Fortress-(Government Facility) Economic Development Strategy
As described by Robert Lotchin[1], early twentieth century Pacific Coast cities (especially California) focused their city building and chamber-style boosterism to forge a distinctive multi-decade economic development- growth strategy based upon “close ties between the city and the military”. By linking municipal-state economic development efforts to national defense policy (and war) these cities developed a key and sizeable economic agglomeration for their jurisdiction by acquiring military/governmental spending, facilities and personnel. This locally-initiated strategy came under some attack at the time of the so-called “rise of the Sunbelt”. The federal government was then accused of diverting tax dollars from Eastern cities and using them to subsidize Western cities, reducing the competitiveness of the former and unfairly enhancing the latter. It resounded at the time, but as emotions tempered, the existence of a long-standing local economic development strategy to attract federal investment, mainly through facilities, bases and offices, was increasingly recognized by authors such as Lotchin, and accordingly merits a bit of discussion on our part.
At its core the strategy the strategy attracts federal resources, physical or otherwise, by local development initiatives. As such the strategy is not tied to any one department or policy area. Highways, dams/irrigation, agriculture, welfare, federal reserve district, housing, physical redevelopment benefited during this period from federal largesse. To be sure, the Defense Department (and war production) had very deep pockets indeed, and they may have led to something called Fortress California, but our terminology will be more neutral, if clumsy. We label the strategy “federal/state intergovernmental investment/resources attraction”.
Secondly, Lotchin’s Fortress California has become so deeply impressed in our understanding of the early rise of California’s cities that one might think these cities invented the strategy—they didn’t. San Antonio[2], unequivocally, engaged in a defense-based economic development strategy essentially similar to Lotchin’s California cities—but in the 1880’s (Charleston around 1900 as well—there were others). Indeed the controversy surrounding federal resources to support “internal improvements” was a derivative of our earlier discussed Whig (Clay) and Democrat (Jackson) brouhaha. This economic development strategy, like other strategies, is prone to whose ox is gored, which ideology/partisan affiliation one prefers, and subjective “data” to prove one’s case. Whether or not one approves, this strategy has been evident practically from day one, and promises to never go away. San Diego’s contribution is not its being first, but rather the most sophisticated and sustained use of that strategy.
Thirdly, what further distinguished the Pacific states use of this strategy in this effort is that it truly was a uncoordinated, decentralized region-wide strategy used by municipalities to compete for position in the Pacific urban hierarchy. The First World War unleashed a period of great prosperity as war production demanded western resources (fishing, mining, lumber, agriculture), and prompted shipbuilding for a newly established (1919) Pacific fleet and a new, but struggling, aircraft industry as well. When war-induced prosperity petered out after the war’s end, population and economic growth faltered. The insecurity of each city’s business elites correspondingly increased as did their perceived need to return to a path of growth and regional dominance thru acquire facilities associated with the Pacific fleet/military for their metropolitan area: “This naval/air realignment triggered economic war up and down the West Coast.”[3]
The dispatch of the American fleet to the Pacific coast was a critical event in the development of California and the West Coast and a critical stage in the evolution of the Sunbelt as well. The emergence of the Sunbelt was essentially a reorientation of the American patterns of urbanization and the resources of the United States Navy provided a critical lever with which to enhance that realignment … the presence of that service promised a strikingly important population increase to the city that could capture all or a part of this maritime complement …. Better harbors would facilitate commerce and the greater volume of commercial traffic would complete the cycle by providing a rationale for still further federal spending on the harbors. [4]
In each of these pre-World War II cities, within its booster-competitive-Chamber policy nexus, a network of business, political and national bureaucratic alliances were established sufficient to obtain the desired military-related facilities/spending.[5] At the core of these initiatives was an early military-industrial complex, an “Iron Triangle” of military/governmental bureaucracies, congressional delegations/committees and municipal EDOs. Bureaucratically, Chambers provided leadership, liaison, and staff-coordination with municipal/county/state, the general business community and key private actors, the media, and the Washington political/bureaucratic establishment. They arranged for incentives and developed formal programs support of the various projects.
… the San Francisco Chamber actually received a municipal operating subsidy for its normal expenses and an extra one for its promotional activities. Elsewhere chamber-government ties were especially close and their collaboration in military matters quite thick. Both the San Diego and Vallejo chambers operated almost as lower houses of the urban legislatures and sometimes as upper houses and executives as well. Like their city government partners, the chambers’ courtship of the soldiers and sailors was institutionalized rather than improvisational. Although the chambers featured military affairs committees, by the Second World War the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce had a committee for both military and naval affairs and, in addition, published a weekly newsletter devoted solely to civil and military aviation.[6]
Over the next several decades there were winners and losers for each project, but despite San Diego’s obvious success, Los Angeles and San Francisco did well. But over the following decades “In this fluid and dynamic situation, no city felt secure, and all shared a vast metropolitan anxiety …. In order to make their (the city’s) dreams realizable (and hold their nightmares at bay) all the major California cities and many minor ones, mobilized for combat“[7]. Newspapers were full of advertising, press releases; there was constant lobbying, promotion, tours, installation of relevant infrastructure (dredging of harbors), and even county-wide urban plans became tools subsumed into intercity economic development competition.
For example, San Francisco hired a publicity agent, the Los Angeles Chamber went on a “Golden Rule Sociability Tour”. San Francisco launched a serious of infrastructure, landmarks and tourist projects (including the 1937 Golden Gate Bridge). San Diego mimicked their larger neighbors and stressed military-related projects as well as tourist/resident promotion to increase national awareness. Lotchin was correct in calling attention to the Pacific Coast targeted military and defense facilities economic development focus previous to World War II—this strategy, the intensity and consistency it was pursued, were a distinctive goal/focus for their economic development policy system.
[1] Robert Lotchin, Fortress California 1910-1961 (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1992).
[2] Boulder Springs embraced it in the post-World War II period, but so did Houston and so many other cities.
[3] IBID. p. 6.
[4] IBID. pp. 6-7.
[5] IBID. pp. 13-15.
[6] IBID. pp. 17-18
[7] IBID. p. 13.
Ron W. Coan 