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Cities now commonly engage with financial actors, tools, and markets to manage their budgets and associated activities. The growing significance of finance within urban governance is connected by some scholars to the latter's increasingly speculative character. One area of urban governance where financial tools are now commonly used for speculative ends are public pensions. Across the United States, many state and local governments face large unfunded pension liabilities. In some cases, this has led them to issue pension obligation bonds to reduce their unfunded liabilities. This paper examines the extent of recent pension obligation bond issuance and develops a comparative case study of three Massachusetts municipalities. The research results show that the speculative content of pension obligation bonds varies, even across three Massachusetts municipalities. By using pension obligation bonds, all three case study cities have exposed themselves to different levels of financial risk and have given themselves a long-term governance challenge by installing a speculative financial tool within their budgeting.

Two cities loom large in the history of American urban restructuring. New York City's 1975 technical bankruptcy and Detroit's 2013 Chapter 9 bankruptcy have played an oversized role in urban theory. This is currently reflected in competing theories of post–recession urban restructuring. "Austerity urbanism" uses Detroit as an exemplar, whereas "pragmatic municipalism" adopts the converse position arguing post–recession reform is defined by local context. This paper draws on the small cities literature to generate a different account of recent municipal bankruptcies and their broader impacts. It uses qualitative methods to survey the causes and outcomes of all eight post–recession Chapter 9 bankruptcies. The research recognizes the potential nationwide significance of these extreme events but avoids focusing on big city examples. The paper's findings suggest small and medium sized cities play a significant role in shaping recession–related restructuring.

Post-recession urban restructuring in the U.S. has involved national and state governments pushing budget problems to the local level, with municipalities implementing a variety of responsive reforms. Although the term "austerity" has often been used to characterize these reforms, others have argued municipal responses to fiscal stress have been largely "pragmatic". Disagreement therefore exists about the extent to which austerity is a post-recession tendency across U.S. urban governance. However, there is a consensus that extreme municipal fiscal stress is linked to austerity restructuring. But can cities who have experienced extreme fiscal stress avoid austerity restructuring? This paper draws on research that examined bankruptcy-related reform in the City of Vallejo, California. In 2008, Vallejo became the first municipality to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy after the financial crisis. During and after its bankruptcy, the City has faced extreme budget problems, making it a prime candidate for austerity restructuring. However, research shows that Vallejo undertook a set of post-bankruptcy reforms—controlling labor costs, revenue raising, managing risk, participatory budgeting—that are not collectively characteristic of austerity or pragmatism. In conclusion, the paper reflects on the political and ideological factors that shaped Vallejo's post-recession restructuring and how the City's core fiscal problems have avoided resolution.

If we now live with a planetary urban process (Brenner & Schmid, 2015a), the very idea of "future cities" must be brought into question. Indeed, we might ask whether urban planning has morphed into planetary planning, with its primary charge being the construction of vast networks of urban systems coordinating a global capitalist process. This commentary cautions against such over-extended theories of urbanization and related planning practices. Although global capitalism has engendered profound spatial changes, the concept of the city remains a crucial social and political idea. By outlining the continued centrality of the city to social and political life, the commentary argues for a democratic evaluation of the urban form in order to plan for, and realize, more just cities.

If we now live with a planetary urban process (Brenner & Schmid, 2015a), the very idea of "future cities" must be brought into question. Indeed, we might ask whether urban planning has morphed into planetary planning, with its primary charge being the construction of vast networks of urban systems coordinating a global capitalist process. This commentary cautions against such over-extended theories of urbanization and related planning practices. Although global capitalism has engendered profound spatial changes, the concept of the city remains a crucial social and political idea. By outlining the continued centrality of the city to social and political life, the commentary argues for a democratic evaluation of the urban form in order to plan for, and realize, more just cities.

Beginning in the mid-1930s, government-sponsored fieldworkers canvassed the nation as part of a series of unprecedented folk music research, collecting, and recording projects, conducted under the auspices of the Federal One arts programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. In most cases, the thousands of instantaneous recording discs, transcriptions, and song texts were deposited at the recently established Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, under the watch of Harold Spivacke and John and Alan Lomax. The network of individuals involved in these projects reads like a who's who of folklore and folk music scholarship of the era: Benjamin A. Botkin (Federal Writers' Project, WPA Joint Committee on Folk Arts); Sidney Robertson Cowell (California Folk Music Project); Herbert Halpert (Federal Theatre Project, Joint Committee); George Herzog (Columbia University); Zora Neale Hurston (Federal Writers' Project), and Charles Seeger (Federal Music Project, Joint Committee). The reasons behind making these collections were as varied as the individuals involved, but mainly reflected intellectual currents of the time: functionalism, comparative musicology, salvage ethnography, and an archival instinct. This dissertation explores the institutionalization of folk music during the New Deal era and the place of "the folk" within the prevailing "national fabric" metaphor used to describe the United States as, in theory, a culturally pluralistic nation.

In 2006, as Cultural Attache at the United States Embassy in Tokyo, I oversaw a major cultural diplomacy project that bore out the utility of this metaphor. The project serves as a case study of the structural elements -- or building blocks -- for credible cultural diplomacy in this age of social networking, Al Jazeera, & the Starbucks-ization of the planet. The indispensable role of public diplomacy officers in the field is today, as it always has been, the keystone of our edifice of engagement with foreign publics. The context for my work in Tokyo from 2002 to 2006 was the maturing of the U.S-Japan relationship. State Department polling conducted post-9/11 showed that Japanese public sentiment toward the U.S. was slowly but steadily worsening. We were particularly concerned that the decline was greatest among younger, well-educated Japanese -- the emerging opinion leaders -- too many of whom displayed a kind of cultural disdain, a belief that American culture itself was decadent & even harmful to the world. Adapted from the source document.

Acknowledgements -- Preface / Jamie Peck -- Introduction / Mark Davidson and Kevin Ward -- Austerity and the spectacle: urban triage and post-political development in Detroit / L Owen Kirkpatrick and Chalem Bolton -- Austerity as the new normal : the fiscal politics of retrenchment in San Jose, california / Sara Hinkley -- The difference a crisis makes : environmental demands and disciplinary governance in the age of austerity / Caroline Sage Ponder -- The unaffordability of recession : housing mobility & recession austerity in Providence, Rhode Island / Aaron Niznik -- Urban governance and inclusionary housing in New York City / Kathe Newman -- Homeownership in Middle America : a case of incidental austerity? / Dan Hammel and Xueying Chen -- Conclusion / Mark Davidson and Kevin Ward and Mark Davidson -- Post script / Mark Davidson and Kevin Ward -- Notes -- References -- Contributors -- Index -- Endnotes

Offers a much needed update on urban politics in a globalized world; Davidson and Martin, as well as contributors, chart new territory and produce thought-provoking research that move the field in a more critical direction.