Through the eighties: reversing decline

 

If the critical theme of Chapter 16 was the rise, then consolidation, of the federal government in economic development, then the critical theme in Chapter 18 is Fed’s economic development pullback and the gradual redefinition of its role in the Contemporary Era. Chapter 17’s dominant theme was the collapse of the northern Big City hegemony and the consequent rise in the many wings of contemporary community development; then the overriding theme in Chapter 18 is the stabilization of Big Cities under charismatic mayor leadership that fabricated a hybrid predominantly mainstream ED strategy supplemented by a CD-led focus on revitalizing troubled neighborhoods. In the incremental formation of Contemporary ED, new sub-municipal EDOs carried critically important ED strategies to targeted and distressed areas. Finally, Chapter 18 concludes by describing the new polycentric metropolitan area and the emergence of the Contemporary Era metropolitan competitive hierarchy.

This chapter’s tale begins in the seventies and carries into the late eighties. In this chapter, the feds regroup. Carter and Congress combatted an intensifying manufacturing decline and rise of the Sunbelt. At the end of the decade, however, Carter and the Policy World failed to formulate a long-term urban role for the federal government. Instead, Reagan cut back and “reformed” it dramatically; but a surprising number of new ED programs were approved, and a surprising number survived (albeit modified). The workforce system, HUD, SBA and EDA survived preserving a more limited federal role in vital ED/CD strategies. A balanced, limited, focused, and somewhat predictable federal role was being forged, and that role would remain reasonably constant in our Contemporary Era.

Former Big City governments also survived Great Society tumult and disruption. To newly elected charismatic mayors was left responsibility to revitalize Big Cities, imploded ghettos and declining jurisdictional economic bases. These “messiah” mayors, did a surprisingly good job over this decade and the former hegemonic cities stabilized. Economic development played a major role in this comeback. A variety of strategies/programs repurposed the central city, accommodated the rising service sector, restoring a measure of hope, and combatted manufacturing job losses. These strategies required new EDOs; EDOs that extended municipal ED into waterfronts, commercial areas, and distressed neighborhoods—and CBDs as well.

Municipal governments developed strategies to revitalize neighborhoods, and chambers adopted CBDs during the eighties. Cities cleaned up urban renewal and gave it a new focus/rationale—and a new name for good measure. Community development evolved during the eighties. More on its own, a CD “philanthropic foundation” wing recommitted itself, but deindustrialization wreaked horrible effects on ghettos and low-income neighborhoods. A “Third Ghetto” emerged—from which entry into employment and societal assimilation was a difficult mission indeed. The decade proved to be a much harsher environment for CD than its seventies’ golden years.

Suburbs, like the Eveready Bunny, just kept on hopping. Former Big Cities no longer exercised primacy over the autonomous, “going their own way” suburbs. Suburbs moved into an era characterized as “post-suburbia,” walking a narrow line between a small village self-image, that provided both growth and urban amenities. Suburbs lost whatever homogeneity they might have had in the past as they diversified. Suburbs, not exactly old, were not as spry as they once were. Many of the forces that troubled Big Cities were now theirs to enjoy. Still, as in its old “suburb” days, the dominant attribute of post-suburbia was incredible jurisdictional variation. Polycentric former Big City post-suburbia, while not liked by many, provided a durable context upon which North and Midwest metro areas could rebuild.

 

THE FEDS REGROUP: But Not Very Well

The Carter Years

The Carter economic backdrop included inflation (stagflation) triggered by 1973 and 1979 oil/energy crises that led to a 21.5 percent prime rate in 1980. By then the Second War between the States was moving to “off-Broadway”, 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 Boston’s Tip O’Neil as Speaker (1977). 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 redlining, 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, a cleaned up, updated, renamed urban renewal, 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 28 percent 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 that 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 lobbyists secure annual retainers for delivery of additional earmarks (Kaiser, 2009, pp. 69–81). The first legislative earmarks for Georgetown and Tufts Universities were approved in 1976-77. Over the next several decades they 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 and 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.

National Agenda for the Eighties

Carter’s National Agenda for the Eighties got lost in his reelection campaign. The Agenda attempted to reconcile tensions caused by Sunbelt–Snowbelt conflicts. It recognized the now chronic manufacturing plant closings, downsizings and job losses that had prompted the reindustrialization debate of the seventies. Recommendations included relocation of the 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 nationwide 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 the Bayh–Dole reform of patents was approved in 1980.

Foreign Trade Zones

A number of important changes were made to the FTZ, first established in 1934 (anti Smoot-Hawley tariffs) and 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, FTZs amounted to a little-used tax-free storage of imported goods. In 1970 there were only eight FTZs and three 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 were in operation.

CERCLA-Superfund brownfields

In 1980 CERCLA-Superfund legislation was approved by Congress. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act included the Superfund remediation program, but also authorized funds, regulatory procedures and clean-up/ liability standards appropriate to private and local brownfield remediation. Each state enacted its own “voluntary cleanup 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 1990s most states had enacted such programs. State variation in brownfield programs was huge, and 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.

The companies that polluted a 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 brownfield 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 brownfield remediation an immensely complicated, fragile and time-consuming affair.

Reagan Devolution

In a three-way race with 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, 1981–93 was the longest period since 1920 that Privatist Presidents governed. Yet the 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 devised 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 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.¹

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 percent, CDBG halved (54 percent), urban mass transit reduced by 25 percent and UDAG by 41 percent. In 1980 federal dollars constituted 22 percent of Big City budgets (over 300,000)—by 1989 it was 6 percent. State governments didn’t pick up the slack; their percentage was 16 percent 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 percent (Domhoff, 2013, p. 246). Public housing programs and Section 8 were cut, at one point by 80 percent. 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.

EDZs

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 for 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, it was 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 microeconomic cost reductions will triumph over geographic and demographic constraints.

The idea was embraced by the Heritage Foundation’s Stuart Butler,² who 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) they introduced the 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 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 (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 and 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 1980s.

IDBs

Industrial development bonds were easy targets for Reagan reform legislation. The 1968 Revenue and Expenditure Control Act had sharply limited IDB issuances and eligibility by establishing two “types”: exempt and small issues. Small issue IDBs declined dramatically during the seventies. “Reforms” were approved in 1982 (TEFRA) and the 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. The 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 percent 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” (SDAs), 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.³ 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, the Small Business Administration 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, nationwide network of private, usually nonprofit entities that packaged, issued and serviced the SBA loan/lien. The loan structure, similar to SBIC, involved multiple participants (owner 10 percent, bank lender at least 50 percent) and proceeds from the SBA-issued debenture (up to 40 percent). 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, multi-county certified development corporations. By the first decade of the twenty-first 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.

SBIR

Ignoring conservative screams, Reagan in 1982 signed the Small Business Innovation Research Act (SBIR), which facilitates small business startups and commercialization of new technologies, processes and innovation.⁴ SBA serves as the coordinator, overseer, reporting agency and contract point for several federal agencies.⁵ Annually a (presently) 2.5 percent 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 is based on technical merit, feasibility and commercial potential.

+ Phase II involves 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 112,500 awards dispersing nearly $27 billion, assisting 15,000 companies, 50,000 patents, and involved approximately 400,000 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 program was decentralized to states that set priorities, application process and approved allocation. Small cities probably fared well, better than larger “entitlement cities’ whose share declined by about 5 percent.

PTAP

The1985 Procurement Technical Assistance Program 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 nationwide, state-based network of centers for free or low cost provides 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 the Urban Development Action Grant; 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 1980s 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 in 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 Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program—from its sponsor, Senator Hollings, South Carolina)—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 the 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 its first decade followed (Sargent Jr., 1915). Its chief foci were quality control, productivity innovations, integrating Japanese-proven techniques (Sigma 6, lean manufacturing) and process innovations (ISO 9000 started in 1987). 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, and today MEP is found in all 50 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 from, 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 that 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, then 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 economic development. Certainly, the vehicle (block grants) differed from the Great Society’s categorical direct federal to city, but federal involvement in the strategy/program persisted. Categorical grants 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, MEP, 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 and 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 that the 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. Yet, an aggressive federal government deeply involved in sub-sate ED/CD continues to be 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 that Reagan’s fiscal austerity and devolution forced local/state innovation. But a simple “Reagan did it” is an oversimplification. A second answer is that 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 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 of 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 that since 1990, 1600 communities have adopted Main Street,⁶ 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: To build partnerships and boards of directors based on consensus and cooperation.

+ Promotion: To 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:

1. Comprehensive (no single activity dominant).
2. Incremental (take baby steps).
3. Self-help (rely on local consensus).
4. Partnerships (public–private).
5. Identify/capitalize on existing assets (develop uniqueness).
6. Quality (do it right, even if more expensive).
7. Change (district success can change public perceptions).
8. 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, it is a CD approach to commercial revitalization. Business is a partner, not a 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 1920s through 1940s, 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 1950s and 1960s, 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 and Gopal-Agge, 2007, p. 947).

Allegedly, the first true BID 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 (1980s). By 1997, an estimated 1000 BIDs operated in the USA, 50 in New York City alone (Nelson et al., 2008). A 1999 survey suggested that 60 percent of these were created after 1990 (about 400 in the 1980s) and about 28 percent were established after 1995 (Mitchell, 1999). BIDs started slowly in the early 1980s, picking up steam later in the decade (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 costs 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 includes 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 (RIDs).

Wisconsin in 1983 approved a state-wide Business Improvement Districts Act, empowering local municipalities to create a BID. Eventually 95 BIDs were formed (20 in Milwaukee).⁷ 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 BIDs’ 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 on) policies toward that end” (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 and 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 1000 EDZs existed. EDZ diffusion was a statedriven process; as described above, the federal government never approved an EDZ program in the 1980s, but a coordinated “effort” by HUD, working with a score of think tanks, NGOs and professional associations, prodded states into authorizing EDZs. Ultimately, 40 states adopted some form of EDZ; by 1995 only ten states had not approved an EDZ.⁸

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.⁹

State diffusion came in bursts. The first period (1982–83) enlisted 20 states, the second (1984-89) 16 and the last (1993) four.¹⁰ 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 1984-89 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” (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 than economic development oriented (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; but when William Weld (Republican) was elected governor in 1992, he got it approved.

Looking back in 2000, Mossberger comments that EDZs over their first 20 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 Districts

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

Structurally, a 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 TIFs extensively to finance urban renewal projects.¹¹

TIF is the quintessential state ED program. Every aspect of it 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:

+ Who is authorized to create a TIF district (state, county, municipality, RDA).

+ How long can a district exist? Accountability, audits and reporting requirements.

+ Preconditions   with   which   the  TIF   district  must   comply—e.g.  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 the plan is adopted/approved; who has the final say.

+ Issuance of bonds—types, terms and conditions, who issues them, eligible uses of bond proceeds, repayments, surpluses, losses and default (Johnson and Man, 2001).

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 Californian cities operated TIF districts (Johnson and Man, 2001, p. 32). By 1988 almost 600 project districts/RDAs received 6 percent of the state’s property tax receipts, and by 1990 there were 658 districts (Briffault, 2010, p. 70). In 1998 TIFs garnered 8 percent of property tax receipts despite major state legislation intended to rein them in, limit, refine and refocus use of TIF by California’s municipalities. At that time (1990) there were 351 RDAs in existence and over 700 ongoing projects.¹² In 1998 five project districts exceeded 18 square miles each; by 2008 six projects exceeded 30 square miles each.¹³ In the period 1990–2010 TIF was the prime strategy/tool employed by California EDOs. Its RDAs were (essentially) terminated in 2012.

Through the seventies, states incrementally adopted versions of TIF, but the real explosion occurred after Reagan. TIF’s attractiveness as a substitute for federal (UDAG) dollars was compelling. By 1984, 28 states had approved TIF legislation, 33 by 1987 and 44 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 and 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). There are many other examples:

At the end of the 1980s 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, 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 percent of the urban tax base … In 2007 there were 402 active TIF districts in Cook County Illinois covering more than 10 percent of the county’s land area. (Briffault, 2010, pp. 70–71)

In contrast to this, Hawaii, Mississippi and New Jersey had laws authorizing TIF back in 1985, but none had an operating tax increment district as of 2001 (Johnson and Man,2001, p. 32). By 1997, 48 states had approved TIFs (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 Californian tool to raise funds for local match to combat blight in UR projects, TIF has 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, 16 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 [tax incremental districts] … 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.¹⁴

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 as a way 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 of them as a “growth regime coalition.” Their power, aggressiveness and often closed bureaucratic/ expert internal policy-making rendered them both powerful and vulnerable,¹⁵ 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 Mainstream ED expanded the scope of its activities/strategies greatly during the 1980s. Commercial revitalization coincides with and 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 new EDOs offered another opportunity to see onionization in real life—and to observe how onionization drives professional siloization. Professionally, these EDOs attracted a new breed of economic developers. What is 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 pursuing 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. Strategies pursued several goals simultaneously.

No one planned this fragmentation, and one seriously doubts it could have been avoided. But by the 1980s onionization, siloization and goal complexity explode. EDO onionization drove 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 1980s.

 

 

FORMER BIG CITIES PUSH BACK THE SHADOWS

Crisis breeds opportunity and Big City implosion created opportunity for a new breed of Big City mayors. Teaford called them “Messiah” mayors. Their names, familiar or not, were: Coleman Young of Detroit, William Schaefer in Baltimore, Ed Koch in New York City, Richard Caliguiri in Pittsburgh, George Voinovich in Cleveland, Vincent Schoemehl of St. Louis and James Griffin in my Buffalo. To these names one can add a sixties’ survivor, Boston’s Kevin White. Chicago and Philadelphia missed the messiah mayor boat (Frank Rizzo a law and order, anti-busing police chief, conservative and populist, didn’t fit Teaford’s mold). Minneapolis, with a weak-mayor form of government and Cincinnati with a city manager were not in the running. Messiah mayors demonstrate that successful economic development in a crisis environment requires more than choosing the correct economic development strategy. It is a complete package including leadership, power-management, hard work, charisma, image and confrontation.

Messiah mayors had boosted the spirits of many urban dwellers and made them proud of their cities … [They] fashioned enough of an urban consensus to keep themselves in power … [and] eliminated some of the obstacles in the way of revitalization. These messiah mayors may not have worked as many miracles as they claimed, but they were generally adept enough … to keep up the illusion of success. (Teaford, 1990, p. 307)

Their success required use of charisma to harness political and bureaucratic power. Most messiah mayors were attacked as bosses in that they constructed a new-style political machine based on city bureaucracies, projects, pork, jobs and services to get them through elections. CETA public service jobs were great until 1982. On the whole, these mayors were not cerebral—or nice guys; they were aggressive, in your face, publicity hounds and credit-takers who established a reputation for getting things done and inspiring confidence. Power and personality became intertwined. Policy areas other than ED were vital, but ED was their meat and potatoes. Gruen was correct: downtown is the visible symbol of former Big City metropolitan viability, and the CBD revitalization was a defining characteristic of messiah mayors.

Refunction the CBD, But First “Pay the Bills”

Messiah mayors embraced a fairly consistent set of ED strategies. In the late seventies and eighties several strategies were attempted. These included CBD revitalization (office, corporate HQs, downtown malls), festivals, waterfront (and entertainment) districts, convention and tourism destinations, eds and meds, sports stadiums and cultural/arts districts. But the one they all had to follow before any other was to “pay the bills”—dealing effectively with the fiscal crisis. This required battling the unions and reducing budgets and public expenditures. Their success in this endeavor was measured by ratings from credit agencies—and by voters appreciative of a serious effort to keep taxes low.

By 1980 a big-city mayor was a success if he or she could just keep the city from going bankrupt. … Thus deficit and debt figures were powerful answers to police officers threatening to strike or neighborhood groups demanding improved services … between 1977 and 1985 the number of municipal employees dropped in ten out of the twelve older central cities … three slashing their personnel more than 20 percent. (Teaford, 1990, p. 263)

Cost-cutting, efficiency, wage stabilization, personnel reductions and tax increases were the dark side of the messiah mayor. Voters understood they were bankrupt, or on the precipice; the saving grace was that austerity worked. In 1981, after six years, NYC reentered the money markets. In 1985 Koch retired the last of the federally guaranteed debt. Voinovich massively reformed city administration, personnel management and fiscal management: an austerity program and bank loans at favorable terms, tax and utility fee hikes—and big layoffs. The city income tax was raised by 33 percent. In 1983 Cleveland reentered the national bond market, and in 1987 it paid off the last of its crisis debt and the state commission that had handled its finances was disbanded.

A part of that solution was, in Teaford’s words, “a heavy strain of ballyhoo about the long-awaited arrival of central city renaissance, a rebirth that supposedly would soon fatten starved budgets and relieve residents of some of their tax burden” (1990, p. 268). The central pillar of that ballyhoo relied on the visible physical redevelopment of the city.

Rebuild the Core

Visible and believable city revitalization meant messiah mayors and economic developers returned, yet again, to physical redevelopment and public–private partnerships. They couldn’t call it urban renewal; mercifully, UDAG and Rouse came along. Rouse’s first festival market project, Boston’s Faneuil Hall, was completed in 1976. It was pioneering (inspired by San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square) and its success redefined urban renewal. The most popular and publicized physical redevelopment strategy was simply to hire Rouse and copy Boston’s Faneuil Hall-Quincy Market. Rouse prospered, becoming a modern-day Daniel Burnham. South Street Seaport in New York City (1982), Market East in Philadelphia, St. Louis Union Station, Portland’s Pioneer Palace and Riverwalk Marketplace in New Orleans were other Rouse festival marketplaces built in the eighties. Some were never completed (Niagara Falls and Buffalo). What made it all possible for the cash-strapped cities was UDAG, the one remaining vestige of the Age of UR.

Rouse redefined UR into a mixed-use waterfront/entertainment/development project anchoring the development with museums and tourist attractions. The Harborplace Project (mid-1980s) in Baltimore, Rouse’s hometown, provided a good example. Residents and tourists used the facilities and enjoyed themselves. Redevelopment no longer was symbolized by the displaced poor and minorities. Festival marketing attracted local middle-class spenders and tourists. Food, shopping, views, street entertainment and a dollop of culture and art—a festival market and waterfront redevelopment was the ultimate mixed-use district that redefined the inner city as safe and a fun place. Rouse had given urban renewal new meaning and a positive emotional attachment.

Projects of this period include: Detroit’s waterfront Renaissance Center, San Francisco’ Fisherman’s Wharf, Salt Lake City’s Trolley Square, Denver’s Laramer Square, Chicago’s Navy Pier, Atlanta’s Peachtree Plaza, Kansas City’s Crown Center, St. Louis’s Laclede’s Landing and Union Station, and New York’s South Street Seaport. A typical example, St. Louis Center, opened with 200 shops anchored at each end by a department store. Union Station was a 90-year-old rail depot and train shed with 80 shops, 22 restaurants and a hotel. For the most part they still remain today, interwoven into the present-day tourism strategy and urban fabric.

In their effort to rebuild and refunction the CBD, former Big Cities caught a break. Cyclical growth in the commercial/office sector, driven by a national shift to a service economy, provided opportunities for CBD redevelopment. Commercial growth led to relocation of corporate and regional headquarters to the CBD. Private sector office and HQ strategies helped offset the sustained decline of CBD retail resulting from the collapse of CBD department stores and the rise of “big box” specialty retail. Downtown ceased being the metro areas’ prime retail center. Instead, it would function as the administrative office and corporate headquarters function for the region. Mollenkopf’s concern at the time, however, was valid: “some eastern cities have a rich supply of these activities (HQ and corporate, banking offices)—cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Boston. Others, particularly the industrial cities, like Buffalo, Youngstown, Toledo, Gary and the others … do not” (Mollenkopf, 1983, p. 233).

No matter the city, examples of big-name private sector CBD projects can be found. For the most part these projects were natural and organic, not the consequence of ED. Chicago’s Sears Tower went up; Milwaukee built its First Wisconsin Center. From a 20 percent commercial vacancy rate in 1973, NYC dramatically—and rapidly—lowered it to 4 percent by 1978. It continued through 1986 as the city opened 45 million more square feet of commercial space. A similar office boom spurred Caliguiri’s “Renaissance II” in Pittsburgh that equaled the total square footage of the previous two decades. Cleveland constructed the 45-story Sohio Building, and Cincinnati a new Proctor & Gamble corporate HQ. The Baltimore Sun declared 1984 “the year of the crane” (Teaford, 1990, pp. 269–72). Office and headquarter commercial growth, however, was not a universal panacea. Detroit’s Renaissance Center, headquarters of General Motors, was at best a mixed success—by 1983 its debt/ownership restructured.

Messiah mayors used tax-exempt bonds to enhance arts and museums. Pittsburgh and the Heinz Foundation established a mixed-use cultural district in the Golden Triangle; Cleveland’s Playhouse Square and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame captured the headlines and attracted crowds; Baltimore’s Mayor Schaefer developed in his signature Inner Harbor project, the National Aquarium; and Shea’s Performing Arts Center and Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo are examples of culture and theater as elements of urban revitalization. The image, if not a reasonable reality, of downtown refunctioning was forged during these years. Partly this was made possible through a revolutionary and media-catching redevelopment, Gruen’s “downtown mall.”

In the eighties, a number of central cities built regional downtown malls to support remaining department stores and provide ridership to mass transit lines built in the early 1970s: “Supporters of downtown malls hoped that they would do for the central business district what regional malls did for suburbia: provide attractive, safe and comfortable environments for shoppers; restore economic vitality, and perform vital social, cultural and community functions.” Arguably, such malls were a poor imitation of the more grandiose plans proposed by Gruen in the late 1950s and early 1960s; nevertheless they were popular and in vogue with public opinion. West and Orr uncovered nearly 20 such downtown malls; another eight were built in central cities outside the CBD (West and Orr, 2003, pp. 194–5). For the most part these malls were constructed in the Northeast and Midwest (Boston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Columbus Ohio, the Bronx, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Cleveland, Providence, Buffalo and St Paul.

Sports and Stadiums

Sports stadiums, despite any claims to the contrary, are not job generators. The real functions of a sports stadium are (1) image, perceived by city residents and leaders as urban competitiveness; and (2) a ton of just plain folks getting together to watch their heroes, make fools of themselves and have fun—often with their families. The purposes behind sports stadiums drive us more refined folk nuts. In academia and think tank land there is a body of literature (Delaney, 2003) devoted to cataloging the job creation failures and taxpayer subsidies, marking these “redevelopment” projects as abject failures, fat cat capitalist greed and a distortion of true public purposes. (Full disclosure: As an ED CEO, my agency built/financed/managed major league stadiums—I am proud of it.) Rich capitalist owners should build their own facilities, but sports arenas are complicated affairs for an economic developer.

Stadiums address the needs of community residents to feel proud and garner respect for their home town—home team—their home city. There’s nothing wrong with civic patriotism! Rich folk civic patriotism builds opera halls and modern art museums that more normal folk won’t go near. Sports provide the social and often psychological glue vital to a positive community and metropolitan fabric. And, more than that, a sports team that moves and leaves an empty stadium is a perceived rejection of that community—quite likely a real loss of national status and competitiveness, and a visible structural testament of the city’s fall from greatness. Failure to update, modernize, create a sports sizzle experience falls to the public arena. The failure of public officials to provide a competitive stadium will cost elections, generate intense and never-ending media criticism, and create a sense of public sector incompetence held by large segments of a community’s population. Sports stadiums are an integral element of an effective strategy of urban revitalization.

So, no surprise, messiah mayors built sports stadiums as a very conscious effort to generate approval and the perception of urban revitalization:

A big city had to have big-time sports, and a giant domed stadium [and an exploding score box, luxury boxes, cheerleaders and entertainment] could supposedly lure business and visitors just like an up-to-date convention center. Mammoth sports arenas, elaborate meeting facilities, and vibrant festival marketplaces all seemed to spell visitors dollars and a fun reputation for a traditionally begrimed urban core. They were all part of the promotional package of the late 1970s and the 1980s. (Teaford, 1990, p. 276)

Minneapolis started the decade off by building a domed stadium to keep the Vikings and Twins in town. The Vikings’ existing stadium—“the old Met” or the “Ice Palace” in Bloomington, a suburb (now the site of the Mall of America)—became vulnerable in the late sixties when the new AFL/NFL merger expressed strong discontent with stadiums of less than 50,000 seats. After more than a decade of anxiety and debate, the domed Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome opened in 1982.¹⁶ (It was later torn down and replaced in 2014 by U.S. Bank Stadium—apparently stadiums do not enjoy a long useful life.) Allegedly the politics behind the HHH came into place with the opening of rival Detroit’s domed stadium, the Pontiac Silverdome (Hartman, 1974). In that instance the central city stole the stadium from a suburb.

Baltimore suffered through a reverse experience. The Colts in 1984 left town for Indianapolis (literally in the middle of the night—after being threatened with foreclosure). Schaefer scrambled, not only to find a replacement but also to retain the Orioles. The solution was the two-stadium ($235 million) Camden Yards project, one that, 30 years later, is considered a success and a Schaefer achievement by local residents—and voters. Cleveland, of course, migrated to Baltimore in the 1990s, making the project the success it was. The St. Louis Cardinals moved to Phoenix and the Los Angeles Rams eventually moved to St. Louis during the 1990s as well. Watching all these public relation disasters, Coleman Young rushed to modernize Tiger Stadium, finding big bucks in a very distressed city to keep them in place. While I support stadium construction with public dollars, I admit these case studies are little more than an ED soap opera.

Convention Centers and Tourism

Dennis Judd, concerned with “the industry without a smokestack” and its role in downtown revitalization and intercity competition, found (in the 1960s) that about 65 American cities operated convention bureaus to attract and assist convention groups. By 1977, their number had increased to approximately 100 and doubled again by 1983. Judd observed a 1972 survey uncovered 70 cities that had opened, had under construction or were actively planning construction of multi-million dollar convention centers. Municipal leaders as of 1978-79 were Chicago, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans and Washington DC (the top five in conventions), but New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Los Angeles led in number of attendees (Judd, 1984, pp. 388–93). Judd is not comfortable convention centers are a sound economic development strategy; nor is Chester Hartman, who asserts that “most large convention centers lose money” and not all cities that compete ought to (Hartman, 1974, p. 165). The industry appears highly concentrated; winners win big, but losers … well, lose.

In 1977 St. Louis opened its new convention center, the nation’s tenth largest, and the race was on. Baltimore, Pittsburgh and the Jacob Javits Center in New York City were enormous convention centers built within nine years of St. Louis’s opening. By that time St. Louis had dropped to 19th place. Chicago enlarged McCormick Place and retained its number one status, beating out the 22-acre, 90,000 occupancy Javits Center. Cleveland and Cincinnati revamped/expanded facilities to compete in the national convention and meetings industry. Detroit built Cobo Hall and Boston the Hynes Convention Center. The approach did not inevitably generate success; some cities failed miserably in attracting tourists, filling hotel beds and signing up conventions and meetings. Other cities made it work: Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and New Orleans (“the usual suspects”) did fine. A few medium-size cities competed effectively at a regional level. Local publicity campaigns helped, but ran out of dough; absent the sizzle we were left with the gristle. Over the next decades, many convention centers/hotels turned into chronic open sores in the downtown fabric (Judd, 1984, pp. 388–400).

A remarkable initiative that redefined state-level tourism is remembered to this day: “I LUV NY.”¹⁷ The iconic tourism campaign was launched in 1977 by New York City and later picked up by New York State. The campaign, adapted from an earlier Montreal Canada advertising campaign, caught on. City after city developed a high-priced media image attraction strategy touting each as the destination of a lifetime. Often these tourism campaigns were turned on their head and advertised to local citizens and metropolitan residents: Buffalo’s “Talking Proud,” “I Love New York,” “My Kind of Town” and Detroit’s “Super City USA” and the Four Tops singing “Do It in Detroit” appealed to out-of-towners and local residents alike. These strategies complemented the messiah mayors’ need for faith in their city’s future and the need to deliver visible achievements to justify that faith.

In the eighties tourism and conventions meshed with corporate HQ, festival markets, waterfront redevelopment, cultural districts and sports stadiums: they all countered the shift from manufacturing to the service economy—demonstrating that former Big Cities could compete. A new urban life style, sports teams, TV shows (Mary Tyler Moore’s Minneapolis, WKRP Cincinnati) hinted at today’s “branding.” A viable tourism program affirmed a resident’s hope that their city was attractive to others. Emerging from the era of Big City collapse this was economic development at its best. Capturing this reaffirmed pride, an article in the Saturday Review explained:

the big city, our big city, is not indispensable to our self-esteem, so much so we take a chauvinist delight in luring a Peter Rose to our ball team, or a Zubin Mehta to our symphonic podium … our thirst for urban display is overriding the less glamorous priorities of health, welfare, and education.¹⁸

That messiah mayors favored CBD revitalization in partnership with a corporate sector did not necessarily mean they were at war with neighborhoods. Jimmy Griffin was an exception to this, but even he was forced by the city council to fund neighborhood opponents with CD dollars. Coleman Young, despite his labor union and neighborhood activist past, was more extreme in his CBD orientation than most messiah mayors. Detroit’s Poletown is testimony to that. At the other extreme was Boston’s Kevin White, who pioneered in a former Big City a neighborhood-based-political strategy.

White told the city council that “for too long urban renewal in Boston has emphasized rebirth of the downtown area at the expense of the neighborhoods” (Teaford, 1990, p. 240). His first two administrations set up neighborhood “little city halls” (terminated in his third, however). Messiah mayors had to deal with CD neighborhood movement during their tenure. Pittsburgh’s maverick Peter Flaherty, in 1969, vowed: “As a mayor I will concentrate on the neighborhoods, rather than on the downtown section.” St. Louis Mayor Alfonso Cervantes stressed two “pressing priorities” for his administration: “the fight against crime and the fight to preserve our neighborhoods.” Neighborhoods were an established component of most Messiah-era redevelopment. City councils in Cincinnati, Baltimore and Minneapolis protected neighborhoods and urged their redevelopment as core to their city’s ED strategy

Stability Achieved

A rough, but surprisingly durable stabilization for former Big Cities followed after 1990. They didn’t die after all. Periodically, the media would tout a “back to the city” movement—usually by young professionals (never families)—and CBD and central city population would tick upward. One or another former Big City would be cited by the media and the Policy World as the decade’s comeback kid. Gentrification articles were sure to follow. And then bad times hit and the numbers went down. Comeback kids faded into the mists. Cynical? Perhaps?

But another, less comforting trend could also be observed. The two-region Big City hegemony had seemingly drifted apart. The Midwest, the Great Lakes states/cities were now the Rust Belt. True, most former Big Cities were re-labeled as “legacy cities,” cities hobbled by their ungrateful suburbs with economies that ranged from chronic decline to a slow, fragile growth in the best of economies. In the Midwest farm belt rural decline was noticeable, but what really screamed out was that deindustrialization hit the Midwest harder than the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic. The Midwest was the nation’s industrial heartland. Comparative advantage helped our East Coast financial centers, but not so much the industrial heartland.

The “new auto alley” was followed by Michael Moore’s Roger and Me documentary about GM and Flint Michigan. Michigan and Detroit became ground zero for the American auto industry transition. During the 1980s the Chicago metro area lost 188,000 heavy industry jobs (-33 percent). Rouse’s Midwest waterfront and festival markets, lacking sufficient discretionary income, a profound city/suburban racial distribution. and on the fringes of the tourist trade did markedly less well; Toledo’s Portside waterfront project failed outright. The Midwest was making the transition to the service/finance/technology economy less well than its eastern neighbors (Teaford, 1993). It was a much harder slog for economic developers in the Midwest and Great Lakes.

Between 1990 and 2000 average metro population growth for the 17 Big Cities of the North and Midwest was almost 8 percent (only Buffalo and Pittsburgh metros lost population); central cities declined 2.3 percent (McDonald, 2008, p. 270, Table 15.2). Thirteen of 17 metro areas increased population between 2000 and 2006 (Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Boston lost metro population). New York City came roaring back. Washington DC grew the most jobs. After stabilization in the 1990s, however, central cities mostly pulled backed between 2000 and 2006. Of the 17, only Kansas City, New York, DC, New York City, Columbus and Indianapolis enjoyed any pre-Great Recession population growth (in order of growth). Detroit and St. Louis lost the most (McDonald, 2008, p. 270, Table 15.2; pp. 308–10, Tables 17.1 and 17.2). McDonald concludes: “recession and jobless recovery have placed in jeopardy the continuation of the [former Big City] urban rebirth of the 1990’ and hampered of … central cities to turn the corner” (2008, p. 313).

Somewhere between 33 and 35 percent of the population live in our largest cities (nationally). It has ranged around that since 1930. Our faithful Big City chronicler, Jon Teaford, asserted the post-1980s’ gap between Big City and its suburb never closed: “instead central cities pursued a different path … a distinctive market niche that would distinguish them from suburban competitors.” The central city would not be the monolithic “hub of all metropolitan life,” rather it characterized itself as the “urban way of life different from the prevailing suburban norm” (Teaford, 2006, p. 166). If so one might make a case that an unspoken de facto polycentric metro area had emerged from the Big City collapse of the seventies.

Big City hegemony had passed into our history, but former Big Cities and their (de facto) polycentric metro areas had not! A rough, fragile, uneven stabilization of former Big Cities had emerged from the implosion of the 1970s. Messiah mayors had managed to keep central cities afloat and restored fiscal and some functional stability to jurisdictional economic bases—but population mobility was still working against them. With occasional blips and bleeps, exceptions that prove the rule, this grudging stability, verging on stagnation, of Big Cities and their metro areas has been a foundation of our contemporary economic/community development worlds.

 

REAGAN ERA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

When last we left community development it was “hitting on all cylinders”; the approach had exploded, achieving almost near equal status with mainstream ED. Then along came the municipal fiscal crisis, property tax rebellions and Reagan! Federal pullback from sub-state ED hit CD hard. The reliance of local CD actors/EDOs on the federal government was more than HUD cutbacks; it was psychological abandonment from an ally viewed as more than a close friend—almost a betrayal. To maintain momentum community development and CDCs had to make new friends and develop new revenues. Riding on a train in late 1979, Ford Foundation executive Mitchell Sviridoff was challenged by a board member on how he would help local CDCs survive if he had $25 million available. A year later, he and former Bed-Stuyvesant CEO, then Ford Foundation president, formed a national CDO whose purpose was to assist CDCs. The new CDO was flush with $9.3 million in grants from Ford and six major corporations. Within four years the initial seed money had grown to $70 million from 250 corporations (Hoffman, 2012, p. 27). Today known as LISC, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation provides grants and technical assistance to CDCs. Foundations rushed into to fill the gap left by the Federal government.

In the eighties community organizers had to tone down mobilization. Citizen activism and volunteerism redirected itself from social justice, economic empowerment and political change, to confronting specific doable, local problems. Krumholz later observed:

what began in the early ‘70s as a group of grass-roots activist organizations, very strident in style and confrontational in expression, has been transformed into a set of enormously competent community development corporations that are now doing economic development, housing, and commercial development. (Fisher, 1994, p. 182)

Social change took a back seat to touchable change.

CD by the nineties exhibited a mixture of maturity, success and complexity—at the expense of exuberance and wild-eyed commitment. Sadly, it is beyond the capacity of this history to detail the literally hundreds of major initiatives conducted over the last two decades of the twentieth century—even very important ones such as the Harlem Children’s Initiative. A listing of the types of activities engaged—ranging from import substitution, welfare rights, development rights, housing and food cooperatives and tons more (Simon, 2001)—would strain the reader’s eyes and dull their sensitivity to the enormous effort and intensity of commitment to bring about change in distressed neighborhoods and their residents. But the tide of change, the critical mass, had not yet been achieved. The troubles of the Third Ghetto could not be meaningfully reversed.

The targets of neighborhood revitalization were constantly moving: new residents, new immigration—and the inability of American capitalism to provide work for low-income residents of color (Wilson, 1996). In some neighborhoods, the infamous “tipping point” had been crossed; in others affluent new residents appeared— precipitating gentrification and displacement. In other areas new inflows, mostly immigrant, invaded hitherto predominantly homogeneous black neighborhoods, with unsettling consequences. The majority of folk in Watts, for example, were Hispanic, no longer African-American. CDCs had to cope with “diversity” in addition to preaching it.

Two examples of influential Reagan Years projects testify to the innovation unleashed, and the change in the CDC movement’s direction: NYC’s Brownsville Nehemiah neighborhood renewal and Boston’s Dudley Street Neighborhood initiative. As the decade’s end drew near, frustration with conventional, housing-based, comprehensive CD’s pace and results suggested some further experimentation, a third new direction should be attempted. Perhaps, a community development “big push” might be answer. So a new CD initiative was tried: the Comprehensive Community Initiatives (CCI)—the Sandtown case study (see below).

Nehemiah and Dudley

Nehemiah

The Nehemiah project in East Brooklyn was as remarkable as it was controversial. Nehemiah was an offspring of an Alinsky Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF—founded by “himself” in 1940 Chicago). IAF evolved after his death in 1972 into a national network of neighborhood-level community organizing initiatives. By the Reagan Years IAF comprised 28 local initiatives, mostly in the Southwest, centered on colonias (suburbs populated by poor Mexican-Americans) and allied with local churches, congregations and existing neighborhood institutions. Unlike ACORN, IAF had to be invited in, and its message was often religious in tone—with IAF’s leadership asserting “the [Catholic] Church as the one institution in society with the potential to work positively for the empowerment of the people” (Fisher, 1994, pp. 192–6). East Brooklyn’s Congregations (EBC) spun off from IAF. Nehemiah, EBC’s experiment, was both an Alinsky community empowerment organizing initiative and what proved to be a significant faith-based initiative (Vidal, 2001, p. 9).

East Brooklyn was one of the most devastated of NYC’s predominantly minority neighborhoods. After over 100 “kitchen-table” house and public meetings that drew thousands, EBC incorporated in 1981 around a plan to demolish over 300 houses—the first of its controversial decisions was to reject rehabilitation and press ahead for large-scale demolition. Named after the biblical prophet sent by Cyrus the Great to rebuild destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, the Catholic bishop, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island joined the initiative. When additional land became available and Mayor Koch agreed to provide city resources for infrastructure and write-downs, the Nehemiah initiative expanded. It hired I.D. Robbins as its general manager, and his revamped plan produced two more controversies: Robbins (1) embraced the Levittown model of mass-housing construction; and (2) its scale of housing demolition matched UR projects. Shades of slum clearance!

The idea was to construct affordable houses for existing residents. That didn’t work out; it took at least working-class incomes to purchase a new home—not affordable for all displaced residents. The scale and housing style, many thought, created “suburbs in the city.” The first phase (1100 units) started in 1983, the second (1100 units) in 1987, the third (700 units) in 1996; and a recent (2009) bi-phased initiative for 1500 units completed the construction thus far (4500 units). The townhouses (modest, architecturally detestable and low-priced) have always enjoyed waiting lists—and stable ownership. The New York Times reported that fewer than a dozen original homeowners went into Great Recession foreclosure.¹⁹

Nehemiah inspired many imitators nationally, including Sandtown in Baltimore, and later a HUD Nehemiah Opportunity down-payment assistance program between 1987 and 1991. While much maligned, Nehemiah proved that community development could make slum clearance, Levittown and reasonably affordable housing construction work on a scale that moved the needle. Another lesson from Nehemiah is that in these tough times, housing proved itself to be a sustainable focus for a CDC, causing awkwardness from some CD advocates who prefer social change/justice and personal empowerment. Nevertheless, housing remains to this day as the most common activity of CDCs.

Dudley Street

Located on the borders of Boston’s Dorchester and Roxbury neighborhoods, the 1.5-mile block Dudley Street initiative provides insight into the complexities of neighborhood revitalization. Dudley’s diverse population (40 percent African-American, 30 percent Hispanic, 20 percent Cape Verdean and 10 percent white) lived in a neighborhood that included 4 million square feet of vacant, weed-filled lots and lacked the elements of a viable residential area: no supermarkets, commercial storefronts boarded up, lots of abandoned cars and its three closed landfills the proud recipients of continued illegal dumping. Almost 1500 residents were on a substance abuse program waiting list.

In 1984 the Riley Foundation “pulled together” 30 community agencies to formulate a neighborhood plan (Halpern, 1995, p. 203). The “Plan” was introduced to neighborhood residents at a public meeting—and promptly rejected, mostly because residents were not involved in its development. In response, a CDC, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), was devised with membership and governance composed of residents, agency leadership, businesses and neighborhood institutions and churches (during this period about 1800 resident members). Between 1984 and 1987, DSNI successfully tackled a number of problems that built confidence, capacity and credibility. Vacant lots were cleaned up, abandoned cars towed, a public landfill closed, and new street signs and lights and an MBTA rail stop to downtown installed. The rationale was to build resident confidence so more complex issues could be tackled.

A second planning campaign in 1987 produced a five-year plan that included land use modifications, housing, jobs, youth/community service programs, public safety and environmental cleanup. The plan coined the now-famous “urban village” metaphor. The overall goal was to revitalize all the elements necessary for a successful neighborhood (i.e. comprehensiveness). New and rehabilitated housing were anchors. To secure land for housing, DSNI board and staff decided piecemeal land acquisition simply would not work. The land was owned by over 130 individuals and entities. City agency eminent domain seemed the answer, but DSNI and residents alike feared that, once condemned, they would lose control over the property to the city agency. The solution was for DSNI itself to be empowered to exercise eminent domain. It took a while, but in 1992 DSNI acquired authority to condemn 30 acres of land (Dudley Triangle). The Ford Foundation provided funds, and construction of low-rise owner-occupied homes followed. DSNI, which still prospers, afterward evolved into a full-fledged, multiservice CDC conducting numerous programs congruent with the traditional CD “comprehensiveness.”

Issues in Neighborhood Community Development

By 2005, the number of CDCs was estimated at around 4600.²⁰ As CDCs evolved, they engaged in more complex activities involving greater planning and sophisticated execution. Tension between resident control, involvement in governance and CDC accountability to the neighborhood became evident—it remains so today. Given the goals and gestalt associated with community development, this concern cannot be dismissed as a mere Michel’s iron law of oligarchy—it presents an almost existential concern. In order to get things done, too much may have to be sacrificed. Dudley Street initiatives, plans, innovative activities and housing construction made apparent a persistent concern about “who” made decisions. Ideally, of course, a CDC should be governed by neighborhood residents, businesses and institutions; but residents do not always have the interest and, frankly, the capacity to be effective decision-makers.

All too frequently, agency and foundation officials were the drivers behind DSNI and its initiatives. The gap between resident involvement and bureaucratic (staff) leadership of activities was troublesome and initiatives were frequently:

staff driven when [they] began, and it took skill and willpower by staff and the directors to make even moderate levels of participation feasible and to carry programs through. The balance of resident versus professional control … remains in question, and it is not clear what should have been expected … resident control tends to diminish as more professional staff are hired and the organization becomes dependent on external funders. (Ferguson and Stoutland, 1999, pp. 51–2)

At one point a “leadership academy” was established to teach residents the necessary skills (Halpern, 1995, p. 204). The problem was not specific to DSNI, but common to some degree to CDCs (Hopkins and Ferris, 2015, pp. 15–19).

Comprehensive Community-Building Initiatives Movement

After a decade of Reagan/Bush, foundations believed the time had come to develop an approach that combined private financing with Policy World professional/policy expertise to fill gaps that prevented neighborhood CDCs from achieving comprehensive neighborhood revitalization. In the first half of the 1990s several initiatives experimented by supporting projects. Today these projects are collectively referred to as Comprehensive Community Initiatives (CCI). CCI formally developed into a coherent approach in the early 1990s and continue to this day.

Four core CCI goals tie this approach to a CD tradition that started with the nineteenth-century settlement house:

1. change in neighborhoods (place) and residents (people);
2. comprehensiveness or change in a number of program policy areas (housing, education, health care, social services, jobs and, in recent years, environmental sustainability) to achieve critical mass;
3. a rational, plan-driven process devised and implemented by a network/alliances/ partnerships of “experts” and research; and
4. resident/community empowerment, self-government, capacity-building and achievement accomplished through involvement and direction provided to outside experts, professionals and change agents.

Two additional characteristics are especially relevant to the “foundation approach”: (1) funding is based on philanthropy and corporate donations: (2) each individual project is both an experiment and a knowledge-base for formulation of future (and better) initiatives. A practical consequence of CCIs is a network of alliances and partnerships with foundations, service providers, NGOs and think tanks (both local and national) that were involved in CCI initiatives. In later years the Living CitiesNational Community Development Initiative (backed by 20 foundations and financial institutions) in 23 cities was a prominent example of a CCI approach. Indeed, Hope VI and Clinton’s approach to EZ community-based implementation tied into early CCI mentality. Over the last two plus decades it is estimated that $1 billion in philanthropic dollars were invested in its initiatives, an investment that leveraged $10 billion in federal government and local financing (Kubisch et al., 2010, p. 8).

LISC (outlined above) provided the model and inspiration for CCIs and the various sub-initiatives. A powerful catalyst for CCIs was the founding by James Rouse and his wife of the Enterprise Foundation (EF) in 1982. EF intended to serve as a national platform for community economic development initiatives. Its core competence was low-mod affordable housing, but comprehensiveness was also a key goal in Rouse’s approach. EF set up its own neighborhood-based CDO—Community-Building in Partnerships (CBP)—to act as its organizational change agent. Rouse, long associated with Baltimore’s ED, would be the force behind the below Sandtown case study—he died during its implementation.

Sandtown in the next section is a case study of one of CCI’s very first experiments. It failed—badly in my opinion. The spring 2015 Baltimore riots resulting from the death of Freddie Gray, a Sandtown/Gilmore Project resident, were not, of course, caused by the 1990 decade-long CBP/CCI revitalization initiative; but they demonstrate how little that first experiment altered the neighborhood’s path. Sandtown was chosen as a case study not to suggest CCI cannot work—much evaluation and learning has followed from it and other projects. CCI today is not in the same place as it was in the 1990s. Rather, Sandtown illustrates what have proven to be chronic issues which CCI has struggled to overcome. If history can teach lessons, then Sandtown must be a teachable case study.

Sandtown

Sandtown is a 72-block neighborhood with 10,000 residents in West Baltimore, a neighborhood associated with HBO’s The Wire. For several generations Sandtown had been among the most deteriorated and troubled of Baltimore’s neighborhoods. Just plug in terrible statistics stereotypical of distressed areas. Half its residents were unemployed, it suffered four times the nation’s infant mortality rate and, in 1987 (and today) high drug addiction rates—and crime. Earlier it had been a working-class black neighborhood that produced success stores like Cab Calloway, Billie Holliday and Thurgood Marshall.

Our Sandtown-Winchester story begins with Kurt Schmoke: present-day president of the University of Baltimore, Rhodes Scholar, Harvard and Yale grad, former Howard University Dean of Law and Baltimore’s first African-American mayor (1987–99) (Stoker et al., 2015). Schmoke forged an alliance with BUILD, a Westside church-based coalition affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (see above). BUILD advocated a program to push Nehemiah-style homeownership: “Sandtown-Winchester 600” (600 abandoned brick row houses). By 1989 BUILD and Schmoke amassed over $20 million in federal, state, city, foundation and church funds to implement Sandtown-Winchester 600. The initial phase, the Gilmor Project (227 row houses), was identified. BUILD needed a developer, however, and formally in 1990 James Rouse and his Enterprise Fund stepped into the Sandtown story.

Rouse’s EF, joined with BUILD/Schmoke to establish the Sandtown-Winchester Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI). NTI attacked a comprehensive set of neighborhood problems—i.e. “broken systems” such as schools, health care, jobs, safety and housing. EF set up NTI to organize and lead residential and institutional participation because it believed no local CDO or anchor institution could be used—although longstanding Sandtown CDOs existed. I note the absence of the private sector.

EF also forged alliances with other foundations such as Rockefeller, Kellogg and Anne E. Casey. Professional staff was assembled, residential board and staff participation recruited and studies of various types conducted. Several other organizations and local alliances were formed to flesh out the “comprehensiveness.” Between 1994 and 1998 at least eight corporations and five “consortiums” were formed—one of which, the Transformation Consortium, included 18 organizations. In addition seven other organizations (for example, AmeriCorps operated the jobs component) either ran programs within the EF/CPB network or were in some way connected to programs. This does not include local entities such as the city, BUILD, Baltimore School System, the Urban League, universities or HUD (Halpern, 1995, pp. 208–13). Evidently, comprehensiveness invited large doses of bureaucracy.

Comprehensiveness was always a problem. Educational initiatives, faithful to the Boston Compact, required close working relationships with a non-involved private sector, and an exceedingly troubled Baltimore school system. Other program areas, lead paint for example, operated at the margins of neighborhood priorities. Anti-drug efforts got off to a late start and were mostly limited to referrals—which makes for easy statistics but little impact. Anti-crime and Police Department-related programs were virtually non-existent. Initiatives leveraged public funds, and private foundation involvement, however. The Anne E. Casey Evaluation (2000) states that $70 million of “new funds were committed … by federal programs such as Healthy Start and Empowerment Zone. Foundations such as Aspen, Kellogg, the Habitat for Humanity, Anne E. Casey, Abner, Annenberg, Rockefeller, Walter Jones, Urban Institute and NY Community Trust were involved in activities/initiatives.

Where in all this was the BUILD Nehemiah housing project? After Phase 1 of the Nehemiah Project was completed, BUILD separated itself from EF and NTI, remaining involved in the Empowerment Zone but dropping its name from CBP literature. EF moved into large-scale “Sandtown-Winchester” scattered site; substantial rehab housing was intended for owner-occupiers but eventually, because of the high cost, became mostly rental. Little momentum was generated behind the housing. Nevertheless, between Nehemiah and the other housing initiatives approximately 1000 new units were constructed and another 2000 rehabbed—out of about 4300 units in the two neighborhoods.

Local political leaders, activists and media interviews observed NTI leadership was perceived as both political (loyal to the mayor) and not especially attuned to residents—the age-old perception was NTI was more adept with bankers and bureaucrats than with its client population. At the beginning, the mayor appointed a task force to lead the CBP planning process. Local comment asserts that two successive CEOs were the mayor’s picks, the last and a mayoral appointee whose performance at CBP was not favorably received by residents. The mayor brought in all sorts of other goodies, including a Federal Empowerment Zone (2000) to Sandtown, followed by a later New Markets Tax Credit project.

When the mayor left office in 1999, NTI lost its thrust. The new mayor, Martin O’Malley, had other priorities, and embraced mainstream economic development strategies (business assistance, attraction and tourism). Police, crime and anti-drug programs were his signature neighborhood initiatives. They are today blamed for the Freddie Gray riots. NTI closed up shop. No critical mass was ever achieved, and the neighborhood downward spiral was not stopped. Said and done, over the existence of CBP lots of public and private funding went into Sandtown—$60 million from Rouse alone. Lacking a comprehensive audit, it is impossible to determine how much actually was spent. Over the course of EF/CBP’s NTI project, the various participating entities likely spent several hundred million (pre-2000) dollars.

 

POLYCENTRISM AND POST-SUBURBIA

Between 1950 and 1970, the urbanized area of Washington DC grew from 181 to 523 square miles and Miami from 116 to 429, while the megalopolitan areas of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles expanded thousands of square miles. They call it sprawl. In 1960 suburban residents (31 percent) and central city (32 percent) residents were roughly equal; in 1970 suburbanites exceeded 37 percent of the nation’s population while the central city share remained 32 percent. Suburbs, however, kept on growing (Hobbs and Stoops, 2002, p. 33, Table 15). With 37.6 percent of the nation’s population in 1970, suburbs grew to 50 percent by 2000 (and an estimated 53 percent in 2014). Somewhere in there a point of no return had to have been broached. However, sprawled as 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 or 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 1990s. 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 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 postsuburban 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 1980s and 1990s 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, 1991, p. xx). Garreau had discovered a form of post-suburbia that became evident during the eighties. He defined an edge city or edge node as having more than 5 million square feet of leasable office space plus at least 600,000 square feet of leasable retail space—a place that has “more jobs than bedrooms” and is perceived by the locals as an identifiable place less than 30 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, 1991, pp. 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, 2003). 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 (2007), and Lang and Simmons previously (2003), discovered that 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 DC. 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 403,000 residents compared to Atlanta’s 421,000; in 2010 Mesa (463,000) “lapped” Atlanta’s 420,000. St. Louis by that time held 319,000. In 1970 Virginia Beach VA was about 175,000—by 2000 over 425,000 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 (2007) listed 44 suburbs as boomburbs, and they were truly the growth gazelles of urban America. Another 86 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 adults. Between 1970 and 2000, boomburbs gained 6 million new residents.

Edward Glaeser (2000) suggested that “sun, sprawl, and skills drove the growth of the boomburb.” 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 and LeFurgy, 2007, pp. 10–11). 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 demonstrates suburban regional variation.

Contemporary Suburban City-Building

Earlier chapters discussed “planned” city-building initiatives that ranged from company towns to private luxury “gated” communities (Menlo Park NJ), to 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 1960s, however, “master-planned communities” (MPCs) (Platt, 2011) 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 the time of writing, it exploded in the rising Sunbelt.

California took an early lead (Rancho Bernardo, a San Diego “neighborhood”) and the most well-known, Irvine—a post-1960 partnership with the University of California and the Irvine Company.²¹ Coral Gables in Florida was also a 1961 pioneer. ULI formed its Community Builders Council, headed by Nichols back in 1944, and the FHA and HUD have worked with master-planned communities.²² 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, 1994)—will follow. As late as 2015 a significant article questioned the proliferation and pervasiveness of these new cities (Semuels, 2015). The genuine unease of CD with MPCs strongly hints that we are dealing with a Privatist form of suburban city-building (Weiss and Watts, 1989). In the next chapter a CD-congruent form of city-building—“New Urbanism”—will be discussed.

The Woodlands

MPCs, reflecting their garden city roots, are a curious blend of capitalism (financing, marketing and construction) and socialism (community governance, primacy of planning and remarkable inclusivity). MPCs are not meant for CD’s low- and mod-income clientele—a good deal of the initiative rests upon high-income, even luxury clientele, all of which contributes 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’ associations 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 (planned unit development/PUD-like in their scale) such as Silicon Valley, looked at from a real estate focus, were composed of 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. and King, 1987). 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 buildings, 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, 2008, p. 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 180,000 so excessive growth would not destroy the community ambience. Homeowner associations and covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) preserved property values and ensured future economic vitality. Individual neighborhoods with similarpriced but varying designed housing were the basic unit. Incorporation and a citymanager form of government (achieved in 1971) were contemplated from the beginning.

Mitchell found the sixties a difficult environment in which to forge partnerships and raise capital needed to design, plan, assemble land and lay infrastructure. He turned, almost in desperation, to the newly approved 1970 federal Housing Act—in which Texas Senator John 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 opened an office on site and sold its initial 60 townhouses. In 1975, with 643 residents and homeowner association, Woodlands by 1984 grew to 18,700—and in 2015 had 110,000 residents.

Mitchell sold off his corporate interests in Woodlawn, making a tidy sum to be sure. He then financed and experimented with new forms of oil and gas extraction. Today he is better known as the “father of fracking”.

Privatopia

MPCs as a new town or a planned unit development within an existing jurisdiction— frequently associated with condos and townhouse/attached developments—latched onto common interest developments (CID and homeowner associations popularized in Nichols’s Kansas City post-WWI Country Club (see Chapter 9). These tools allowed MPCs 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 associations were 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 (1994) in his critique of RCAs (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 10,000, by 1975 20,000, by 1980 about 55,000 and by 1992 150,000 (McKenzie, 1994, p. 11). The trade association HOA-USA (since 2011) asserts that in 2015 there were about “351000 homeowner associations in the United States … 40 million households, or 53 percent of owner occupied households.”²³ McKenzie claimed that in 1990 there were 11.6 million CID housing units or 11 percent 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 percent were found in the West, 33 percent in the South, 10 percent in the Midwest and 21 percent in the 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, 2008, p. 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. are responsible for— payment of P&I from infrastructure bonds, assuming 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, 2008, p. 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 percent of non-central city metro population; by 2000 they were 28 percent. For half of the 100 largest metros, such minorities were responsible for the “bulk of population gains.”²⁴ “Between 1970 and 2000, the number of black suburbanites rose from 3.5 million to 12 million … 38 percent of all African-Americans lived in suburbs.” Latinos also moved to post-suburbia. In 2000 “more than half (54 percent) of the nation’s 35 million Latinos lived in suburbs [and] 58 percent of Asian-Americans (almost 6 million) lived in suburbs … [as well as] 52 percent of foreign-born residents” (Nicolaides and Wiese, 2006, pp. 409–10). Post-suburbia is ethnically and racially complex.

Bernadette Hanlon (2010) 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 rings 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 styles of inner-ring are far from identical to the northeastern and mid-Atlantic ones.

Myron Orfield (2002) 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 25 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 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 alternatives and newcomer 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), those who already suffer from housing discrimination, there appears a pattern very similar to inner-city neighborhood succession.

A second at-risk suburban type (overlapping Hanlon’s inner-ring housing) is the low tax capacity, older resident, also 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 that 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 extraordinary tax bases and 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, HQs, high property values—but tons 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 Brookings’s The Suburbanization of Poverty by Kneebone and Garr (2010).

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 Cities writ small, they do share commonalities. They can age, become obsolescent and 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 suburban jurisdictional economic bases.

While heavily oriented to the service sector, suburbs are home to corporate HQs, 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 tomfoolery called politics and economic development. As Teaford (1997, pp. 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 (1992) asserts that locating in a suburb means self-identifying the household as middle class—whether or not objectively it “is.” If so, “the word that best describes the political identity of the middle class is “taxpayer.” 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 that 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” (Schneider (1992, pp. 33–44). 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 1990s’ 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 that 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 mesas (or Long Beach, Arlington, San Jose and Santa Ana) that are as large as most of the more well-known and established Big Cities—that 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/West 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 counties of Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester (Oakland in Michigan and others too numerous to name) 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 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, 2008, p. 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, doctors’ and dentists’ 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 databases as a suburb. Much more needs to be done to understand post-suburban economic and community development.

NOTES

1. Ronald Reagan, “First Inaugural Address,” Congressional Quarterly Almanac (1981) pp. 11e–12e.
2. Butler, from Britain, was executive director of the Adam Smith Institute in London. He embraced the enterprise zone in 1979 and, after visiting the South Bronx, linked the EZ to housing reform. His book The Enterprise Zone: Greenlining the Inner Cities (1981) caught Kemp’s attention.
3. For an early review of 1983-90 JTPA “An Assessment of the JTPA Role in State and Local Coordination Activities,” US Department of Labor, Research and Evaluation Report Series 91-D, 1991.
4. A similar program had been started by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1977.
5. 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.
6. National Trust, http://www.preservationnation.org/main-street/about-main-street/.
7. Roger N. Nacker, president, “A Short History of Economic Development in Wisconsin and the Rise of Professional Economic Development,” Wisconsin Economic Development Association, Paper prepared for the Wisconsin Economic Summit, November, 2000.
8. New Hampshire, South and North Carolina, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota and Iowa.
9. Enid Beaumont, “Enterprise Zones and Federalism,” in Roy E. Green, New Directions in Economic Development (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 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: Brookings Institution, 1993), pp. 21–44.
10. HUD 1995 State Enterprise Zone Update in Mossberger (2000, pp. 81–3).
11. “Learning from Experience: A Primer on Tax Increment Financing,” Fiscal Brief, New York City Independent Budget Office, September 2002, p. 2.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. State of Wisconsin Tax Incremental Finance Manual, Revised as of April 2012, Chapter 1, Section 1, “What Is a TIF,” pp. 1–2, Department of Revenue, Division of State and Local Finance.
15. The author was CEO of an Erie County NY version of one of these structures.
16. Amy Klobuchar, Uncovering the Dome (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1986. Yes, she is presently Senator Klobuchar. It was her senior thesis, written long before she married a former Star Tribune
17. Wells Rich Greene advertising agency, and Milton Glaser was the graphic designer. The song was written and composed by Steve Karmen.
18. Karl Meyer, “Love Thy City: Marketing the American Metropolis,” Saturday Review, April, 28, 1979, p. 16.
19. Jim Dwyer, “In a Sea of Foreclosure, an Island of Calm,” New York Times, September 26, 2008.
20. “Reaching New Heights: Trends and Achievements of Community-Based Development Organizations” (Washington DC: NCCED, 2005).
21. Irvine was a little over 210,000 in 2010, but census estimates it as in excess of 250,000 in 2015—quite an explosion in such a troubled period. Irvine is among the nation’s top 100 largest cities.
22. Much CD literature focuses on 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&Rs 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 and Snyder, 1997).
23. hoa-usa.com/about.
24. William Frey and David Dent, “The New Black Suburbs,” New York Times Magazine, June 14, 1992, 18, pp. 20–25.