Suchergebnisse

In this book, David L Imbroscio urges that urban political economy must move forward beyond the question of `what is?' to a consideration of `what might be'. He systematically poses the possibilities for reconstructing the nature of contemporary city politics, while integrating a wealth of innovative urban analysis. The author explores three alternative urban economic development strategies: entrepreneurial mercantilism, community-based economic development and municipal enterprise. He considers whether these strategies are likely to be effective for bringing about urban economic vitality and

This commentary offers a critical assessment of Ross Beveridge and Phillippe Koch's article "Seeing democracy like a city." While there is much we can learn from their analysis and perspective, in the end, it offers only marginal resistance against the colossal structural forces quashing the democratic emancipation of the urban, leaving us with little hope for systemic and comprehensive democratic reconstruction. Only through a mass politics designed to capture and wield state-centered democratic power can we hope to realize broader system change in late-stage, neoliberal capitalist regimes.

In this short reply, I attempt to address my critics in the limited space allotted. I show, inter alia, how the Anti–Exclusionary Zoning (Anti-EZ) Project: (1) brutally reproduces White supremacy, rather than subverting it; (2) employs pernicious neoliberal and antidemocratic means to achieve its—at best—inherently modest ends; (3) emanates from and reflects the elitist politics of the liberal professional-managerial class that locks in the neoliberal status quo, instead of building upon the emancipatory potentialities and power of grassroots, street-fighting mobilizations for housing justice and the right to the city; (4) takes massively uneven capitalist development as a given, rather than the object of contestation and resistance; (5) denies lower-income/working-class people of color vital human longings; and (6) embraces the same progrowth mentality fueling the climate crisis. We must stop worrying (so much) about EZ and fight our real enemies: neoliberalism, White supremacy/racial subjugation, elitist skepticism of democracy, and the growth machine.

Everybody, in the academic/activist world at least, seems to hate exclusionary zoning (EZ). In this intervention, I question this prevalent sentiment, especially as held by urban/housing scholars dedicated to the pursuit of social (or housing) justice. I find that the effort to curtail EZ—the Anti-Exclusionary Zoning (Anti-EZ) Project—embraces a set of pernicious normative values giving rise to sociopolitical outcomes far more detrimental to social justice than EZ's actual adverse effects. Most saliently, while the practice of EZ is often a manifestation of the ubiquitous and enduring presence of racism in America, the Anti-EZ Project inflicts an even greater degree of racialized harm upon the disadvantaged. I thus find that, strategically, the Anti-EZ Project stands in polar opposition to what the pursuit of social/racial justice demands, and I briefly sketch the basic contours of this alternative strategy, pointing to, inter alia, some affinities with the Movement for Black Lives platform.

A strong and enduring commitment to liberalism marks much of urban policy discourse in the United States. Although this Liberal Urban Policy compares favorably with its neoliberal and neoconservative rivals, it is nevertheless deeply flawed. One particularly serious problem is its strong commitment to rationalism. I offer a critique of this Rationalist Paradigm at the core of Liberal Urban Policy, which is extensively developed along both normative and empirical dimensions. In light of this critique, I conclude by gesturing toward a possible alternative—an Organic Paradigm—that might conceivably serve as a superior foundation for American urban policy in the twenty-first century.

Equity is a crucial goal of American urban policy. The means by which it is pursued via the liberal approach to urban policy—augmented redistribution—is problematic, however. What is needed, therefore, is an alternative means to advance equity. Broadening ownership (of productive assets) can be the basis of such an alternative. I discuss how the liberal approach to American urban policy can be transcended by supplanting its Redistributive Paradigm with an Ownership Paradigm.

The back cover of Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom'sJustice and the American Metropolisconcisely lays out a central challenge of contemporary politics: "Today's American cities and suburbs are the sites of 'thick injustice'—unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change." The fact that the topic of "urban politics" is not a major theme of political science scholarship both reflects and exacerbates this challenge. And so we have decided to invite a diverse group of social scientists to discuss the book in light of the very big question that it poses: How do American cities look when assessed in terms of their "justice" (or "injustice"), and how might they look if they were assessed in these terms more seriously? In considering this question, discussants have also been asked to consider a related question: How does Americanpolitical sciencelook when assessed in terms of the extent to which it takes the question of urban justice and injustice seriously?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor