In that these are not gated communities, one might appreciate an approach which is somewhat more egalitarian than some past suburban developments. As to the fit with economic development programs, we will soon be considering the works of Richard Florida and his creative classes. New Urbanist communities and neighborhoods would offer a fit residence and style for programs appealing to his targeted clientele.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE 1978 CUED SENSE OF THE PROFESSION: The Subtle Revolution

 

 

The question as to whether this Second War penetrated into the professional economic development organizations would seem most appropriate at this point. An IEDC history attests to the likely reality that the AEDC’s membership was disproportionately southern-based.

 

The organization (AIDC) had a high representation of members from the American

South and a healthy contingent of Canadian members. Its focus was on serving rural

communities. Furthermore, AIDC historically concentrated on forging ties with the

private sector. Government programs played a secondary role. [6]

 

AIDC at the time was located in Boston MA (CUED was in Washington D.C,) and in 1971 established the first professional economic development certification program, and held its first exam in May, 1971 from which 58 economic developers were accredited[7]. In 1973 AIDC headquarters moved to Kansas City and in 1974 developed and approved the criteria for accrediting a “Basic Industrial Development Course” an entry level introduction to economic developers which would be offered locally throughout the nation’s regions. In 1975, AIDC introduced a monthly “Legislative Affairs Report” and by 1978 its paid membership reached 1000.[8] It would appear that AIDC during this period was not deeply involved in the Second War but choose instead to distance itself from the War’s politicization, literally being in Boston and Kansas City, and spiritually in that this period marked very serious achievement in professional standards, education, and certification. There is no indication that AIDC engaged in any serious lobbying or was in any major way linked to the SGPB.

 

CUED on the other hand had been very active in lobbying the newly elected Nixon administration and was a vigorous defender of the EDA in its early years (CUED being the recipient of several EDA operating grants). Still the Nixon Administration did cut urban renewal funds suggesting some mixed results. CUED, which it must not be forgotten was only two years old in 1973, did quickly develop professional-based activities such as its first Annual Meeting (1973) as well as “technical assistance to cities such as Detroit, St. Louis Allentown (PA) and Xenia (OH)”[9] the last experienced a serious natural disaster.

 

Moreover, CUED seem very interested in promoting newer economic development strategies and tools such as “creative financing, small business development, commercial revitalization and central business district renewal” as well as “business retention and the linkages between universities … and the needs for small business incubators, the role of technology…”CUED, during the Carter years, published several reports under its second Executive Director (the first, Milwaukee-based Ken Fry) James Peterson on CETA training programs and a major research study of CDBG, funded by HUD, “Coordinated Urban Economic Development” in 1978. But political involvement was never neglected. In 1976 CUED lobbied Ford’s EDA nominee…”He became a strong supporter of CUED”.[10]

 

With Carter’s election in late 1976, CUED returned to its intense lobbying and political involvement and early 1977, CUED:

 

was positioned to play an influential role during the transition period that ushered

in the new Carter Administration. CUED was part of advisory groups working with

HUD, EDA and the White House, meeting with new Secretaries of HUD and Commerce

And the new president’s key advisers on domestic and state and local policy, Stu

Eisenstadt and Jack Watson.

 

“We actually wrote a national urban policy which became the Carter Administration’s

economic program when he came into office … We played a role in finally getting an

amendment through which allowed EDA to work with urban areas. (Ken Patton)

 

The late 1970’s were a time to innovation. There was an almost competitive situation

between HUD and EDA as who could best deliver the best economic development

programs to cities. CUED’s greatest value in those days was that it was a meeting place…

(Walter D’Alessio, Chair of CUED 1978-80)[11]

 

This was followed shortly by the recruitment of at least three CUED staff by EDA[12]. It appears that CUED maintained an active presence with these key federal agencies and to a certain degree was involved in the policy process within HUD (and UDAG) and EDA. Accordingly, it would appear that CUED, certainly more politically involved than AIDC, was a participant in the early years of the Second War. It did so while maintaining some balance with more professional activities such as organizational development, research and technical assistance/expertise.

 

The second war is a page turner for economic development–it is one of the more critical episodes in the evolution of the practice and profession of economic development.

 

In 1975 CUED commenced what turned out to be a more than two year study of the “state of the practice and issues of economic development”. Financed by HUD, the staff through case studies and a large advisory council the staff interviewed and conducted three-four day site visits resulting in twenty-two case studies of individual cities and economic development agencies. An eight volume report was published in March 1978. The “primary aim of the analysis is to provide information that cities can use to enhance their capacity to plan and implement a coordinated economic development program”.[13]

 

Many of this report’s observations provide a fascinating look into the internals and the mindsets of key agencies and economic development leaders. In many ways these reports provide a perspective of the problems and their past background which afflicted the profession on the eve of the 1980’s–but more importantly the report announces without fanfare or even discussion a momentous but very subtle revolution within the Progressive stream. That subtle revolution was very simply that governmental-based economic developers were assuming responsibility for the management and direction of their economic base and their local economy. No longer would a municipality’s economy and prosperity be directed by the area’s private sector and no longer would the configuration of the “area-wide” economic base be left to private enterprise-market decisions. We will offer some observations salient to our history of the profession derived from our reading and understanding of these reports. Several caveats would seem appropriate before we begin.

 

First, the CUED report is not an exhaustive census of the entire profession. By its own admittance, the report is focused almost exclusively around large cities–membership in CUED was based on population of 50,000 or more. CUED was still in its early years, about ten years old at the report’s issuance; many large cities had not yet joined CUED. Also, CUED in these early years was very close to EDA and also to HUD. It was probably at the height of its lobby powers with the White House and federal agencies. For both good and bad reasons, it is likely that the impact and role of federal agencies and their programs are more emphasized than is local autonomy, innovation and state and sub-state public policy-making (although the latter, in fairness does receive much attention but usually is a somewhat negative or unhelpful factor). CUED, in our sense of the economic development profession, flows, especially in these early years (much less so after its merger with AEDC), along the Progressive stream–it is we repeat very oriented toward federal programs and leadership. The CUED report is based and reflects economic development in our larger cities.

 

Small cities and towns, third tier cities and rural areas as well, live in very different worlds from the larger cities–economic development is noticeably different in these smaller-sized communities. In the sixties and seventies especially, more homogenous populations, non central city status, and the impact of more limited resources, affect the complexity, and the goals of economic development. Size and resource base alone are critical to the definition and capacity of EDOs. Economic development agencies in smaller communities exhibit much less complexity and far fewer staff; specialized programs receive generalized attention and management. Programmatic variance from central cities is also likely to be considerable; new suburbs, for example, need first time infrastructure, not urban renewal. Residential communities are not central cities in their diversity, needs, or goals. In addition, small cities and towns tend to receive less attention and assistance from federal categorical grants and demonstration projects. In these cities and towns, Privatist economic development has much more appeal.

 

And some mention ought to be made regarding the context, the backdrop during which the study was conducted. The events described in this chapter are critical to the development of the profession–and they are quite dramatic and even traumatic. The War Between the States, the reaction to the Great Society, Vietnam War, Riots, Assassinations, Watergate, and social and generation change–not to mention the truly shocking perception of the rise of the Sunbelt and the specter of regional decline. As we have stated elsewhere, economic development got shoved to the top of the public policy agenda. Economic development, always important we must modestly confess, assumed a first order importance for many cities, regions and political and public officials. The escalation up the policy agenda priorities list occurred precisely during this study. The need for coordination and planning, upon which much of the study is based, we believe reflects an awareness that previous structures, practices, and policies were not going to be adequate in what was a brave new world for economic developers. Fragmentation and poorly coordinated programs are tolerated much easier when no one is watching.

 

To us the report’s formal underlying theme is the need for coordination of economic development. An earlier, 1976 version of the report made the case for the consolidation and coordination in the federal agencies providing economic development programs. That call for federal coordination went nowhere quickly, and the focus turned toward coordination of local economic development. Why the need for coordination? Because the existing structure and fabric of municipal economic development policy system was not sufficient to the task that lay before it. Indeed, the opening lines of the report’s Executive Summary announce the subtle revolution and why it was necessary:

 

Urban decay, loss of population and jobs and the mounting costs of public services all threaten the economic vitality of our cities. As a result cities are taking new initiatives to stimulate private employment opportunities, and strengthen their tax base. Increasingly, cities are abandoning the notion that the role of government is to provide services while private sector market forces determine the mix of local industries, the expansion and movement of local firms, the number, location and mix of jobs. City governments are trying to find ways to consciously and purposefully influence their economies in order to provide jobs for urban residents, increase per capita income, and reduce the heavy, and often inequitable bite of the local tax structure. But revitalization of the urban core cannot be accomplished with public resources alone. It requires public-private cooperation in a comprehensive economic development strategy that makes effective use of public funds to maximize private investment.[14]

 

Several revolutionary implications flow from economic development’s new role and task set. This report and is new goal structure is a radical departure from the then dominant urban renewal approach with its geographically-limited, physical-real estate infrastructure strategy driven by the private sector of the community from economic development agencies whose control and direction were shared by mayors and the private sector. In its place was a city government assuming responsibility, for not just blighted areas and modernization, but for the regional economy and economic prosperity. This is far more than simple Keynesian tweaking applied to the municipal economy. Second, this is a central city focused economic development desperately seeking to overcome the inequities and decline induced by regional change and suburbanization. Thirdly, the goals of economic development are clearly set: job creation, fiscal and tax stability and equity, and economic revitalization of the central city. The role of the private sector is clearly stipulated–its cooperation in the remaking of the local economy and economic base by city government and economic developers. What is needed to accomplish these goals is the content of the report.

 

The most obvious deficiency was that economic development was fragmented and comprehensive (i.e. unified) policy was frustrated because it was implemented by multiple and diverse economic development organizations (EDOs) in an unplanned and all-too unthoughtful manner. Economic Development policy was at that time driven by bureaucratic bias and constituency demand–both of which were regarded as unfortunate and impediments to sound rational economic development policy drawn from a sound, rational economic development plan. Structural and policy coordination-reform and the establishment of new forms of economic development planning were, therefore, the initial fundamental reform to achieve the goals of the new economic development perspective. Certainly, the heritage of Progressive economic development’s long association with planning was asserting itself at this very critical juncture of Progressive, big city economic development.

 

Our reading of the report suggests that over the past years, economic development programs had been incrementally added, located perhaps logically in one department or agency or another and over time simply diffused through the bureaucratic and community public policy landscape. Economic development “things” were filed in locations that seemed easy and logical at the time–and they accumulated over time. By the late 1970’s every major city had economic development programs all over the place, in no particular order.

 

In most local governments, development-related functions are housed in separate and often unrelated line and staff agencies, or are under the aegis of different policy-making bodies. This is the result of the traditional service orientation of city governments in which most municipal activities are viewed as unrelated services meeting the individual needs of the community.[15]

 

We would also observe from our history, that government had in relatively recent years become engaged in what had in the past been a primarily private-Privatist activity and function. For the most part, except for urban renewal which had mostly been pushed into an independent quasi EDO redevelopment agency governed in partnership with the private corporate leadership, the newly devised economic development programs represented an innovative, new to the scene intrusion of the public sector into the affairs, hitherto seen as predominately private and business community-related. The new set of economic developers, however, was frustrated with what they saw in the jurisdictional policy and bureaucratic landscape.

 

Diffused as they were through the community policy system, there was no easy way to innovate or manage these disparate and differently operated programs. How did these economic development programs get placed into different diffused locations? Often because they were financed by different federal agencies–economic development in the field had already become siloized. The picket fence of categorical federalism, tempered to be sure, by Nixon’s block grants, had lodged different economic development programs in different departments and different independent agencies.

 

Each department or independent agency had their own goals, staff, and funding sources–and most importantly, their own constituency–entities that were dependent upon, linked with, or attracted to the goals and outputs of the federally funded programs. Coordination and structural reform, therefore, potentially meant institutional war and community conflict; a potential reordering of priorities and benefits helped and hurt groups, individuals and organizations throughout the community. Comprehensive economic development planning and policy-making was at best unlikely, most likely impossible in such an environment.

 

Over the years, the numbers of semi-autonomous bodies that carry out development activities have increased. Although many of them have successfully completed development activities, they have also created problems. The city government may experience difficult in involving them in comprehensive public development because the constituencies and objectives of these groups frequently are different from those of city government.

 

Federal program regulations have also contributed to this proliferation. Some o programs require the creation of separate agencies to manage or direct the program at the local level, and in some cases direct funding is provided to those bodies. In addition, federal regulations may require community or private sector involvement which lessens the city’s influence or control over these programs. Some examples include the community development corporations funded by the Community Services Administration, business development organizations funded by the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (HUD) and Model Cities agencies funded under the former Model Cities categorical program.[16]

 

The report observed that strong mayors are more successful in countering the effects of fragmentation and those weak mayors, especially those elected every two years or subject to frequent turnover, are less able to achieve control over development agencies and to accomplish coordinated economic development. The “economic situation” of the community is cited as an important factor in creating the need to coordinate economic development. A growing or stable economy “may have less need to a sophisticated institutional framework and might opt for a more informal and ad hoc approach… On the other hand, cities with declining economies have a greater need for public intervention…”[17]

 

In addition, the cases studies suggest several models by which coordination can be achieved. A line model, in which all economic development programs are combined into one department or a single administrator (Milwaukee’s Department of City Development placed planning, urban renewal, land banking, and financing functions together) is one option[18]; a staff approach is another alternative in which the mayor establishes either an office or a single administrator in the mayor’s office who is responsible for the coordination of the independent and department line agencies (City of Baltimore’s Physical Development Coordinator, The City of Louisville established a Community Development Cabinet, and Portland’s Office of Planning and Development)[19].

Economic development planning, or more precisely the need for such planning, is clearly distinguished from conventional planning associated with housing and zoning.

 

As cities assume more responsibility for local economic development, the need grows for practitioners to set clear development objectives and to devise means for achieving them. During fiscal crises and national recession, competing demands for scarce resources become more intense as the needs of every constituency escalate. Local officials come under pressure to set priorities and develop more rational approaches to urban economic development. At the policy level, this means devising overall investment strategies to address job creation, fiscal solvency, and growth management issues.[20]

 

The Executive Summary is blunter and to the point. “Comprehensive economic development planning is a new concept and a new function that will require significant changes in many city planning activities. A new set of objectives and policies must be imposed upon existing city operations …”.[21] Acknowledging that “Public planning for economic development has been limited in most cities” despite several past efforts by the federal government to create local economic development planning capacity, the need in 1978 was to establish, with federal support, a new planning apparatus and approach to economic development.

 

Deserving of particular praise for effectiveness in promoting local economic development planning was EDA’s Section 302 program which, at that time, had provided funds to forty cities for that activity. HUD, EDA, and DOL had also created a joint program and funded ten cities. If so, it appears that by the late seventies, the need for local economic planning had been perceived as central to economic developers and the tasks they had set for themselves

 

The initial need was to gather city-wide data and construct the datasets necessary for effective economic development planning. These datasets were discussed at great length and now, for the most part, they have been created. The next step in planning was to adopt “area-wide planning techniques”. First and foremost this involved understanding the economic base of the area, its sectors and industries, their growth or decline, business starts, export industries and their multipliers and how each compare to national trends. From this one can better understand the role the central city plays in the area economy and the competitive advantages and disadvantages of each and how they play into the region’s business climate can be derived. Further data should reveal the nature of social and demographic changes and how local residents and the labor force are affected.

 

Today, all this is rather commonplace–but to our understanding, this is the first time one sees it so specifically and prescriptively in the economic development “literature”. In the seventies local economic development had indeed taken a decided turn away from urban renewal towards new forms of economic development in which government was no longer a supporting participant but the leader in what amounted to an attempted remaking of a jurisdictions economic base in order to safeguard the primary and prosperity of that region’s central city. There is, however, a legitimate question as to how much, if at all, this subtle revolution was shared by others outside the profession at this point in time. In our minds, we suggest that the frustration of the local economic developer was to a considerable degree the result of the indifference or outright opposition of other actors in their policy system and local environment. We strongly doubt that constituencies and decision-makers in every city from this time forward looked to economic developers, and their plans, in this leadership role.

 

Delving deeper into the planning approach advocated by this report we discover some interesting, oft-times perceptive insights into the future evolution of the profession and economic development theory. Of particular note is the strong reliance on sector and industry trends and developments. The manufacturing sector is certainly foremost among these sectors, but the increasing growth of the “commercial” (i.e. services) sector, while secondary to manufacturing, was also noted. The Sunbelt’s non-manufacturing-based resurgence had apparently been noticed–either that or economic developers did notice that the only construction cranes in their jurisdiction were building commercial facilities.

 

Also interesting was the use of the term “industrial cluster”. As it turns out this has little to do with the cluster approach to be advocated by Porter twelve years later. Industrial clusters in this report resemble the old-style industrial districts and are “geographic concentrations of industrial activity”. The physical conditions of these areas in which these industrial clusters inhabit are described in terms very similar to those used thus far for blighted neighborhoods and urban renewal projects. The economic development planning as described in the report focused very heavily on the physical land use and site characteristics which were the then existing paradigm in the central city.[22] The break with economic development’s immediate past was far from complete and the report in no way represents a disparagement and a repudiation of urban renewal or the physical redevelopment strategy. Instead, we see economic development enlarging upon urban renewal to evolve into a much more comprehensive, area-wide redefinition of the tasks which central city economic developers were to achieve. Urban renewal was an acceptable strategy for economic development, but it was not, and could not be, the entire strategy for central city revitalization.

 

What we do think we see in this report, however, is advocacy of structural reform–the centralization of as many economic development programs and policy areas into one department or one mayoral office staff member. If so, the report is very much a “power grab” within municipal government and an attempt to unify different economic development policy areas into one “comprehensive” policy process which is constructed from rational “scientific” and “objective” “planning techniques” as described above[23]. Accordingly, we see concerted efforts to bring to heal the “community development” agencies, programs and departments (more precisely grab onto a greater share of the CDBG budget for area-wide activities) and to establish some sort of linkage with DOL’s CETA workforce programs. The latter, while acknowledged as critical to area-wide economic development, was not the target of consolidation but rather of policy innovations and program changes which were more compatible with area-wide sector-based economic development initiatives.

 

While not a formal theme of the CUED report, it is possible to assemble a picture of the range of economic development programs offered in the major urban centers in the late 1970’s. Obviously (or not) urban renewal and housing-related problems seem to be the most common and are the most difficult for mayors to control in that they are usually located in bureaucracies outside of direct mayor control. The panoply of community development and model cities agencies are also very common and they too appear to be operating in distinctly different bureaucracies than economic development programs. Nevertheless, the “physical-infrastructure-real estate” strategy is found in all examples presented in its twenty-two case studies.

 

The types of programs in operation which appear to be, by current standards, conventional economic development programs are usually of two generic types: (1) those which are real-estate related (incubators, industrial parks and sites) and those which are (2) finance related (business loans, MBE, venture capital, business surveys and visitation). Industrial development bond financing, usually associated with an independent quasi EDO, do not seem to be as common in large city municipal governments. There appears to be a wider variety of programs associated with community development-style agencies including both real estate and finance programs, but also more “people”-oriented, workforce, skill building and, of course, neighborhood-based revitalization and housing-related programs.

 

There are some references to formal, titled economic development strategies; in particular, attraction[24] and retention[25] are clearly identified and seem to be pervasive. We would digress from the report and suggest that these strategies and tools (both real estate and finance related) associated with attraction and retention possess the following characteristics: (1) the strategies have probably been around for some time and are the result of a half-century of North-South sparing over manufacturing firms and the support of the state and its SSS; (2) both real estate and finance tools appear to be what we term “micro economic” (some refer to it as cost minimization) approaches to economic development–i.e. they seek to reduce the cost structure of a private firm in order to influence a location decision. As such, in these most Progressive big city policy-systems a Privatist approach to economic development is thoroughly and safely ensconced in the economic development framework by the late 1970’s. We do not see formal reference to job creation in any volume of the report.

 

We would also add neighborhood-community development based strategies to this as that strategy does seem to characterize a good deal of the various tools and programs common to community development agencies and departments. Interestingly, we do not sense in the CUED report that community development approach is viewed as any different in its goals, strategies and tools from conventional economic development. Indeed, a major element of the report is to find ways to “fold” the community development approach into the conventional economic development paradigm. That is a major goal of the coordination theme and an entire volume of the report is dedicated to that topic alone. That volume supports strongly the start made in the 1977 Community Development Block Grant Act to enlarge upon the eligible economic development activities under CDBG. The report also specified a number of HUD-CDBG reforms, such as the elimination of the “three day” rule which precluded HUD funds from being included in a revolving loan fund.[26]

 

The economic strategy picture that emerges from these pages is that central city economic development (and its lead agency EDO) is clearly multi-strategy based. We see evidence that any individual central city municipality could simultaneously follow an urban renewal-physical redevelopment, community development-neighborhood, micro economic, workforce, tourist-industrial attraction, business retention strategy. An individual EDO within that municipality could specialize as a workforce or tourist EDO would likely, or, and this is especially true for the jurisdiction’s lead agency EDO, include several strategies and the tools appropriate for each strategy within one EDO. That the CUED report exhibits some willingness to concentrate a number of strategies into one line agency, we can see evidence that by the middle, and certainly late seventies there were typically one, and probably a number of multi-strategy EDOs simultaneously operate within the jurisdiction’s boundaries.

 

 

 

 

Polycentrism and Post-Suburbia

 

Between 1950 and 1970, urbanized area of Washington, D.C., grew from 181 to 523 square miles, Miami from 116 to 429, while the megalopolitan areas of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles expanded thousands of square miles. They started to call it sprawl. Suburban residents in 1960 (31%) and central city (32%) residents were roughly equal; in 1970 suburbanites exceeded 37% of the nation’s population; central city share remained 32%. Between 1930 (31%) and 2000 (30%) central city population remained remarkably stable. Suburbs, however, kept on growing (Hobbs & Stoops 33, Table-15). With 37.6% of the nation’s population in 1970, suburbs grew to 50% by 2000 (and an estimated 53% in 2014). Somewhere in there, a point of no-return had to have been broached. However, sprawled they might be, suburbs existed and they weren’t going away. That was as true for former Big City metro areas as for western metros.

 

In the meantime, of course, Big Cities had, more often than not, been categorized as “Legacy Cities”, cities abandoned by their insensitive children to their fate. That dialogue continues into Contemporary Economic Development. In this chapter, however, we leave that debate behind and argue the metropolitan hierarchy is polycentric, acknowledged as such, or, if not conceded to be polycentric, is de facto polycentric. Central cities no longer enjoy economic nor political primacy or a dominant position to control affairs of their metro areas. Central city metro relationships vary, but suburbs are autonomous; unincorporated areas mostly serviced by counties and service districts. For this history, the city-suburb war is over; it ended sometime … certainly by the end of the 1990’s. In 1997 Teaford labeled the new metropolitan order, “post-suburbia” and that is our euphemism for a polycentric urban metro area.

 

Just what does this polycentric metro area look like to an economic developer? It is ironic that for more than a half-century we defined thousands of communities and jurisdictions with three words “suburb”, “sameness” and “sprawl”; yet, this history’s most difficult initial conceptual problem is finding some way to get our arms around the incredible diversity and variation found in post-suburban metropolitan areas. City size is important to an economic developer, but many non-central cities have achieved sufficient scale to function in ways similar to former Big City economic development—if they choose to. Not all do. Post-suburban jurisdictions come in many types/policy systems, with different ED/CD goals, different economic bases, and vastly different internal composition and history. Post-suburbia has neighborhoods, and CBD, a work in progress for many, is not without its relevance. Not all post-suburban jurisdictions want growth—or at least define growth in their own terms.

 

This history asserts there is no single post-suburban policy system, no single post-suburban economic development strategy/EDO motif, and no single set of ED goals common throughout the metro area. Indeed, a considerable number of post-suburban jurisdictions do not highly prioritize ED or CD. There is variation with metro areas and across regions. Moreover, as shall be argued in the next chapter, we have “Big Sorted” ourselves so well most metro areas consist of ideological, ethnic/racial and class enclaves. Post –suburbia can be highly politicized, and the economic bases of each component jurisdiction, quite different—sometimes competing. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, however, our first task is to recount post-1970/pre-2000 suburban evolution to lay foundations for Contemporary Economic Development. Initially we focus on the edge city and boomburbs, and follow with brief descriptions of suburban city-building models such as the common interest development (CID/ Privatopia) and master-planned communities. The second task sketches the variation that may be the chief characteristic of post-suburbia.

 

Polycentric Suburbanism

Edge Cities and Boomburbs

The 1980’s and 1990’s could be described as the golden era of sprawl. In 1991 Joel Garreau published “Edge City: Life on the New Frontier“.  He described a new urban landscape (job centers, more precisely) “in places that only thirty years before had been residential suburbs or even corn stubble” (Garreau xx). Garreau had discovered a form of post-suburbia that became evident during the eighties. Garreau defined an edge city or edge node as having more than 5 million square feet of leasable office space plus at least 600000 square feet of leasable retail space–a place that has “more jobs than bedrooms“, and perceived by the locals as an identifiable place less than thirty years of age. His poster child for an “edge city” was Tyson’s Corner.

 

Garreau thought of edge cities as a third wave of suburbanization and claimed two-thirds of America’s office facilities were in edge cities (Garreau 5-7). Quoting Faulkner, Garreau gets to the nub of why edge cities exploded: “Man ain’t really evil, he just ain’t got any sense“. If economic developers had little influence over these population centers, it appears that planners had less (Lange). Many edge cities were wholly contained within a city, others in unincorporated areas– not “legally” cities at all. Scale and growth, commercial growth mostly, characterize edge cities—they describe an important factor in the evolution of post-suburban jurisdictional economic bases. Combine this with TIF mall/sales tax chasing described earlier, and one can see that a Privatist-dominated planning motif characterized the development of post-suburbia jurisdictions during these years.

 

This pattern continued into our Contemporary Economic Development period. Lang and LeFurgy (2006) (and Lang and Simmons previously) discovered the fastest growing cities in the post-2000 period were mostly Sunbelt suburban “cities”. Such cities contrasted starkly with suburban metro stagnation, even decline, of several former hegemonic Big Cities. Former hegemonic Big City suburbs were still under a cloud in our Contemporary World-often held responsible for the decline of their loving parent. Not so in the West, and California in particular (with 84 adult/baby boomburbs). California had nearly half of the nation’s Boomburbs, but the South had 41 baby and adult boomburbs. Chicago had one boomburb, as did Atlanta and Washington D.C. There were none in the Northeast.

 

Boomburbs dramatically exploded after 1970. Cities with names like Glendale, AZ, Hialeah FL, Riverside CA, Naperville IL and Grand Prairie TX are just a few examples. Most prospered in the shadow of their more prestigious central cities, but they were true growth centers. These new urban centers rivaled older central cities; Mesa (2000) had 403000 residents compared to Atlanta’s 421,000—in 2010 Mesa (463000) “lapped” Atlanta’s 420000. St Louis by that time held 319000. In 1970, Virginia Beach VA was about 175000—by 2000, over 425000 and Virginia’s largest city. This is undisputable polycentrism.

 

Boomburbs were defined as having populations of at least 100,000, not the core (central) city of their region, and having maintained double digit rates of population growth for each census between 1970 and 2000. Unlike edge cities which are as likely to be unincorporated as not, boomburbs are incorporated. Lang and LeFurgy (Lang & LeFurgy) listed forty-four suburbs as boomburbs and they were truly the growth gazelles of urban America. Another eighty-six “baby” boomburbs (50,000-100,000)–some of which are in the Midwest and South) were also identified. Many baby boomburbs were on the way to becoming “adult” boomburbs. Between 1970 and 2000, boomburbs gained 6 million new residents.

 

Edward Glaeser suggested “sun, sprawl, and skills drove the growth of the boomburb”. (Glaeser) Boomburbs “typically develop along the interstate freeways“, are home to the “commercial elements of the new suburban metropolis–office parks, big-box retail stores, and most characteristically, strip malls” and are “dominated by large-lot, single-family homes. Boomburbs … are extensions of the auto-dependent city typical of the Sunbelt” (Lang & LeFurgy 10-1). If so, boomburbs are yet another facet of growth associated with the rise of the Sunbelt, and the new national and regional urban hierarchy being fashioned during these years. Their virtual absence in former hegemonic states demonstrate suburban regional variation..

 

Contemporary Suburban City-Building

Earlier chapters discussed “planned” city-building initiatives that ranged from company towns, private-luxury “gated” communities (Menlo Park NJ), CD city-building (Radburn), J.C. Nichol’s Privatist County Club, New Deal (Title VII) New Towns, war production/nuclear-related production centers, and Rouse’s post-1962 Columbia MD. Planned communities are nothing new to American ED. During the 1960’s, however, “master-planned communities” (Platt) became a dominant feature of late-twentieth century (and contemporary) suburbanization. Privatist it may be, commercially-driven it has emerged alongside the traditional Levittown subdivision model, and while found across all regions at time of writing, it exploded in the rising Sunbelt.

 

California took an early lead (Rancho Bernardo—a San Diego “neighborhood”)) and the most known, Irvine[lxxi], a post-1960 partnership with the University of California and the Irvine Company.  Coral Gables in Florida was also a 1961 pioneer. ULI formed its Community Builders Council, headed by J.C. Nichols back in 1944, and the FHA, and HUD have worked with master planned communities[lxxii]. A brief case study of one well-known MPC, the Woodlands outside of Houston, will be presented. A second discussion on a hybrid MPC EDO/tool, the homeowners association and CID housing—labeled Privatopia (McKenzie)—will follow. As late as 2015 a significant Atlantic article (Semuels) questions the proliferation and pervasiveness of these new cities. The genuine unease of CD with master planned communities strongly hint we are dealing with a Privatist form of suburban city-building (Weiss & Watts). In the next chapter “New Urbanism” a CD-congruent form of city-building will be discussed.

 

The Woodlands:  MPC, reflecting its Garden City roots, is a curious blend of capitalism (financing, marketing, and construction) and socialism (community governance, primacy of planning, and a remarkable inclusivity). MPCs are not meant for CD’s low and mod-income clientele—a good deal of it rests upon high-income, even luxury clientele—all of which contribute to the common costs and facilities associated with the project. MPCs produced profits derived from a comprehensive plan. They fit nicely into the planning, city manager, low-tax, residentially-oriented, large-lot subdivision nexus that followed the Sixties “sit-com” suburban policy-system. MPCs offloaded government infrastructure costs to the “community builder, who offloaded them to homeowners association upon project completion.

 

MPCs could be grandiose in their scale—the most famous, like Woodlands, constructed, literally, a community-jurisdiction—complete with recreation, entertainment, schools, parks, and a city-center. They were the ultimate mixed use project, with offices, hospitals, professional buildings and retail—resting on a remarkably complex residential base. Locations were chosen with access to transportation modes, and reinforced existing patterns of suburban expansion. Often their core non-residential anchor was the university branch campus—built on donated land. Corporate HQs were attraction candidates. Other forms of MPC (PUD-like in their scale), such as the Silicon Valley, looked at from a real estate focus, was composed MPC campuses home to rising technology firms. Woodlands follows the large-scale “community-level” variant of an MPC.

 

Woodlands was the dream of George Mitchell, founder/owner of a Texas oil and gas seismic and operations firm, Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation. The project was conceived and developed by its Real Estate division—and an internal team that acted as developer  (Morgan Jr. & King). An urban planner enthusiast, Mitchell wanted to recreate Howard’s Garden City using business methods and guided by profits. Identifying his location, he started design work and land assembly after 1964. The idea was to build a total community, with residents from working to luxury class, office building, amenities, city-center—the gamut of uses found in every community.

 

“Set among lakes and pine woods, the city sold a combination of small-town nostalgia and high-tech communication and infrastructure” (Abbott, How Cities Won the West 225)—and its own jurisdictional economic and tax base. Parks and trees, congestion free internal roadways, no polluting uses, environmentally-friendly, with a population cap of 180000 so excessive growth would not destroy the community ambience. Homeowner associations and CC&Rs preserved property values and ensured future economic vitality. Individual neighborhoods, with similar-priced, but varying designed housing were the basic unit. Incorporation and a city manager form of government (achieved in 1971) were contemplated from the beginning.

 

Mitchell found the Sixties a difficult environment to forge partnerships, and raise capital needed to design, plan, assemble land, and lay infrastructure. He turned, almost in desperation, to a the newly-approved 1970 federal Housing Act—in which Texas Senator Tower had played a role in passing. The Act permitted up to $50 million of HUD guarantee for a city-building initiative. So Mitchell rushed design and plans to apply for HUD guarantees. A partnership with the University of Houston to develop a branch campus on donated land was forged. Complicated negotiations with HUD followed.

 

MPC did not fit well into HUDs sense of a New Town, but in September 1972 a final $50 million HUD guarantee was awarded. Almost five years of negotiation and implementation of projects followed. HUD and the Woodland Company were not always on the same page and they parted company in 1976. In 1974 Woodland Company opened an office on site and sold its initial sixty townhouses. In 1975 with 643 residents and homeowner association Woodlands by 1984 grew to 18700— and in 2015 110000 residents.

 

Privatopia: MPC.s as a new town or a planned unit development (PUD) within an existing jurisdiction—frequently associated with condos and townhouse/attached developments–latched onto common interest developments (CID and homeowner associations (popularized in J.C. Nichols Kansas City post-WWI Country Club, Chapter 9). These tools allowed MPC’s to move beyond luxury housing into working/middle-class affordable units. CID included common space owned by the community (community center, pools, parks, trails, bike paths), residential infrastructure (parking, sidewalks, water, septic systems), and common services (snowplowing and garbage pickup). Homeowner association was the developer’s “exit” strategy, handing off both subsequent management/operation, and legal title. As a former eight-year resident of one, I am well-aware of the issues outlined by McKenzie in his critique of RCA’s (residential community associations as ULI calls them). Whatever their faults, CIDs and homeowner associations took over post-suburbia.

 

When MPCs started in the early Sixties there were about 500 homeowner associations in existence. By 1970 there were 10000, 1975 20000, 1980 about 55000 and by 1992 150000 (McKenzie 11).The trade association HOA-USA (since 2011) asserts in 2015 about “351000 homeowner associations in the United States … 40 million households, or 53% of owner occupied households”[lxxiii]. McKenzie claimed that in 1990 there were 11.6 million CID housing units or 11% of America’s housing. Growth prompted new housing (overwhelmingly suburban) and new housing employed these tools. Converting older privately-owned housing units to CID, not uncommon in former Big Cities, is very controversial, media-saturated, and highly regulated. Most homeowner associations and CID therefore centered in fast-growing (often retirement/vacation-prone) states like California, Florida, Hawaii, and Arizona—but are also employed in numbers in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, The ACIR in a 1989 study (May, A-112) reported that 36% were found in the West, 33% in the South, 10% Midwest and 21 % in North.

 

It is hard to ignore the impact of homeowner associations/CID on policy-making and suburban economic or community development. Their presence, and their activity level a primary force in those suburban jurisdictions where they exist in number. “With the advent of the townhouse and condominium a powerful new tool came on line” (Abbott, How Cities Won the West 221). Commonly referred to as “Private Governments”; as a vehicle of democratic governance, they are “imperfect” and they may, counter-intuitively, be a factor in the notorious “Bowling Alone” culture so prominent in suburbia. As an exit strategy for a developer, i.e. community-builder, however, they are excellent. Homeowner associations, for example, become “recourse”, i.e. responsible for payment of P&I from infrastructure bonds, assume service obligations commonly associated with governments. These entities, grossly understudied, cannot be ignored as a major factor in contemporary post-suburban policy-making.

 

Diversity is our Middle Name

Minorities in 2000 accounted for more than half of suburban residents in McAllen (TX), El Paso, Honolulu, Albuquerque, Fresno and Los Angeles, and more than 40 percent in San Francisco/ Oakland/San Jose, Stockton, San Antonio, and San Diego. There were big gains in the minority share of suburbia in Las Vegas, Houston. Dallas and Bakersfield. (Abbott, How Cities Won the West 228)

 

Despite the longstanding criticism suburbs are “white”, middle-class (i.e. rich) refugees escaping from central city African-Americans, a major post-suburban trend has been notable increase in racial and ethnic diversity. In 1970, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians were less than 10% of non-central city metro population; by 2000 they were 28%. For half of the 100 largest metro, such minorities were responsible for the “bulk of population gains”[lxxiv]. “Between 1970 and 2000, the number of black suburbanites rose from 3.5 million to 12 million … 38% of all African-Americans lived in suburbs”. Latinos also moved to post-suburbia. In 2000, “more than half (54%) of the nation’s 35 million Latinos lived in suburbs [and] 58% of Asian-Americans (almost 6 million) lived in suburbs … [as well as] 52% of foreign-born residents” (Nicolaides and Wiese 409-10). Post suburbia is ethnically and racially complex.

 

Bernadette Hanlon (Hanlon) suggests a major dynamic of considerable effect on post-suburban jurisdictions is the decline in “inner-ring suburbs that developed between 1980 and 2000. Among her conclusions are (1) regions differ remarkably in the composition and economic viability of their inner rings (Midwestern inner ring declining most severely), and (2) inner-ring decline is closely tied to the age of its housing stock. Not a surprise, older housing attracts poorer residents—especially minorities. Shades of the Age of UR. Obsolescence and time played a huge role in the decline of the central city and it appears to have moved into post-suburbia. The likelihood that physical ED strategies as well as counter industry profit cycle business assistance programs will become relevant to post-suburbia as it ages seems quite reasonable. Moreover, Hanlon provides strong evidence as to how suburbs among regions differ. Western suburbs are not clones of eastern counterparts, and now southern and Midwestern style of inner-ring are far from identical to the northeastern and mid-Atlantic.

 

Myron Orfield (Orfield) also early on observed that “fragmentation lies at the heart of America’s new suburban reality”. His cluster analysis of 4000 plus suburbs in the twenty-five largest metro areas revealed “distinct types of suburban communities”. As a community developer at heart, Orfield focuses on those “types” which are at risk. The first at-risk type are those jurisdictions whose schools attract a disproportionate number of poor children. Rising numbers of poor children create a spiral in which more affluent households send children to other alternatives and new-comer households select another jurisdiction—resulting in lower housing prices and higher rates of children in/near poverty in the school system. Poverty being associated with race and ethnicity (African-American and Hispanic) who already suffer from housing discrimination and there appears a pattern very similar to inner city neighborhood succession.

 

A second at-risk suburban type (overlapping Hanlon’s, inner-ring housing) are low tax capacity, older residents, low rates of minorities and children in school. They tend to be inner-ring suburbs—we suspect post-WWII era ethnic sit-com suburbs. Orfield asserts their main streets and commercial districts cannot attract new firms and businesses—meaning both their tax base and the jurisdictional economic base is vulnerable. A third at-risk type exists on the metro fringe— “making the transition from rural or farm land to suburban development”–with low fiscal resources, tax base, and high needs from infrastructure and schools especially. Government capacity, above and beyond fiscal resources, is also likely an issue. More stable suburban types are (1) “bedroom-developing” and (2) “affluent job centers with “extra-ordinary tax bases, low poverty.  The two differ regarding school infrastructure, with the former requiring costly expansion of their school systems.  The job centers, the Arlingtons of America, are the classic edge city—great office centers, HQ, high property values—but ton of congestion. Here is a workable starting classification of the various suburban “types”. Orfield’s post-suburban diversity was officially recognized in 2010 when the “suburbanization of poverty” hit the Policy World. The breakthrough was Brooking’s “the Suburbanization of Poverty” by Kneebone and Garr (Kneebone and Garr).

 

Wrapping up Post-Suburbia

If there are many different types of suburbs, and we can get over our obsession with sprawl, what can we conclude? While suburbs are not Big City’s writ small, they do share commonalities. They can age, become obsolescent, have neighborhoods with distinct housing markets, and policy systems with varying priorities, not to mention political cultures. They are not inevitably demographically monolithic, mobile population, national economy, state business climates, global comparative advantage competitive hierarchies as well as industry profit life cycles affect jurisdictional economic base.

 

While heavily oriented to the service sector, suburbs are home to corporate HQ, technology, industrial, and office parks. Virtually all the centers of economics and culture found in the central city probably exist somewhere in post-suburbia. A goodly number, however, are not very interested in competitive urban hierarchies, and many not interested in the metro hierarchy—they much prefer to be home where residents can live their life, raise their family, and be left alone without all this tom-foolery called politics and economic development. As Teaford (Teaford, Post-Suburbia 6-8) asserts post-suburban policy systems reflected a “tenuous balance between their view of themselves as a small village, but one with the amenities and vibrancy of a larger city.

 

William Schneider (Schneider, 1992) asserts locating in a suburbs means self-identifying the household as middle-class—whether or not objectively they “are”. If so, “the word that best describes the political identity of the middle-class is ‘taxpayers’”. Rates of homeownership are higher in suburbs and the homeowner directly feels the impact of property taxes. “These people resent it when politicians take their money and use it to solve other people’s problems especially when they don’t believe that government can actually solve these problems”. Being tax sensitive they value efficiency, honesty, and services that they use or value. Schneider further argues the location decision “to move to the suburbs is to express a preference for the private over the public”.

 

The resulting suburban neighborhood is “an agglomeration of homes, shops and offices connected to one another by car”. Choosing a suburban location means people consciously “want to be confined to their houses and their cars. They want a secure and controlled environment … Automobiles … give people a sense of security and control. With a car you can go anywhere you want, anytime you want in the comfort of your own private space”. Suburban residents with children extend this mentality to schools. They think of the local public school as their “private” school. Crime violates their personal security and living space. When anything hits these policy lightning rods, residents get involved. Taxes, schools, crime, and traffic are their hot buttons. Otherwise, they largely stay away. Residential post-suburbs, arguably, might revolve around these preferences, a cultural paradigm might emerge, and heterogeneity might threaten it—and so on.

 

Post-suburbia includes a lot more variety (demographic diversity, cultural values, policy systems, etc.) than Schneider’s 1990’s residential suburb describes. Nevertheless, if residents make economic choices in residential decisions, they also make cultural, value, and lifestyle choices. When people move or migrate they carry with them values and policy preferences that affect their new jurisdictional policy system. That reinforces post-suburban and central city jurisdictional differences. The reality that time alters these preferences and tempers values adds further complexity to the jurisdictional policy system. Time hints a “new” generation may someday make different residential decisions, or that new “peoples” may be residents adds still more prospect for change.

 

If we concentrate on the Mesa’s (or Long Beach, Arlington, San Jose, and Santa Ana) who are as large as most of the more well-known and established Big Cities—who have truly won the game of competing in the urban hierarchy, we can see opportunities for a larger city-style of ED/CD. Large suburbs can, and do, pursue their own ED/CD dreams, directly competing (sometimes cooperating) with their nearby “central city”. Legally and emotionally autonomous, compared to former Big City post-suburbia. South/Western suburbs possess functioning jurisdictional economic bases that can reasonably “make it” on their own. They have their own tax base whose scale is sufficient to replicate Big Cities. They compete for sports teams and stadiums. They develop their own policy system, whose elites and policy actors are not dependent on metropolitan elites and policy actors. Eastern, former Big City suburbs, with exceptions here and there, did not reach that scale, and while polycentric (de facto) in the sense they have successfully resisted domination of the central city—they often achieve their dreams through counties. The Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester (Oakland in Michigan and others too numerous to name) counties preserve, protect and defend the autonomy of their suburbs,

 

Finally, our fascination with boomburbs and large MPCs obscures an important reality of post-suburban living and life style.—we lose sight of the literally thousands of smaller suburbs. Smaller suburbs are “the edgeless city”—launching pads for further suburban expansion—and the home for tens of millions. Smaller suburbs are “the ordinary landscape we don’t really notice—small office parks, scattered factories and warehouses, and highway-side strips where insurance agents, COPAs, and yoga studios, sit next to take-and-bake pizza [yuck].” (Abbott, How Cities Won the West 228).

 

These small jurisdictions are downtowns (often small-scale strip development) for neighborhoods that used to be called subdivisions. These small shopping centers reached by car take soccer Moms to martial arts lessons on the way from school. Spasms of homeowner association townhouses and apartment (“If you lived here you’d be home now”) complexes line the main drags, with gas stations, emergency care centers, doctor’s and dentist offices, Economic development, or community development, exhibits a different quality here. Schools, congestion. “Bowling Alone”—and Taxes dominate the agenda. Each jurisdiction possesses its own distinctive demographic, social, ethnic and jurisdictional economic base distinct from its neighboring suburban jurisdiction. They have distinctive housing markets.

 

We know little about these policy systems. They are simply coded in aggregate data bases as a suburb. Much more needs to be done to understand post-suburban economic and community development.

 

 

The Feds Regroup

 

Carter Years

The Carter economic backdrop included inflation (stagflation), leading to a 1980 21.5% prime rate triggered by 1973 and 1979 oil/energy crises. The Second War between the States moved “off-Broadway” by then and “deindustrialization” was called reindustrialization. FIRE sectors and technology were the new gazelles. Before Carter was elected, a Democratic Congress overturned Ford’s CETA veto, extending the Nixonian workforce block grant, embracing the spirit of Nixonian Thermidor.

 

Democrats held super-majorities in both branches after 1976–with fewer Southerners in committee chairs, and (1977) Boston’s Tip O’Neil Speaker. Carter’s election meant Democrats controlled three branches of the federal government; they would not do so again until 1993.Carter, however, did not overturn Nixon’s Thermidor; no new block grants, but the old ones were constantly tweaked, formulas readjusted, sections added. Between 1975 and 1980, 92 new categorical programs were created, bringing the total to a record 534 (Conlan, 1998, p. 94).

 

CDBG: In 1977, the Departments of Education and Energy were approved. Extension of the CDBG (1977) tilted block grant formulas from the Sunbelt to Northeastern/Midwestern central cities. New sections attacked red-lining, and CRA Title 9 provided some muscle to activists interested in reversing disinvestment in central city neighborhoods. In 1978 Carter proposed neighborhood level initiatives, including an Urban Volunteer Corps, a Community Development Credit Union, several crime prevention programs and a HUD Neighborhood Self-Development Program. They were not approved.

 

UDAG: On the whole, UDAG was more Congress’s doing, than Carter’s; it gave new life and direction to central city redevelopment (Nathan, 1980). Administered by HUD, it either conflicted with, or supplemented, EDA’s Title IX and was considered a public/private partnership to revitalize “distressed cities”. UDAG provided critical funds to besieged mayors coping with central city decline. Only twenty-eight per cent of pre-1980 UDAGs (there were 241 by then) went to the Sunbelt. $1.4 billion went to industrial projects, a little less went to office, $300 million went to hotels and less than $300 million to residential projects–in large central cities (Mollenkopf, 1983, p. 279). UDAG ended in 1986.

 

The Earmark: Pork has a long tradition in Congress; but the “earmark” is a special kind of pork that became so commonplace today earmark and pork are synonymous. Earmark is a specific allocation for a specific project of some description which, by itself, would almost certainly not be approved, but when placed innocently in an unrelated larger bill, along with other earmarks, creates a critical mass for which any number of legislators will vote. The earmark is so designed that lobby firms secure annual retainers for delivery of additional earmarks.  (Kaiser, 2009, pp. 69-81) The first legislative earmarks for Georgetown and Tufts Universities was approved in 1976-1977. Over the next several decades will be used more each year, by any number of jurisdictions to achieve all manner of projects, many legitimate economic development initiatives.

White House Conference and SBDCs: In 1978 Carter attempted a major reorganization of ED federal agencies/programs. His legislation would have combined EDA, HUD, SBA with a National Development Bank and other programs in Commerce and Agriculture. It passed both houses but died in conference–testimony to choppy politics. Carter himself repudiated many of its recommendations during the reelection campaign. The National Development Bank, a proposal from Carter’s Urban and Regional Policy Group, intended to make/guarantee loans/grants to depressed urban/rural areas for ED was not well-defined, and less well-received by Congress.  See Mohl Urban Policy pp22-23******

 

Carter’s National Agenda for the Eighties got lost in his reelection campaign. The Agenda attempted to reconcile tensions caused by Sunbelt-Snowbelt conflicts. The Agenda recognized the now-chronic manufacturing plant closings, downsizings and job losses that had prompted the “reindustrialization” debate of the Seventies. Recommendations included relocation of unemployed to areas where jobs were more plentiful. More successful was Carter’s 1980 White House Conference on Small Business which prompted Congress to establish a nation-wide system of Small Business Development Centers as clearinghouses for one-on-one small/startup counseling and business plan formulation. Usually linked with a university or college, these SBDCs steadily grew in number/capacity in the following decades. Also Bayh-Dole reform of patents was approved in 1980.

 

Foreign Trade Zone: A number of important changes were made to the FTZ. FTZ first established in 1934 (anti Smoot-Hawley tariffs) was administered by the Bureau of Customs. FTZ was a demarcated-area zone (creating a tax-free “island”) that facilitated import-export activities by foreign and domestic firms. In early practice, FTZ amounted to a-little-used tax-free storage of imported goods. In 1970 there were only eight FTZ and 3 sub-zones in operation. The key obstacle to increased usage was the 1934 Act which discouraged manufacturing within the zone (inverted tariffs). Under pressure from its user-trade association (NAFTZ), the FTZ Board in 1980 permitted value-added manufacturing within the zone/sub-zone to be tax free and effectively dismantled the island zone concept. In 1980 approximately 50 zones were in operation; by 1986 there were 150; by 1990 177, and in 2007 approximately 260 zones and 400 sub-zones in operation.

 

CERCLA-Superfund-Brownfields:  In 1980, CERCLA-Superfund legislation was approved by Congress. CERCLA included the Superfund remediation program, but also authorized funds, regulatory procedures and clean up/liability standards appropriate to private and local brownfield remediation as well. Each state enacted its own “voluntary clean-up program” (VCP). The design of the EPA brownfield initiative (as opposed to superfund) was based on cooperation, consensus, and self-interest determined by voluntary agreements funded by grants and tax credits and the explicit acknowledgment of the leading role of state/local officials in cleanup efforts (Hula, 1999). By the end of the 1990’s most states had enacted such programs. State variation in brownfields programs was huge.

 

Variations included: eligibility, whether project was voluntary or compulsory, extent and form of liability release, process for approvals, who issued approvals, third party liability relief, support available to participants, degree of flexibility in clean-up standards, and reopener clauses. Participants who had actually created the site (PRPs) could be treated quite differently from state to state. Some states were so strict, the intent seemed more to punish polluters than remediate sites. Other states provided support and incentives to PRPs. Michigan, for instance, empowered-authorized localities to create a “Brownfields Redevelopment Agency” (a Quasi EDO) with key powers, liability relief and access to relevant state programs and support. Others states dragged PRPs to court. The issue was the inherent complexity underlying brownfields remediation: its legal nature, its required compliance with established chemical formulas, and the inability to provide any involved party, including banks and other potential funders, long term security (“reopeners”)–all rendered brownfields remediation an immensely complicated, fragile, and time consuming affair.

 

Reagan Devolution

In a three way race (John Anderson and Jimmy Carter) Reagan-Bush won a landslide (winning 44 states). The 1984 election was even worse from the Democratic perspective–49 states went for Reagan-Bush. Not even Massachusetts voted for Mondale-only his home state Minnesota. Dukakis-Bentsen did better in 1988, winning 10 states, but Bush-Quayle squeaked by with the other 40. All in all, 1981-1993 was the longest period since 1920 when Privatist Presidents governed. Yet Reagan-Bush years were an era of divided government. They were, however, years of increasing disunity within the Democratic Party. The formerly solid Democratic South shifted Republican. Democrats retained control of the House, but the Senate went Republican for the first time since 1953. This pattern repeated itself in 1984 and 1986, but Democrats regained control of both Houses in 1988.

 

Reagan’s administration never formed a formal urban or sub-state ED approach. Reagan intended, and to a certain extent succeeded, in pulling the federal government from sub-state policy areas and ending Great Society direct city-federal relationships. Sub-state jurisdictions were the states’ responsibility, forcing States, willing or not, to assume a greater role. Its key concept was “devolution” whose spirit was expressed in his first inaugural address:

 

It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed. It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people[lxxv].

 

To accomplish this promise, Reagan set forth a sweeping agenda of budget reductions, tax cuts, personnel freezes, block grants and deregulation initiatives. Remarkably successful in his first two years, he found the going got tougher after:

 

Federal income tax rates were cut 25 percent and business taxes were reduced an additional $50 billion; federal spending for domestic programs was reduced by $35.2 billion with savings over subsequent years totaling over $130 billion; nine new block grants were established, consolidating seventy-seven programs and sixty-two additional programs were terminated (Conlan, 1998, p. 96)

 

Reagan’s devolution disrupted urban ED greatly. Gone was revenue sharing ($1.8 billion), job training and public service jobs were cut by 69%,  CDBG halved (54%), urban mass transit reduced by 25%, and UDAG by 41%. In 1980 federal dollars constituted 22% of Big City (over 300,000) budgets—by 1989 it was 6%. State governments didn’t pick up the slack; their percentage was 16% in 1980 and the same in 1989. (Dreier, 2002, pp. 126-7) The residue of OEO (War on Poverty) was converted to the community services block grant and transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services (1981)—by 1985 its funding had been reduced by $1 billion. Between 1981 and 1992 federal aid to cities was cut by 60% (Domhoff, 2013, p. 246). Public housing programs and Section 8 were cut, at one point, by 80%. Two private sector-dominated task forces (President’s Commission on Housing and National Urban Policy Report) issued reports in 1982 clearly detailing the Reagan approach to sub-state ED/CD—wherever possible it should be left to the “free and deregulated” private sector.

 

EDZ:       Although Robert Kennedy in 1968 initiated legislation roughly similar to the 1981-Kemp-Garcia enterprise zone, the idea originated from the United Kingdom. Ironically, this most Privatist of ED programs was initially proposed by social democrat Peter Hall in a 1977 Royal Town Planning Institute conference. Hall called a Hong Kong-style Freeport (sort of an American FTZ) for distressed British urban areas`. Picked up by Sir Geoffrey Howe, a highly placed Conservative MP, given the label “enterprise zone”, Howe retained tax abatements, reduced planning approvals and included wage/price exemptions. The concept was to reduce taxes and regulation in clearly-defined distressed geographic areas hopefully resulting in a private investment surge and, yes, innovation. Enterprise zones assume micro-economic cost reductions will triumph over geographic and demographic constraints.

 

Embraced by the Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler[lxxvi], Butler reshaped the zone to address housing reform and neighborhood revitalization rather than British-style job creation through startups. This change attracted Congressman Jack Kemp and Bronx Democrat Robert Garcia. In June 1980 (Carter years) Kemp and Garcia introduced Kemp-Garcia Urban Jobs and Enterprise Zone Act (Benjamin, 1980). The Act blended business job creation with people-based housing/neighborhood redevelopment; the federal role included significant federal tax abatement and depreciation allowances. Reagan did not back the 1981 Kemp-Garcia. Instead, in 1982, Reagan supply-siders returned the concept to its original job creation economic development Privatist roots. For Reagan:

 

The urban enterprise zones concept was pure supply-side economics… identify and remove government barriers to entrepreneurs who can create jobs and economic growth. It will spark the latent talents and abilities already in existence in our most depressed areas. Both public subsidies and the easing of environmental and zoning restrictions were important components of the enterprise zones proposal… few zones were proposed (75) (Judd, 1984, p. 361)

 

The bill’s reliance on startups and hiring low-income zone residents was inspired by David Birch’s, the Job Generation Process (Birch, 1979). Perhaps surprisingly, the EDZ bill generated bipartisan support, particularly from the Black Caucus and a number of ED professional associations (NASDA and, to a lesser degree, CUED). Reagan’s bill, however, was regarded by Progressives as ineffective, resting as it did on tax abatements to firms (Butler, 1982). Abatements were believed unlikely to motivate a firm’s location decision. The bill would simply reshuffle firms from one site to another. Other concerns were the EDZ’s reliance on tax credits (useful only for profitable firms). Quality of jobs was questioned, as was whether jobs would flow to zone residents or outsiders. Committee chair, Dan Rostenkowski bottled up the bill; he did not uncork the legislation until 1993. EDZ was never approved in the 1980’s.

 

IDB:        IDBs were easy targets for Reagan reform legislation. The 1968 Revenue and Expenditure Control Act had sharply limited IDB issuances and eligibility by establishing two IDB “types”: exempt and small issues. Small issue IDBs declined dramatically during the seventies. “Reforms” were approved in 1982 (TEFRA) and 1984 Deficit Reduction Act (DEFRA) climaxing with the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Each Act regulated (and limited) IDB issuance—and restricted eligibility to small manufacturers and nonprofits. IDB restrictions were primarily intended to enhance revenues. “Tax exempt bonds were under constant attack throughout the 1980’s as an inefficient subsidy and unacceptably large drain on federal revenues. The revenue loss totaled $20.4 billion in 1983”. (Conlan, 1998, pp. 137-8)

 

JTPA:     The 1982 Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) replaced the Nixonian CETA block grant. JTPA was a bipartisan effort reform intended to fix an unloved CETA.

 

Although CETA provided jobs for more than a million unemployed persons and work experience for thousands more, by 1978 the program had become for many a ‘dirty four letter word’. Stories of corruption and mismanagement–directed mainly at CETA’s public employee titles–undermined support for the entire legislation. Moreover careful evaluations of CETA training programs often failed to detect substantial improvements in the future earnings of trainees (Conlan, 1998, p. 166).

 

Congress had attempted reform since 1978; several Democratic/Republican reform bills were under review in 1981-82. A 1982 compromise bill, sponsored by Senators Quayle and Kennedy, formed the nucleus for JTPA.

 

The bill reduced trainee benefits and subsidies, expanded state/local roles, intensified participation of business, and capped state administrative/support expenses by requiring 78% of the state appropriation be transferred to the locals. The CETA system of local “prime sponsors” was terminated and units of local government with populations greater than 200,000 were designated as “service delivery areas” (SDA), each administered by a “private industry council” (PIC) responsible for a locally approved plan and fund allocation–subject to approval by its chief local elected official (CLEO). JTPA decentralization and augmented private sector input did change the process. The role of the states remained meaningful. The delivery system, while different from CETA, was not a radical departure and the inclusion of the CLEO augmented political and partisan dynamics into local administration of the federal workforce program[lxxvii]. Cynically, JTPA was a work in progress in many respects, but remained the cornerstone of the nation’s job training and youth employment approach.

 

SBA:       In 1981, SBA launched its now well-respected, “504 Certified Development Program”. The 504 Program, closely mirroring the earlier SBIC organizational structure, was “fixed asset” financing (real estate, machinery, inventories). Like SBIC, the 504 Program was administered through a SBA licensed, nation-wide network of private, usually nonprofit entities that packaged, issued and serviced the SBA loan/lien. The loan structure was, similar to SBIC, involved multiple participants (owner-10%, bank lender (at least 50%), and proceeds from the SBA-issued debenture (up to 40%). Thus the 504 program was designed to partner with banking institutions to offer conventional-like financing to businesses unable to meet bank standards. Retail, companies experiencing recent growth, or counter-business cycle pressures found the 504 to be especially useful. Rural areas also benefited from financing made available by regional, multicounty certified development corporations. By the first decade of the 21st century, the 504 Program had licensed nearly 300 Certified Development Companies; 70,000+ loans, totaling more than $28 billion had been closed, and a small, but vibrant, secondary market had evolved. A professional association, NADCO, founded in 1981, represents nearly all the licensed CDCs and provides lobby support for the program and technical expertise.

 

Ignoring conservative screams, Reagan in 1982 signed the Small Business Innovation Research Act (SBIR)[lxxviii]. SBIR facilitates small business startups and commercialization of new technologies, processes and innovation. SBA serves as the coordinator, overseer, reporting agency, and contract point for several federal agencies[lxxix]. Annually a (presently) 2.5% set aside from federal R&D appropriations funds SBIR grants to eligible firms that compete in annual application cycles. Each department technically oversees approved grants/projects. SBIR is a three phase program: Phase I (based on technical merit, feasibility and commercial potential); Phase II (up to two year development of Phase I projects); Phase III leads to commercialization, and is funded by individual Departments. Through FY 2009, SBIR funded 112500 awards dispersing nearly $27 billion, assisting 15,000 companies, 50000 patents, and involved approximately 400000 scientists and engineers (Rosenbloom, 2007).

 

CDBG Small Cities:          Reagan consolidated 54 categorical grants modifying or creating nine block grants including CDBG and the Community Services Block Grant. CDBG was modified to create a “small cities” (under 50,000) program to third/fourth tier cities. The small cities program was decentralized to states who set priorities, application process and approved allocation. Small cities probably fared well, better than larger “entitlement cities’ whose share declined, about 5%.

 

PTAP:       The1985 Procurement Technical Assistance Program (PTAP) administered by the Defense Logistics Agency assists companies to obtain contracts with federal, state and even local governments. Funded in a cooperative agreement with the Department of Defense, a nation-wide, state-based, network of Centers for free or low cost, provide information, support and training to companies desiring to bid, register and secure governmental contracts. The centers are usually nonprofit, EDOs, Tribal, university-based or governmental–depending on the state.

 

UDAG: Reagan had consistently opposed or defunded UDAG—he also annually defunded EDA—but Congress put it back in, at lesser amounts. To attract more support for UDAG, Congress prodded HUD to broaden eligibility to include more localities. Some states (New York and its UDC subsidiary for example) copied the UDAG program. Congress did not fund UDAG in 1988 (Reed, 1993) and it went gentle into the cold, dark night. Direct federal financial involvement in urban renewal ended.

 

Manufacturing Extension Partnership:

Throughout the 1980’s it seemed American manufacturing was having its lunch eaten by the Japanese and Europeans. American industry was losing its competitiveness—even in its gazelle-like technology (electronic) sectors. American goods were perceived as inferior quality, and management closed and stagnant, resistant to new processes and innovations. How we made goods, “managed workers” and innovation seemed in need of rethinking. In this atmosphere, the Hollings (from its sponsor Senator Hollings, South Carolina) Manufacturing Extension Program (MEP)—committed to providing customized, shared cost services in partnership with small/medium-sized manufacturing firms and enhancing technological competitiveness was launched. An obscure section of the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act authorized the founding of manufacturing extension centers and services, (eventually in 1994) run out of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

 

Initially, MEP focused on technology-transfer of technologies developed in federal laboratories. A substantial refocus of services to meet client needs and demands over the first decade followed (Sargent Jr., 1915) Quality control, productivity innovations, integrating Japanese-proven techniques (Sigma 6, lean manufacturing) and process innovations (ISO 9000 started in 1987) were its chief foci. In later years it expanded into technology and startup initiatives (Masterman, 2009). In these first years, centers were initially set up in South Carolina, Ohio and New York; by 1994 44 centers existed—today MEP is found in all fifty states.

 

Impact of Reagan/federal government on Sub-state ED/CD

Two sets of comments need to be made: those concerning the Reagan Years and those concerning the role of the federal government in state/sub-state ED/CD. Said and done, Reaganism pulled the federal government back, not out, of sub-state economic development. Ideology and philosophy aside, the impact was primarily fiscal. Federal cash flow to cities/ED/CD was severely cut. Cutbacks stressed economic development to help “pay the bills” and intensified ED politicization. CD had a bit of the rug pulled away—the price of dependency on the feds. Mostly, states and cities did not replace federal funding with own-source revenues. That is particularly true of CETA public service employment programs—which were zeroed out. Some commentators (Kleinberg, 1995) asserted the more hidden impact was to preference Sunbelt growth cities—perhaps–but it is not at all evident what the proper role of the federal government should be regarding regions and regional change. If national ED/CD preferences are also a public policy, than elections and policy-making determine who gets what.

 

The more interesting observation is how much was left intact of federal involvement in state/sub-state. Certainly the vehicle (block grants) differed from the categorical direct linkage of the Great Society, but federal involvement in the strategy/program persisted. Categorical grants, however, continued in surprisingly high numbers—mostly due to a Democrat Congress expressing itself programmatically. A variety of new ED-related initiatives started during these years (CERCLA, Manufacturing Extension Program, Bayh-Dole legislation, FTZ, block grant formula changes and more). A little noticed example of a Public Works bill, passed by Congress in 1987, subsequently vetoed by Reagan, overturned by Congress, provided federal support for likely the largest local infrastructure/highway project in the nation’s history: Boston’s Big Dig. This seriously challenges the prevailing wisdom Reagan Years were years of an unremitting “No”. Whatever Reagan intended, the federal government emerged from these years as an active player in state and local ED/CD—maintaining a strong and durable presence in key strategies such as workforce, employment assistance, export, small business and CD. An aggressive federal government involved in sub-sate ED/CD continues as a fault line between our Two Ships.

 

Explosion in Sub-Municipal EDOs

 

The eighties witnessed a veritable explosion of new programs-strategies which created literally, thousands of sub-municipal specialized EDOs, still currently active and a well-recognized element of our current ED landscape. Programs/EDOs created in the early eighties include: enterprise zones (EDZs), business improvement districts (BIDs), Main Street programs, and TIF/RDA financing districts.

 

Why were so many sub-municipal, specialized programs-EDOs created? The usual answer is Reagan’s fiscal austerity and devolution forced local/state innovation. But a simple “Reagan did it” is an oversimplification. A second answer is sub-municipal districts addressed then-felt needs to deal with CBD, distressed neighborhoods, commercial revitalization, and development/redevelopment. Neighborhood level community/economic development and downtown revitalization by the early eighties had become a primary ED/CD strategies. Relatively inexpensive cities, suburbs and small towns could undertake and customize these programs/EDOs to fit their needs and demands. If one “inhaled”, one might think neighborhood commercial centers/strips were the service sector equivalent to an industrial park.

 

Main Street

“Main Street” arrived on the local scene in 1980 when the National Trust for Historic Preservation founded the National Trust Main Street Center. By 2013, the Main Street Center claimed more than 2000 “programs and leaders use the Main Street approach to rebuild the places and enterprises that create sustainable, vibrant communities“. The Trust asserts since 1990 1600 communities adopted Main Street”[lxxx], an approach that can be used for downtown or neighborhood commercial districts. Main Street integrates a community’s past and emphasizes activities that bring the community together. The Main Street approach is based on four “points” and eight “principles”.

 

The four points are:

Organization–Build partnerships and boards of directors based on consensus and cooperation.

Promotion–Create a positive image that rekindles community pride and improve consumer and investor confidence.

Design–Creating a safe, inviting environment for shoppers, workers and visitors.

Economic Restructuring—Retaining/expanding successful businesses to provide a balanced commercial mix, sharpening competitiveness and owner merchandising skills, and attracting new businesses that the market can support.

 

The eight principles are:

Comprehensive (No single activity dominant)

Incremental (Take baby steps)

Self-help (Rely on local consensus)

Partnerships (public-private)

Identify/Capitalize on Existing Assets (develop uniqueness)

Quality (Do it right, even if more expensive)

Change (District success can change public perceptions)

Implementation (Complete projects)

 

Main Street points and principles suggest to us an intriguing blend of planning (and implied historic preservation), volunteerism, and a public-private partnership based on shared community visions. Main Street is not a microeconomic, business-based approach to commercial revitalization (that’s a BID). Rather Main Street is a CD approach to commercial revitalization. Business is a partner, not dominant driver, in a community-based initiative, relying less on profit than visual enhancements and sound project management that reshape perceptions and consumer demand.

Business Improvement District

The 1908 San Francisco fire/earthquake led to the creation of the “Down Town Association of San Francisco”. During the 1920’s thru 1940’s, downtown property owners formed membership organizations such as Detroit Business Property Owners Association and Downtown Council of Chicago to combat decentralization (Fogelson, 2001). In the 1950’s and 1960’s, chambers (like Denver’s) formed CBD-based organizations to advocate, plan and participate in UR CBD projects and to intensify efforts to resist intense suburbanization (Hoyt & Gopal-Agge, 2007, p. 947).

 

Allegedly the first true BIDs was Toronto Canada’s 1969 establishment of “an autonomous privately managed entity with the power to impose an additional tax on commercial property owners to fund local revitalization efforts“. The first US assessment-financed business district was New Orleans Downtown Development District in 1974. The first district to call itself a “BID” was New York City (1980’s). By 1997, an estimated 1,000 BIDs operated in the USA (fifty in New York City alone) (Nelson et al., 2008). A 1999 survey suggested that 60% of these BIDs were created after 1990 (about 400 BIDs in the 1980’s) and about 28% were established after 1995 (Mitchell, 1999) BIDs started slowly in the early 1980’s, picking up steam in the eighties (Briffault, 2010) (Houstoun, 2003) (Mitchell, 2009).

 

BIDs provide a variety of agreed-upon services and coordinate business practices and advertising on behalf of the businesses within demarcated geographical boundaries. Staff and services cost are borne largely by a self-imposed tax collected by the appropriate taxing authority—which could be the BID itself. BID governance is usually private sector elected by its membership and often include local government representatives. BIDs can, and frequently do, serve neighborhood commercial centers as well as a downtown-CBD area. The concept, linked to historic preservation, expanded to include Residential Improvement Districts (RID)

 

Wisconsin in 1983 approved a state-wide Business Improvement Districts Act, empowering local municipalities to create a BID. Eventually ninety five (twenty in Milwaukee) BIDs were formed[lxxxi]. Other examples suggest the variety inherent in BIDs. For example, New Jersey empowered “special improvement districts”, Texas “public improvement districts” and Pennsylvania “neighborhood improvement districts”. In many instances, BIDs can be autonomous of municipal government or its subsidiary. In many cities they were spun off from chambers or can be a chamber subsidiary. The variety of configurations is huge.

 

BIDs have engendered some controversy in the academic literature due to their Privatist structure. Briffault comments that BID’s justification has been an underlying belief that “‘cities exist to create opportunities for individual wealth accumulation and business leaders are best qualified to devise (or advise) policies toward that end‘. (Briffault, 1999, p. 470) In effect, BIDs permit private elites to govern and tax, albeit in a limited area, for private commercial benefit. This raises “more questions than answers, regarding the effect of BIDs on such issues as democracy, accountability, and the regulation of public space” (Hoyt & Gopal-Agge, 2007, p. 947). Still BIDs are comfortably adopting many Main Street principles and are often members of both the Historic Trust and the International Downtown Association. By their structure and business composition, BIDs are the Privatist counterpart to the CD-style Main Street approach.

 

Economic Development Zone

At decade’s end (estimated) nearly one thousand EDZs existed. EDZ diffusion was a state-driven process; as described above, the federal government never approved an EDZ program in the 1980’s, but, a coordinated “effort” by HUD, working with a score of Think Tanks, NGOs, and professional associations prodded states into authorizing EDZs. Ultimately, forty states adopted some form of an ED; by 1995 only ten states had not approved an EDZ (NH, SC, NC, AK, ID, MT, WY, ND, SD, and IA).

 

EDZs did not necessarily require a distressed area, and often were geographically-targeted concoctions of each state’s favored programs and initiatives. States were not attracted to the EDZ because of its Privatist nature (some states opposed it precisely for that reason), but because it fit quite nicely within the state economic development system. “To the states, however, enterprise zones embodied targeted economic development rather than supply-side economics” (Mossberger, 2000, p. 121). Arguably, most, states used EDZ programs as vital elements of their interstate attraction programs. Small business, seems to have dropped out of EDZ priorities early on[lxxxii].

 

State diffusion came in bursts. The first, 1982-1983 period enlisted twenty states; the second (1984-1989) sixteen, and the last 1993 four[lxxxiii]. The motivations behind each diffusion-burst are particular to that period. The 1993 burst was largely a reaction to the Los Angeles (Rodney King) riots. There is evidence the 1984-1989 middle diffusion period was driven by the “arrow-in-the-quiver” mentality of state EDOs desiring to catch up with early adopters. Mossberger asserts that in middle period “Continued state adoptions probably occurred in part because of increased interstate competition for business investment and rising state interest in economic development programs of all types” (Mossberger, 2000, p. 82).

 

Officially, the first state was Connecticut in 1981, but Illinois and Florida were early entrants as well (Mossberger, 2000, pp. 81-3). EDZs in several first-burst states were more community development-oriented than economic development (Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana). Massachusetts waited for more than a decade before it put its toe in the water (1993). There partisan politics were the issue. Democrats wouldn’t touch it; when Weld (Republican) was elected Governor in 1992, he got it approved.

 

Looking back in 2000, Mossberger comments EDZs over their first twenty years drifted “ away from the notion of decreasing governmental activity….But regulatory reform largely withered in the process of diffusion … [and] Most state programs emphasize economic development objectives…over community development objectives….States often link a number of (non-zone) economic incentives to the enterprise zone concept (such as low interest loans, TIF, IDB, MBE, infrastructure, venture capital, workforce) … with which the state has had previous “experience”. (Mossberger, 2000, pp. 85-6)

 

Tax Increment Finance District

In 1970 TIF had been adopted by California and six other states. The last sub-municipal EDO, the tax increment finance district, is linked to the diffusion of TIF during the Eighties. TIF captures incremental tax revenue growth generated by physical development within a defined district, Incremental tax revenues pay for the public infrastructure installed to spur development. TIF is typically presented as self-financing, as costs of development are paid for by the increased revenues resulting from TIF-financed growth—thus avoiding tax increases. It didn’t hurt that TIF is “off budget” and the RDA outside of formal municipal accountability.

 

Structurally, TIF requires establishing a legal entity with a defined geographic area (TIF district), and a determined assessed property valuation that serves as the base for future tax revenue growth. Tax receipts above the base pay off installed infrastructure, and net proceeds are paid to eligible taxing districts, captured by the RDA, or distributed according to a state legislative formula. Legally separate TIF districts are created for each defined geographic area, each managed by the master redevelopment agency (RDA). The RDA (usually) issues bonds to pay required infrastructure costs. Autonomy enjoyed by the RDA varies by state, but can be considerable. TIF can be used for development (Greenfield) or redevelopment; PILOT agreements are also common. Only Oregon used TIF extensively to finance urban renewal projects[lxxxiv].

 

TIF is the quintessential state ED program. Every aspect of TIF is defined by each state; commonalities exist, but are overwhelmed by state variation. The purposes desired by each state differ and are reflected in types of projects, processes, actors etc. The complexity of state variation is massive—some ways states differ include (Johnson & Man, 2001) include:

 

• Who is authorized to create a TIF district (state, county, municipality, RDA). How long can a district exist? Accountability, audits, and reporting requirements.
• Preconditions to which the TIF district must comply, i.e. blight? (how defined?), “but for” (a legal concept specifying that without TIF initiative Western civilization will end in seconds), and a “plan” which includes TIF/project goals, costs/benefits estimates, base value, and projects incremental revenues given type of projects anticipated
• Form of community input required for TIF plan and specific TIF actions
• Uses allowed for TIF districts (commercial, residential and affordable housing)
• How plan is adopted/approved; who has the final say
• Issuance of bonds: type of bonds, terms and conditions, who issues bonds, eligible uses of bond proceeds, bond repayments, surpluses, losses and default.

 

TIF, in some form, may be the most used local government development/redevelopment tool in America; tax abatement is its chief rival. California, its originator, was arguably TIF’s most aggressive user–its growth was fueled as a bypass of 1978 Proposition 13 (property tax relief). In 1980 there were 299 TIF districts in California (Briffault, 2010, p. 70), and by 1987 467 California cities operated TIF districts” (Johnson & Man, 2001, p. 32). By 1988 almost six hundred project districts/RDAs received 6% of the state’s property tax receipts and by 1990 there were 658 districts (Briffault, 2010, p. 70). In 1998 TIF garnered 8% of property tax receipts despite major state legislation intended to them rein in, limit, refine and refocus use of TIF by California’s municipalities. At that time (1990) there were 351 RDSs in existence and over 700 on-going projects[lxxxv]. In 1998 five projects districts exceeded 18 square miles each; by 2008 six projects exceeded 30 square miles each[lxxxvi]. In the period 1990-2010 TIF was the prime strategy-tool employed by California EDOs. Its RDA were (essentially) terminated in 2012.

 

Through the Seventies, states incrementally adopted versions of TIF, but the real explosion occurred after Reagan’s. TIF’s attractiveness as a substitute for federal (UDAG) dollars was compelling. By 1984 twenty-eight states had approved TIF legislation, thirty-three by 1987, and forty-four by 1992 (Briffault, 2010, p. 70). In Illinois, for instance, the number of TIF districts quintupled in a single year after the state loosened the requirements in 1985 (Kerth & Baxandall, 2001, p. 5). Indeed, Chicago’s Mayor Daley (Son) proclaimed TIF as “the only game in town” and the city’s “only tool” for promoting economic development”. In 2007 Chicago was home to 155 TIF districts (Briffault, 2010, pp. 65-6). Other examples include:

 

At the end of the 1980’s there were more than 1000 TIF districts, although most of them are concentrated in California and in the upper Middle West states of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. Minneapolis has been a particularly heavy user (Briffault, the Rise of Sub-Local Structures in Urban Governance, 1997)There is no national registry of TIF districts and many states do not centrally collect or publish data on their TIFs either….In 2003 Wisconsin had 789 TIF districts, … Missouri in 2007 there were at least 291 TIF projects … In Iowa in 1999 there were more than 2400 TIF districts covering 7.1 per cent of the urban tax base… In 2007 there were 402 active TIF districts in Cook County Illinois covering more than 10% of the county’s land area (Briffault, 2010, pp. 70-1)

 

In contrast to this, Hawaii, Mississippi and New Jersey had laws authorizing TIF since 1985, but none had an operating tax increment district as of 2001 (Johnson & Man, 2001, p. 32). By 1997 48 states had approved TIF (including North Carolina which subsequently rejected a constitutional amendment)–Arizona and Delaware were the laggards; by 2010 only Arizona had not adopted some form of TIF.         Originally inspired as a California tool to raise funds for local match to combat blight in UR projects, TIF had become the go-to tool in the economic development toolbox. In most states TIF is now an all-purpose local government tool for financing public investment (infrastructure) for private development. As of 2010 sixteen states no longer require a finding of blight and other states simply create special “conservation” or “economic development areas”. Wisconsin is a fine example of TIF’s evolution.

 

Wisconsin adopted TIF legislation in 1975 in response to the challenges of eliminating blighted areas in depressed urban areas…Since it was first adopted in 1975, several major changes … expand the ways that TIF can be used, and have increased the involvement of the overlying taxing jurisdictions and local residents. Changes [include] mixed-use TIDs … multijurisdictional TIDs … New TIF powers were also given to Town governments that allow them to use a Town TIF for specific project types…In recent years, more TIDs are being created in more places…As of January 1, 2011 there were 1,074 active TIDs[lxxxvii].

 

RDAs were a new variation of the older UR redevelopment agency and TIF, with its alliance with private developers, banks and real estate investors.  A powerhouse, bulldozing property-based ED conglomerate, closely tied to mayors, sometimes county CEOs, mostly loosely-attached to city managers, RDA employed an approach-style the polar opposite of Main Street and BIDs. RDAs could be construed not only as a way to “pay the bills” for the jurisdiction, or to move the costs of development and redevelopment off-budget, but also to address the rise of offices, retail, and professional service sectors in older central cities. TIF in growing states like California meant malls and sales tax chasing—and higher ranking in the metro competitive landscape. TIF and RDAs brought many a metro region closer to a polycentric landscape than any other ED structural type. In many ways this was a brand new ball game for economic developers. Unless checked by states, TIF and RDAs offered a way around expensive school taxes and one should not be blamed for thinking them as a “growth regime coalition”. Their power, aggressiveness, and often closed bureaucratic/expert internal policy-making (the author was CEO of an Erie County NY version of one of these structures) rendered them both powerful and vulnerable, a remarkable icon of physical Privatist development/redevelopment in an Age of Anti-UR.

 

Below the Radar: Wrapping Up Sub-Local EDOs

If CD took off in the Seventies, it is clear ED expanded the scope of its activities/strategies greatly during the 1980’s. Commercial revitalization corresponds to the shift to FIRE/service sectors in jurisdictional economic bases. EDZ marks the increased involvement of states in local ED. Most states, ignored “distressed areas”, choosing instead to use the program as an umbrella for their most used “arrows in their quiver”. In many states it was an open question who really ran EDZs: states or localities. More than any other single program, EDZ was the most significant intrusion of States into local ED thus far. TIF replaced UR as the principal tool to conduct physical development /redevelopment.

 

These EDOs offered another opportunity to see onionization in real life—and to observe how onionization drives professional siloization. Professionally, these EDOs attracted new breed of economic developers. What a “Main Streeter”?  Are BIDs a derivative of chamber-style ED? FTZ brought in export expertise. TIF and RDAs are obvious parallels with the old redevelopment agencies. EDZ, usually a curious blend of ED programs pursing CD objectives attracted its own sort of entry-level professionals. All had particular gardens to tend, and they operated out of EDOs, customized with appropriate powers, tools, competencies, political/policy relationships, constituencies—and goals–Not one goal, always several goals.

 

No one planned this fragmentation and one seriously doubts it could have been avoided. But by the 1980’s it explodes—onionization, siloization and goal-complexity. One also wonders about the “multiplier” for these various EDOs. EDO Onionization drove its distinctive professional siloization—certifications, bodies of expertise, legislative advocacy, constituencies, tools, programs and funding sources, NGOs, Think Tanks, Policy Institutes, higher level trade associations, and lest we forget consultants and planners (both profit-making and nonprofit)—and academic, media and policy specialists. What a vicious web we weave when we perceive new challenges and opportunity. That we developed into our own growth machine has still to be appreciated. It’s in place by the end of the 1980’s.

[1] An interesting treatment of Taylor is included in Page Smith’s, America Enters the World: A People’s History of the Progressive Era and World War I (Volume 7) (New York, Penguin Books, 1985)  pp. 376-378.

[2] Witold Rybczynski, Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town (New York, Scribner, 2007), pp. 17-18.

[3] Rybczynski, op. cit. p, 19.

[4] Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York, Pantheon Books, 2003) pp. 205-216.

[5] Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Spock, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (New York, North Point Press, 2000)

[6] Frankie Clogston, “Ten Years After the Merger: A Celebration of IEDC and its Forerunners”, Final Draft, July 12, 2011, p.5.

[7] Shelton, Birkhead, and Seal, “American Economic Development Milestones – 1960-2000, Economic Development Review, Fall 2000, p. 29.

[8] IBID. p. 29.

[9] Jim Breagy CUED At Thirty, Commentary, Fall, 1997, p. 10.

[10] IBID. p 10.

[11] IBID. p. 10-11

[12] IBID. p. 10

[13] Coordinated Urban Economic Development: A Case Study Analysis (Executive Summary), National Council for Urban Economic Development, March, 1978. P. 1. In addition to a Executive Summary volume, seven other volumes were issued: Coordination of Public Development Institutions, Comprehensive Economic Development Planning, Coordination of Community and Economic Development, Neighborhood Economic Development, Coordination of Manpower and Economic Development, Public-Private Development Institutions, and Development Financing.

[14] Coordinated Urban Economic Development, Executive Summary, p. 1.

[15] Coordinated Urban Economic Development, Coordination of Public Development Institutions, p. 1.

[16] CUED, op. cit, Coordination of Public Development Institutions, p. 2.

[17] CUED, op. cit, Coordination of Public Development, Executive Summary, p. 4.

[18] Interestingly, even after establishment of the Department of City Development, the report lists four major public economic development entities which were not included and remained independent or in separate departments. In other words, the most successful example of combining economic development functions into one line agency was unable to combine all economic development functions.

[19] CUED, op. cit, Coordination of Public Development Institutions, pp. 2-3.

[20] CUED, Volume 2, Comprehensive Economic Development Planning, p. 1.

[21] CUED, Volume 2, Comprehensive Economic Development Planning, p. 4.

[22] Comprehensive Economic Development Planning, pp. 5-7.

[23] Comprehensive Economic Development Planning, p. 4.

[24] The attraction strategy, “industrial attraction” is “one of the most extensive and controversial elements” of local economic development. “Typically the domain of consulting firms’ attraction attempts to “match the needs and economic potentials of a locality to those of expanding industries”.”Local development officials then prevail upon selected industries to relocate or expand there”.  Data processing and analysis required for screening hundreds of industries … consulting firms have developed standardized procedures [but] a controversy exists concerning the usefulness of these techniques”. Philadelphia is cited as relying principally on industrial attraction. Activities included in industrial attraction are: site selection studies, market studies and feasibility analysis (which combine site and market studies), marketing and customized “packages [we assume incentives]” infrastructure investment and site selection (an early forerunner to shovel ready). CUED, Volume 2, Comprehensive Economic Development Planning, p. 6.

[25] Retention strategies they imply are more common “particularly in the urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest which have experienced steady out-migration of manufacturing”.  The basic instrument of the strategy is the survey and the visitation program. They cite Minneapolis, Long Beach, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago and Milwaukee as having used this tool extensively. Survey was quite extensive and not especially dissimilar to that utilized in recent times. The survey is used to coordinate development activities including public works investment, manpower programming , provision of municipal services, compatible land use and transportation planning and a second section links retention to “redevelopment of industrial areas” or urban renewal. CUED, Volume 2, Comprehensive Economic Development Planning, p. 6.

[26] Other criticisms include the relatively few CDBG dollars that survive social services, administration, housing and conventional community development programs. Economic development is clearly conceived to be the last of a long list of priorities of CDBG. Spreading CDBG funds across neighborhoods also seriously limits the ability to use such funds for concentrated micro economic business development programs. Finally, an interesting discussion on an apparently common internal opposition from HUD administrators (New England is cited twice) who simply are perceived to be at war with economic development.

[i] Tom Gjelten, A Nation of Nations: a Great American Immigration Story (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015)

[ii] Tom Gjelten, A Nation of Nations: a Great American Immigration Story (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015), p. 91.

[iii] Tom Gjelten, A Nation of Nations: a Great American Immigration Story (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015), p. 123.

[iv] Tom Gjelten, A Nation of Nations: a Great American Immigration Story (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015), p. 132.

[v] Phillip Martin, “Trends in Migration to the U.S.”, the Global Challenge in Managing Migration, Vol. 68, No. 2, November, 2013, Population Reference Bureau, p.2

[vi] Phillip Martin, “Trends in Migration to the U.S.”, the Global Challenge in Managing Migration, Vol. 68, No. 2, November, 2013, Population Reference Bureau, p.4.

[vii] Phillip Martin, “Trends in Migration to the U.S.”, the Global Challenge in Managing Migration, Vol. 68, No. 2, November, 2013, Population Reference Bureau,

[viii] Anna Brown, Statistical Portrait of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States, 2014, Pew Research Center, April 19, 2016.

[ix]  Robert Siegel and Selma Simmons-Duffin, March 7, 2017, “How Did We Get To 11.5 Million Unauthorized Immigrants”,

http://www.npr.org/2017/03/07/518201210/how-did-we-get-to-11-million-unauthorized-immigrants

[x] Robert Siegel and Selma Simmons-Duffin, March 7, 2017, “How Did We Get To 11.5 Million Unauthorized Immigrants”,

http://www.npr.org/2017/03/07/518201210/how-did-we-get-to-11-million-unauthorized-immigrants

[xi] Steven A. Camarota, A Record-Setting Decade of Immigration: 2000-2010, Center for Immigration Studies, October 2011, see Tables 1 thru 3

[xii] Steven A. Camarota, A Record-Setting Decade of Immigration: 2000-2010, Center for Immigration Studies, October 2011, see Table 1

[xiii] Steven A. Camarota, A Record-Setting Decade of Immigration: 2000-2010, Center for Immigration Studies, October 2011, see Tables 1 thru 3.

[xiv] Steven A. Camarota, A Record-Setting Decade of Immigration: 2000-2010, Center for Immigration Studies, October 2011, see Table 2.

[xv] Anna Brown, Statistical Portrait of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States, 2014, Pew Research Center, April 19, 2016.

[xvi] The Pew Research Center has developed databases for the major Hispanic and Asian nationalities and has prepared excellent reports which help considerably to explain local and state variations.

[xvii] Steven A. Camarota, A Record-Setting Decade of Immigration: 2000-2010, Center for Immigration Studies, October 2011, see Table 6.

[xviii] Gustavo Lopez and Eileen Patten, “The Impact of Slowing Immigration: Foreign-born Share Falls Among 14 Largest U.S. Hispanic Origin Groups”, PEW Research Center, Hispanic Trends, September 15, 2015, Figure 2.

[xix] Anna Brown, Statistical Portrait of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States, 2014, Pew Research Center, April 19, 2016.

[xx] Table 47 as 2015.

[xxi]  Gustavo Lopez and Eileen Patten, “Hispanics of Puerto Rican Origin in the United States, 2013, PEW Research Center: Hispanic Trends, September 15, 2015.

[xxii] See Asian-American History Timeline American-Asian Immigration Center.

[xxiii] Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, Asian Immigrants in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, January 6, 2016.

[xxiv] Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, Asian Immigrants in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, January 6, 2016.

[xxv] Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, Asian Immigrants in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, January 6, 2016.

[xxvi] Neil Ruiz and Jill Wilson, “The H-1B Visa Race Continues, Brookings, the Avenue; https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/04/02/the-h-1b-visa-race-continues-which-regions-received-the-most/. See also their article“ the Search for Skills,, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/…/18-H1B-visas-labor-immigration.pdf

[xxvii] Audrey Singer and Jill Wilson, Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America” Migration Policy Institute, March 1 2007.

[xxviii] Audrey Singer and Jill Wilson, Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America” Migration Policy Institute, March 1 2007.

[xxix] Audrey Singer and Jill Wilson, Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America” Migration Policy Institute, March 1 2007.

[xxx] Audrey Singer and Jill Wilson, Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America” Migration Policy Institute, March 1 2007.

[xxxi] Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, Asian Immigrants in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, January 6, 2016.

[xxxii] Jynnah Radford, Just Ten States Resettled More than Half of Recent Refugees to U.S., PEW Research Center, December 6, 2016.

[xxxiii] Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, Asian Immigrants in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, January 6, 2016; see also Jynnah Radford, Just Ten States Resettled More than Half of Recent Refugees to U.S., PEW Research Center, December 6, 2016.

[xxxiv] Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, Asian Immigrants in the United States, Migration Policy Institute, January 6, 2016.

[xxxv] Phillip Martin, “Trends in Migration to the U.S.”, the Global Challenge in Managing Migration, Vol. 68, No. 2, November, 2013, Population Reference Bureau, p. 6.

[xxxvi] Neil Ruiz, Jill Wilson, and Shyamali Choudhury, the Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, July 2012, p. 20.

[xxxvii] Neil Ruiz, Jill Wilson, and Shyamali Choudhury, the Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, July 2012, pp. 7-8 Figure 2.

[xxxviii] Neil Ruiz, Jill Wilson, and Shyamali Choudhury, The Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, July 2012, pp.10-11.

[xxxix] Neil Ruiz, Jill Wilson, and Shyamali Choudhury, The Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, July 2012, pp.15.

[xl] Neil Ruiz, Jill Wilson, and Shyamali Choudhury, The Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, July 2012, pp.11-13, See Figure 5.

[xli] Wikipedia does provide an excellent discussion; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa

[xlii] https://www.recode.net/2017/4/13/15281170/china-india-tech-h1b-visas, April 13, 2017

[xliii] http://globalworkers.org/iii-h-1b-workers-us-%E2%80%93-data,

[xliv] https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-2b-non-agricultural-workers/cap-count-h-2b-nonimmigrants; https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-2b-temporary-non-agricultural-workers.

[xlv] https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/statistics/non-immigrant-visas.html

[xlvi] The appropriate spreadsheet is “Nonimmigrant Visa Issuances by Visa Class and by Nationality”,

https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/statistics/non-immigrant-visas.html

[xlvii] Religion, as Bishop treats it, is not doctrines, denominations or specific religious practices; religion is a value system which is expressed in choices, behaviors, expectations, and hopes carried forth daily in one’s life. Religion forms a prism which colors how one evaluates events and ideas and which sets one apart from other religions or from the secular perspective (see Chapter 7).

[xlviii] Bishop also asserted post-material cultures were characterized by greater talent, individual skills, and economic growth. This is Richard Florida’s Creative Classes at work—an assertion with which I do not concur.

[xlix] Almost all scholars of the American West, from Fredrick Jackson Turner, John Muir, to Carl Abbott have consistently focused on the West’s ecology as core to its identity—and a serious element in its history, culture and politics. Much of the discipline of environmental history draws deeply from western case studies and dynamics of western history. It is not unreasonable to assert that western environmentalism, regardless of Privatist and Progressive cultures, has proved a home base for America’s environmental movement. Western state and local economic development has evidenced its own perspective integrating many of the environmental forms/waves into its strategies, programs and tools. For that matter, the eastern former hegemonic cities and states have been more sensitive to pollution control and abatement than wildlife, wilderness, land use, tourism, and energy-related environmentalism more prominent in the west.

[l] Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes, “Global Scale Temperature Pattern and Climate Forcings over the Past Six Centuries”, Nature, 392, 1998, pp. 779-87.

[li] Patrick Allitt, a Climate of Crisis, op. cit., p.74. In his five years as President LBJ signed into law nearly300 conservation enactments (Allitt, p. 69).

[lii] Part of the problem with B&H data results from its use of David Birch’s Dunn and Bradstreet database—which has been severely critiqued to the point that Birch himself, moved away from it in subsequent publications. See Davis, Haltiwanger & Schuh, Small business and Job Creation: Dissecting the Myth and Reassessing the Facts, NBER Working Paper 4492, October 1993. http://www.nber.org/papers/w4492

[liii] Global Betting and Gaming Consults LLC, as cited in the Wall Street Journal August, 2013, p. 1.

[liv] http://www.ncsl.org/research/financial-services-and-commerce/casino-tax-and-expenditures-2013.aspx; and file:///C:/Users/emiletebo/Downloads/direct_taxes_casino.pdf.

[lv] Congress in 1823 approved a lottery to fund Washington D.C. beautification. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, however, as the lottery managers absconded with the funds.

[lvi] Thomas A. Garrett, Casino Gambling in America and its Economic Impacts, Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, August, 2003, pp. 4-5.

[lvii] A Seminole Tribe in Florida was undergoing a roughly comparable process as well.

[lviii] Figures are taken from 2013 State of the States: the AGA Survey of Casino Entertainment @ americangaming.org…

[lix] State regulation, unknown probably to most, specifies the “casino take” or the payoff ratio. The interrelationship of the payoff revenue with annual tax proceeds is truly complex, hidden largely from sight and inspection, and fragile.

[lx] Lucy Dadayan, State Revenues from Gambling, Rockefeller Institute, April, 2016 (the Blinken Report)

, http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/2016-04-12-Blinken_Report_Three.pdf; Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2016, R2

[lxi] Christopher Walker, “Nonprofit Housing Development”, Housing Policy Debate 4 (3): pp. 369-414.

[lxii] Littleton Colorado is a suburb of a suburb (Colorado Springs). Colorado Springs is a boomburb.

[lxiii] Global Betting and Gaming Consults LLC, as cited in the Wall Street Journal August, 2013, p. 1.

[lxiv] http://www.ncsl.org/research/financial-services-and-commerce/casino-tax-and-expenditures-2013.aspx; and file:///C:/Users/emiletebo/Downloads/direct_taxes_casino.pdf.

[lxv] Congress in 1823 approved a lottery to fund Washington D.C. beautification. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, however, as the lottery managers absconded with the funds.

[lxvi] Thomas A. Garrett, Casino Gambling in America and its Economic Impacts, Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, August, 2003, pp. 4-5.

[lxvii] A Seminole Tribe in Florida was undergoing a roughly comparable process as well.

[lxviii] Figures are taken from 2013 State of the States: the AGA Survey of Casino Entertainment @ americangaming.org…

[lxix] State regulation, unknown probably to most, specifies the “casino take” or the payoff ratio. The interrelationship of the payoff revenue with annual tax proceeds is truly complex, hidden largely from sight and inspection, and fragile.

[lxx] Lucy Dadayan, State Revenues from Gambling, Rockefeller Institute, April, 2016 (the Blinken Report)

, http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/2016-04-12-Blinken_Report_Three.pdf; Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2016, R2

[lxxi] Irvine was a little over 210000 in 2010, but Census estimates it as in excess of 250000 in 2015—quite an explosion is such a troubled period. Irvine is among the nation’s top 100 largest cities.

[lxxii] Much CD literature focuses about restrictive covenants which are a cornerstone element of early planned communities, but, one which has been “cleaned up” by court decisions and the civil rights movements. Today covenants are called “CC&R”s, and not without their faults and concerns, are not racially “exclusionary”. Exclusionary covenants have given way to income segregation/class discrimination with cries of “gated” communities for the privileged (Blakely & Snyder).

[lxxiii] http://www.hoa-usa.com/about

[lxxiv]William Frey, David Dent, “New Black Suburbs” New York Time Magazine, June 14, 1992, 18, pp. 20-25

[lxxv] Ronald Reagan, “First Inaugural Address” in Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1981 (Washington DC, Congressional Quarterly 1982) pp. 11-e–12-e

[lxxvi] Butler, from Britain, was executive director of London’s Adam Smith Institute in London. He embraced the EZ in 1979, and, after visiting the South Bronx, linked the enterprise zone to housing reform. His book, The Enterprise Zone: Greenlining the Inner Cities (1981) caught Kemp’s attention.

[lxxvii] For an early review of 1983-1990 JTPA “An Assessment of the JTPA Role in State and Local Coordination Activities“, U.S. Department of Labor, Research and Evaluation Report Series 91-D, 1991.

[lxxviii] A similar program had been started by NSF in 1977

[lxxix] Departments of Agriculture, Commerce (NIST and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, EPA, NASA, and NSF,

[lxxx] National Trust Website, http://www.preservationnation.org/main-street/about-main-street/

[lxxxi] Roger N Nacker Ph.D. President Wisconsin Economic Development Association, “A Short History of Economic Development in Wisconsin and the Rise of Professional Economic Development“, November, 2000.

[lxxxii] Enid Beaumont, “Enterprise zones and federalism” in Roy E. Green, New Directions in Economic Development (Newbury Park, CA, SAGE Publications, 1991), pp. 41-57; David B. Robertson and Jerold L. Waltman, “The Politics of Policy Borrowing” in David Finegold et. al. (Eds) Something Borrowed, Something Learned (Washington DC, the Brookings Institute, 1993) pp. 21-44.

[lxxxiii] HUD 1995 State Enterprise Zone Update in Mossberger, chapter 4, Figure 3, pp.81-83

[lxxxiv]  “Learning from Experience: A Primer on Tax Increment Financing”, Fiscal Brief, New York City Independent Budget Office, September, 2002, p. 2.

[lxxxv] Michael Dardia, “Subsidizing Redevelopment in California” (Public Policy Institute of California, January, 1998), p. ix. http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_298MDR.pdf

[lxxxvi] Legislative Analyst Office State of California, ”Unwinding Redevelopment”, February 17, 2012, p. 4 http://lao.ca.gov/analysis/2012/general_govt/unwinding-redevelopment-021712.aspx

[lxxxvii] State of Wisconsin Tax Incremental Finance Manual, Revised as of April 2012, Chapter 1, Section 1, “What is a TIF“, p. 1-2, Department of Revenue, Division of State and Local Finance