Chap 18 Done
Pre-Elgar Chapter 19: Western Policy Systems, Suburbs and Urban Renewal
Chap 19 Elgar Updated-with inclusions as of 3/17/17, San Jose
Chapter 17 Final as Revised & Expanded Silicon Valley, Stamford
Chapter 15: Final Simultaneous Sub and Domeism; Vignettes
Chapter 13 Western War Time,Postwar Ind DC/Postwar Policy Sys
Chapter 8 Western
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2014 file on Western Snapshots—Complete text
Post Submittal Silicon Valley Update
Snapshots
In this section, a series of descriptive municipal policy-oriented snapshots will be presented—for cities that either did not fit the “typical pattern described in the previous section” or to demonstrate the pull and tugs encountered by western cities in this period. Not every western city is described, but the ones presented offer ideas, a sensitivity apart from abstract generalizations, and lay the ground for what will follow in future chapters. Outstanding omissions such as San Francisco, Seattle, and Phoenix will be covered in detail in subsequent chapters. The snapshots, I believe, reveal the diversity and variation among western cities. These cities while cut from the same cloth, and while undergoing a similar change in policy systems, will find their own ways, take their own sweet time, and wind up on different policy trails. Why they do so is central to an understanding of how American economic development evolved and makes more valid our belief the policy area is “bottoms-up” driven.
[1] Bruce Bissonette, The Wichita Four: Cessna, Moellendick, Beach and Stearman (Aviation Heritage, 1999); and Jeffrey L Rodengen, The Legend of Cessna (Write Stuff Syndicate, 2007). Stearman was bought out by Boeing
[1] A lyric in a 1942 song by Redd Evans/John Jacob Loeb, later picked up by big band leader Kay Keyser. The real Rosie, Rosie Bonavitas, was an assembler in a San Diego Convair plant. It became a famous Saturday Evening Post cover page. The idea originated in Canada from Veronica Foster who (1941) was “Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl”.
[1] The Bracero Program (bracero, I am told, means manual labor) was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements that followed from the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement of 1942 and enacted by Presidential executive order. The agreement allowed millions (over 4 million) Mexicans to work, mostly in agriculture, under short-term employer contracts. Because of the Korean War, the program was formally enacted into law in 1951 and continued to its end in 1964. http://braceroarchive.org/about
[1] Los Angeles, Wichita, St Louis, Seattle, Dallas, Rhode Island, Long Island and Connecticut, Norfolk, Charleston, Boston, Kansas City, Tulsa, Portland, San Diego and San Francisco
[1] Baton Rouge-1947, Hampton VA-1952, Newport News VA-1955, Nashville TN-1962, Jacksonville FL-1967, Columbus GA-1970 and Lexington KY-1972
[1] The Lakewood system, approved in 1954, allows cities and suburbs to contract with the county for pivotal services such as police, fire, garbage and the like. The unanticipated effect of the Lakewood system is that it facilitated municipal fragmentation transferring the costs of critical infrastructure and service needs to the urban county. Together with county wide special districts (in Los Angeles case the Water Authority is a good example), the Lakewood system enabled fragmentation as well as affordable municipal governance.
[1] The Portland Area Development Committee borrowed staff from the Bonneville Power Authority, the National Resources Planning Board, and the Northwest Electric Company.
[1]Interestingly, the Eastern Policy World was critical of Moses’s Portland Improvement Plan. Moses added to the rancor asserting that “nothing short of a revolution in urban life [would avoid making] this report disappointing to ivory tower planners” because it relied on public works. Dutifully, Martin Meyerson, Harvard School of Design called Portland Improvement “ a grab bag of unrelated projects”, and Christopher Tunnard, author of prominent planning and landscape architecture publications, attacked the plan for its “narrow vision, its negative forecasts about postwar industry, and its neglect of planning for housing, health, community facilities, and other social needs”—in short because it was not a comprehensive plan (Abbott, 1981, p. 115). The reaction to Moses/”Plan Improvement” suggests tension within planning, which in relatively short order, will lead Big City economic developers away from planning into their own distinctive discipline-policy area.
[1] Portland’s de facto economic developer, William Bowles, a Moses disciple and commissioner of Public Works Department. Portland implemented economic development/urban renewal not through an independent business-led quasi-development agency, but by a government department led by Bowles.
[1] Bernard seems to agree, citing a number of reasons why Oklahoma City citizens “steeped in deference” did little to challenge their rule by a business oligarchy (p. 216).
Ron W. Coan 