Exceptional Proff 530f

Reassessing “City Limits” in Urban Public Policy

Aaron Deslatte

Urban public policy continues to explore the problems of urban growth and decline in a

multidisciplinary fashion, focusing multiple theoretical lenses on questions of governance and division

of authority as well as the practical applications for areas of policy specialization. This article reviews

recent articles on income, housing, and racial/ethnic stratification, which share a common link of

mobility-based prescriptions. It also reviews the role sustainability, equity, and cultural norms play in

scholarship. The field is moving in a direction that integrates classical rational choice and sociological

explanations for policies addressing sustainability and equity, the role of cultural identity in urban

renewal efforts, and long-standing problems of citizen participation in government decision making.

KEY WORDS: urban public policy, urban politics, sustainability, regime theory, pluralism, gender issues, equity

Introduction

Urban affairs scholars have been battling for relevance on the periphery of the

social sciences for most of the field’s existence. This article reviews the recent pro-

gress of urban public policy researchers in turning the criticism of “balkanization” of

research specialization into prescriptive applications for governance. It also examines

theoretical advancements in exploring the lifespan of cities, or what Bowen and

others call “the changing realities of evolving human settlements” (Bowen, Dunn, &

KasDan, 2010). The aim is to assess progress toward developing both policy recom-

mendations and general theory for the patterns of growth and decline within cities.

The review covers research published during the previous 5 years (2010–14),

although some seminal work predates that timeframe. Four interrelated themes

emerge from the literature: empirical analysis of the philosophy of mobility in deliv-

ering urban goods and services to disparate community groups, increased focus on

sustainability and equity, the influence of cultural identity on urban renewal efforts,

and problems associated with garnering citizen participation in government decision

making and community support for policy goals. The next section outlines theoreti-

cal criticisms and advancements within the field along with research into policy pre-

scriptions of mobility. The second section details future directions for the field of

urban studies.

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0190-292X VC 2015 Policy Studies Organization

Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.

The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 43, No. S1, 2015

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Cities in Gridlock

The Border Wars of Urban Studies

Do city limits still matter for the study of public policy? Cities still charge taxes

and pave over potholes. Local governments remain visible in the daily experiences

of the citizenry. Yet, central cities were long ago classified as a vestige of the urban

system, as the ills of racial/ethnic stratification, job flight to edge cities, exclusionary

housing patterns, and income inequality metastasized into regional problems. Extant

research on urban disinvestment and public participation demonstrate the scope of

the problems. Elite civic participation is declining as community ties to center cities

strain (Hanson, Wolman, Connolly, Pearson, & McManmon, 2010), and modes of cit-

izen participation often fail to overcome the complex challenges of daily urban life

(Carr & Tavares, 2014). At the same time, the field of urban studies has a history of

difficulty maintaining more than peripheral attention within the social sciences.

“Mainstream” political scientists began to abandon the field in 1980s. Urbanists who

stayed became devotees to rival “schools” clinging to particular urban forms. Mem-

bers of the “Los Angeles School” of urban studies argued the dominant form of

human settlement was an ungovernable, gated-off, calcified pocketing of wealthy,

and poor communities, an “antidemocratic residential apartheid” (Dear & Dahmann,

2011). Meanwhile, followers of the “Chicago” and “New York” schools focused on

the concentric circles and political eccentricities of their own metropolitan regions,

while urban scholars sandwiched in all places in-between were seemingly relegated

to specialized border skirmishes over the “contested terrain” of urban studies (Judd,

2011). Cities have remained a focus of fascination for scholars, yet urban outcomes

appeared mired in mystery. Urban decline has motivated policy entrepreneurs and

researchers alike to prescribe mobility as a remedy to educational failures, income,

and racial stratification and blight. As globalization of production, manufacturing,

distribution, and employment coupled with transportation, technology, and housing

changes have all fueled regional migration (Moos & Skaburskis, 2010), some argue

the city limits have become an outdated concept, surpassed by an idealized global

metropolis in the practice and study of urban service delivery (Martinez-Fernandez,

Audirac, Fol, & Cunningham-Sabot, 2012).

Conversely, does urban public policy research matter much to cities? It has been

33 years since Paul Peterson (1981) famously lamented that urban studies had

retreated from asking big questions relevant to democracy, into a policy-specific

“multiplicity of feudal barons” left to “till fields of little concern to the larger world.”

Scholars later lamented that urbanists have become “end time prophets” (Judd,

2005) and because the field had failed to advance beyond Clarence Stone’s “Regime

Theory,” urban scholars were trapped in a “black hole” where “[n]o ideas escape the

event horizon surrounding urban politics; furthermore, ideas from outside rarely

penetrate the subfield’s borders” (Sapotichne, Jones, & Wolfe, 2007). Noting that the

orthodox pluralism of Dahl (1961) has receded and been supplanted by economic

explanations of urban political decision making (Peterson, 1981), regime theoretic

views of capturing governing capacity (Stone, 1993), and polycentric regulation of

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S57

common-pool resources (Ostrom, 1990), they argue for more attention to forming

consensus on broader questions and theories applicable to mainstream political sci-

ence. In the years since, urban researchers have done a fair amount of introspection

on the lost status. Orr and Johnson (2008) argue the decline in interest is attributable

to the flight of urbanists to other research areas, a decline in funding for federal

urban programs and policy research under the Reagan Administration, and the

“social danger” of reinforcing stereotypes through research on racial inequalities and

prejudice.

But it seems the city has not fallen. More than half the world’s population lives

within cities. Urban land cover is projected to triple by 2050 (Angel, Parent, Civco,

Blei, & Potere, 2011). The rapid urbanization of the planet presents a multitude of

ecological and societal dilemmas over issues such as housing, transportation, energy

use, pollution emissions, and income inequality. On many fronts, researchers over

the last 5 years have made inroads in re-energizing research agendas focused on

problems of inequalities between groups which are context-rich and externally valid.

These emerging trends focus theoretically on blending the economic and social

explanations for policy output, in the context of the reconceptualization of urban

revitalization, sustainable development, and social equity. While researchers are still

interested in democratic questions about the amalgamation of power and who holds

it, researchers are incrementally building and testing theories of urban policy proc-

esses through the field’s unique multidisciplinary lens. Perhaps for lack of paradig-

matic consensus, the broader arena of urban studies—a multidisciplinary field

incorporating geography, economics, urban planning, public administration, political

science, and sociology—has continued in recent years to buttress itself as a problem-

oriented field organized around “urban settlement systems” and the political, eco-

nomic, and regulatory social processes influencing them (Bowen et al., 2010).

Decayed Urban Cores and Mobility as Prescription

Since the federal government began de-emphasizing urban policy interventions

in 1980s, the field has come under greater influence from “a liberal philosophy of

mobility,” which holds that increasing mobility could be a panacea for addressing

urban problems of poverty, unemployment, housing, education, and racial imbal-

ance (Bickers, Salucci, & Stein 2006; Imbroscio, 2011). This view focuses on the per-

ceived failures of local governments to address the multitudes of service demands

from constituents. It is motivated by an expanded public choice envisioning of the

Tiebout model which expects that policies encouraging competition between local

governments for public goods will lead to their more efficient and effective allocation

(Howell-Moroney, 2008). Beyond individual benefits, an emerging research agenda

focused on “smart decline” is challenging the idea that population decreases are

always negative for cities themselves. Driven by the Great Recession, some urbanists

have coined the term “shrinkage” to describe policy adaptations to “right size”

service delivery in cities losing population (Oswalt & Rienients, 2006). For instance,

Hollander (2011) finds through an exploratory analysis some evidence that resident

S58 Policy Studies Journal, 43:S1

perceptions of quality vary widely among cities shedding population, but that per-

ceptions of high quality are not the sole purview of growing urban areas.

Educational Choice. Research in recent years has focused on the drivers of social frag-

mentation and NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard), and relationships between popu-

lation sorting and innovations in the delivery of services, most notably education.

School voucher programs have continued to proliferate across the country utilizing

mobility to engender incentives for public schools to make learning gains or risk los-

ing funding, although it remains an open question as to whether they affect degrees

of socioeconomic and racial stratification within communities. Utilizing Monte Carlo

simulations and data from Colorado schools, Carlson (2014) finds evidence that the

state’s interdistrict school choice program slightly increases socioeconomic stratifica-

tion but has the opposite effect on racial stratification. The results suggest differences

between the participants themselves, rather than heterogeneity of options for schools

they can choose, explain more of the educational stratification. The simulation trials

suggest stratification may be more related to initial conditions of income, racial, and

education segregation within communities, but that policy design matters: choice

programs targeting lower-performing students, or an equal proportion of low- and

high-performing students, may reduce stratification witnessed in Colorado’s school

system. The majority of the scholarship devoted to educational mobility policies

have utilized the student as their level of analysis, while a smaller subset look at the

impacts on the public school systems. At the same time, an analysis of policy feed-

back by Fleming (2014) suggests that parents in the Milwaukee school system whose

children receive school vouchers are more aware of government activities, more

politically active, yet less supportive of public schools. While not conclusive, some

progress has been made in recent years to help incrementally demystify urban edu-

cation policies at the center of discourse over the future of the urban poor. In future

years, educational segregation should continue to be a focus of work, similar to the

effort by McVeigh Beyerlein, Vann, and Trivedi (2014), to study linkages between

education levels, segregation, and the prevelance of Tea Party organizations in U.S.

counties. Their work found higher education levels and educational segregation

were positively associated with the number of Tea Party organizations active within

communities.

Racial/Ethnic Stratification. Racial and ethnic divides remain a strain on service delivery

in modern American cities. Methods for remediating racial inequalities in income,

housing, and education have been animated by the notion of mobility. U.S. metro-

politan areas are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse and integrated. Even

though whites continue to live predominately in racially homogenous neighbor-

hoods, they have experienced higher rates of diversification in recent decades (Wag-

miller, 2013).

Yet scholarship from multiple perspectives has advanced our understanding of

the dynamics of stratification in urban neighborhoods, and how federal, regional,

and local policies may ameliorate these conditions. In particular, work at the neigh-

borhood level examining the multilevel effects of economic and demographic condi-

tions hold some potential for more precisely depicting the mechanisms contributing

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S59

to stratification. Jun (2013), for instance, finds municipal-level factors such as racial/

ethnic homogeneity in mid-sized cities are positively associated with better neighbor-

hood economic conditions, although the causal implications of the findings are just

as disturbing as they are unclear.

Anderson and Sternberg (2013) analyze the racial contours of redevelopment

policies in Chicago, and find “urban redevelopment governances,” or collections of

city officials, developers, and financial institutions, respond differently to neighbor-

hoods based on their heterogeneous and interactive “racial economies.” Comparing

predominantly African-American and Mexican/Latino neighborhoods in Chicago

targeted for redevelopment, the authors investigate how different racial conceptuali-

zations between the neighborhoods influence their development trajectories. The

idea behind racial economies is that the actors and institutions involved in redistrib-

uting benefits in a political economy are shaped by racial representations, but also

interactively change these perceptions. In both neighborhoods, the authors find the

redevelopment interests sensitive to the unique “traditions” of idealized Mexican

and African-American heritages which influence development patterns.

Racial and ethnic identification have also been shown to play a role in assess-

ments of the economic future of cities experiencing ethnic turnover in their mayor-

alty (Filindra & Orr, 2013). Research into the “strength in numbers” thinking about

racial politics has also grown more nuanced. For example, Rocha and Matsubayashi

(2013) find evidence that in Latino communities, the relative presence of Latino non-

citizens in negatively associated with equitable policy outcomes, while the number

of Latino citizens is positive correlated. In an institutional context, this negative rela-

tionship between noncitizens and policy outcomes for all Latinos is mediated by the

presence of Latino representatives and citizens.

Housing Policies. Efforts to combat urban poverty have for decades promoted home-

ownership as a method for wealth accumulation among the urban poor. Policy pre-

scriptions have often resulted in incentives to move inner-city families into more

homogenous suburban neighborhoods as well as redeveloping poverty-laden public

housing into mixed-income units. In a special issue of the Journal of Urban Affairs on

the present and future directions of urban research, editor Laura Reese conducts a

keyword search of article submissions to the journal and finds housing and neigh-

borhood inequality to be among the most frequent over the prior 4 years (Reese,

2014). Clearly, urban migration is driving research questions into quality-of-life and

the social equity implications of mobility. Yet, the evidence is mixed as to whether

such policies have been successful.

Mobility plays a role in the organizing logic of programs like Moving to Oppor-

tunity for Fair Housing Demonstration, a federal program in the 1990s intended to

help extremely poor families with children escape dangerous living environments.

The program targeted mostly African-American and Latino families living in the

nation’s worst neighborhoods, assisting them in relocating to safer locales with

access to better schools. While the program produced no evident reduction in adoles-

cent mental health and delinquency problems (drug use, smoking, and violent and

property crimes) among boys, it showed strong improvements with adolescent girls.

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While the findings have been controversial, Popkin, Leventhal, and Weismann

(2010) argue the noticeable improvement in outcomes for girls could be attributable

to reduction in the “female fear” of sexual harassment, coercion, and rape.

Racial and ethnic sorting has long been understood to play a clear but nonlinear

role in the deterioration of central cities, evidenced by deteriorating urban housing

stocks and rising vacancy levels in many cities. Black and minority populations ini-

tially stepped in to fill vacancies as populations migrated to the suburbs, but were

unable to completely fill the gap from out-migration. Older urban centers with dis-

proportionate population and job losses suffer from unique vacancy and abandoned

“zombie” property mixes that stymie neighborhood rejuvenation (Silverman, Yin, &

Patterson, 2013).

Research on urban homeownership policies has focused on two rationales: that

they foster distributive justice for low-income minority communities, and that they

produce positive externalities such as Putnam’s (1995) concept of social capital.

Social capital is an umbrella term for the community cohesion from shared relation-

ships and social networks built on trust and reciprocity. Such studies have often

found mixed housing efforts have failed to develop social networks (Curley, 2010).

Some housing policies subsidize lower-income minority migration to higher-quality

housing in the suburbs, although recent research suggests overemphasis on asset

accumulation through property ownership can lock in inequalities among racial and

ethnic underrepresented groups when home values fail to appreciate more at the

same rate as in predominately white neighborhoods (Anacker, 2010). However,

homeownership efforts have also been shown to improve the caliber of post-move

neighborhoods encountered by homeownership program beneficiaries, suggesting

the programs produce some selective benefits for participants even if they do not by

themselves level the social playing field for underrepresented groups (Santiago et al.,

2010).

Conversely, Allen (2013) finds evidence that involuntary mobility following

home foreclosures has a disruptive effect on households with children in public

schools in Minneapolis, MN. Allen’s study found those households staying within

the public school district were more likely to move to areas with higher poverty and

segregation postforeclosure. However, the study’s inability to control for many

potential confounding factors such as household size, employment status, and hous-

ing vacancy rates makes it impossible to draw conclusions about the broader policy

prescription of homeownership for solving urban inequalities, let alone the effective-

ness of policy interventions such as adjustable-rate mortgages and relaxed consumer

credit score requirements for loans.

Another study, by Fraser, Burns, Bazuin, and Oakley (2013), of the federal House

Opportunities for People Everywhere Program (HOPEVI) found that efforts at

inducing replacing public housing with mixed-income units to induce socioeconomic

mixing can produce marginalization of public housing residents by their higher

income neighbors. The positive effects advocates of mixed-income housing

espouse—social networking that can lead to better jobs and increased wealth—may

remain more illusory than expected. Analysis in this area finds residents in such

HOPEVI neighborhoods are still more likely to associate with those in which they

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S61

have commonalities (Chaskin & Joseph, 2010, 2011; Kleit & Carnegie, 2011). Another

research effort studying the experiences of residents of Toronto’s first mixed-income

redevelopment project suggests that problems still persist, particularly power imbal-

ances between low- and middle-income neighbors, as well as conflict over defining

public space, and modes of surveillance and exclusion (August, 2014).

Transportation. Research into the hollowing out of cities also continues to develop

along spatial and urban design dimensions. Cities most impacted by loss of popula-

tion density and white flight—particularly Detroit—have drawn more academic

attention. In one study of six neighborhoods within Metro Detroit—four more afflu-

ent and two lower income inner-city neighborhoods—Vojnovic et al. (2014), capture

the relationships among the decline of neighborhood; modes of travel; and access to

amenities such as grocery stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. The research identi-

fies predictable patterns between neighborhoods with greater population density,

mixed land-use, and connectivity, with shorter distances to amenities and higher

travel frequencies (Vojnovic et al., 2014). Urban disinvestment in Detroit is particu-

larly acute in access to grocery outlets, and Detroit’s lack of public transit options

plays a role in limiting the ease of access of lower income neighborhoods to cultural

amenities.

The failure of Metro Detroit to collectively resolve its regional transportation

problems in the 1960s has given rise to a critique of regionalism which holds that

state and federal grants may not be a sufficient condition to foster successful regional

governance. Nelles (2013) chronicles the 40-year failure of the Detroit metro area to

develop a regional transportation system. Despite numerous pledges of funding for

metropolitan public transit, the federal government has had to renege in the face of

the inability of Detroit city and suburban officials to forge a workable regional plan.

Nelles argues collaboration between local governments in order to draw federal

funding was insufficient to produce success. Following on the work of Weir, Ronger-

ude, and Ansell (2009), Nelles concludes stronger “horizontal” and “vertical” gover-

nance capacity is required for Detroit to overcome its past failures, and points to

indicators such as federal mentorship and a more activist civic class offering to pay

local matching funds as potential factors which could change the city’s mass transit

course.

While this bundle of “classic” urban problems revolving around location and

mobility remain a locus of attention for urban scholars, the failure of federal policies

to address national and global problems has widened the spectrum of activities in

which localities may engage. This is posing new avenues for research and rekindling

interesting in urban studies.

Developments in Institutional Analysis of Urban Affairs

Although the federal government’s urban interventionist era may have ended,

the age of government gridlock at the national level has not. Responsibilities for myr-

iad functions have devolved to local governments due to the failure of national poli-

cies. As local and state governments have filled this void, urban research has been

S62 Policy Studies Journal, 43:S1

invigorated. For multiple reasons captured by the Bowen et al. (2010) content analy-

sis, the urban studies research agenda has become more varied in methodologies

and policy reach due to the specific interests of the subfields of its scholars. This epis-

temological retrenchment coincides with greater recognition of the multigovernment

and multisector reforms in urban service delivery (Brown, Potoski, & Van Slyke,

2010) and the challenges to traditional public choice and regime theory explanations

for how institutional actors coordinate to supply public goods (Frasure & Jones-

Correa, 2010).

An example of the increased attention paid to the evolution in local governmen-

tal service delivery is the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework (Feiock,

2013). ICA focuses on the overlapping nature of governmental units and why they

may choose to collaborate to provide some public goods and not others. It borrows

from the collective action to frame the choice to collaborate by local actors in the face

of fragmentation and externalities. The framework provides a typology for matching

the “scale and coerciveness” of intervention with the shape of the policy problems,

while accounting for the ICA dilemmas of “larger-than-local” problems for frag-

mented jurisdictions as well as overlapping or redundant hierarchies focused on the

same problems. In one empirical treatment of the framework, Gerber, Henry, and

Lubell (2013) find evidence that California localities are more likely to collaborate in

regional planning when their constituents share similar political preferences, and

thus one way for overcoming such ICA problems may hinge on “political

homophily.”

Classic rational assumptions have also been challenged by other institutional

approaches. In a study of how localities deal with NIMBY problems associated

with day laborers, Frasure and Jones-Correa (2010) argue that the partnerships

developed between elected officials, bureaucrats, and nonprofits to confront

immigrant newcomers overcomes traditional rational-choice and regime coalition

expectations for decision making. This “logic of institutional interdependency”

challenges traditional rational assumptions that governmental actors will pursue

unitary economic development and growth policies. They argue these varied

actors in some contexts band together to provide redistributive policies benefiting

the underprivileged when costs are divided and credit-claiming opportunities

shared.

Scholars in this sense are focusing more attention to the values and principles

of policymakers, drawing attention to a wider range of social justice, ethical, and

moral concerns articulated by decision makers. Schumaker and Kelly (2013) find

evidence that city council members establish “floors” for welfare spending and

seek to maintain such funding levels even in periods of economic stress, seem-

ingly at odds with the rational-economic arguments about policymaker behavior

in cities.

Social Network Analysis in the City. One methodological advance in recent years is the

analysis of network structures. Network analysis is rooted in sociological institution-

alism, and is finding wider application in urban governance situations. One way net-

work analysis has been employed in urban studies is to differentiate between policy

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S63

networks in which actors sharing norms and beliefs attempt to influence policy

design, and the study of implementation networks made up of organizations deliver-

ing public services.

Network analysis also has the potential application for the rational choice under-

pinnings of classic regime theory. Regime theory has a rich tradition exploring rela-

tionships between individuals, and the division of labor between governmental and

private sectors which over time allows the development governing capacity (Stone,

1993). Network-based research is the study of structure of relationships, and holds

promise for the illumination of patterns of urban decision-making processes (Robins,

Lewis, & Wang, 2012). For instance, Henry (2011) tests whether ideological similarity

or resource dependencies and power relations better explain collaboration between

individuals in California transportation and land use planning regions. Henry finds

stronger evidence that ideological similarity explains collaboration, although

resource dependencies may also exist within those networks. Page (2013) advances a

theoretical differentiation between rational choice and sociological institutionalism

explanations for governance with a study of Seattle’s Light Rail system. Within the

context of a mass transit project, he examines whether public choice and principal-

agent theories—which assume actors have divergent interests and information

bases—are a better fit for explaining major project developments than the sociologi-

cal institutions stream, which emphasizes interactions based on shared beliefs and

norms. Page’s process tracing via interviews, public records, and media accounts

suggests the theoretical perspectives work better in tandem to explain rational and

social variables in policy design and implementation. Each theoretical tradition

explained some, but not all, of the major turning points in the project development,

he noted.

Reconstructing Pluralism. Whether through areas of nonprofit implementation or the

advocacy role single-issue agents, the Peterson notion of “groupless” policymaking

in local governments has come under broader assault by a wide range of research

endeavors examining the role of group-based organizations in city politics, particu-

larly in areas of environmental sustainability and development (Berry & Portney,

2013; Connolly, Svendsen, Fisher, & Campbell, 2013; Fisher, Campbell, & Svendsen,

2012).

How urban policymakers define their clientele is also shifting, concentrated

around distinct and dispersed racial or ethnic enclaves, neighborhood associations,

community organizations, and employment hubs that cross municipal jurisdictions.

There are more decision-points, potential political vetoes, opportunities for agency,

and institutional friction in policy outputs thanks to efforts at engaging citizens in

decision making and the “flattening” of hierarchical governmental agencies through

outsourcing backroom functions and front-line services and competition. Malatesta

and Smith (2011) test the extent to which competition in cable franchise agreements

with local governments lead to more concessions in contract terms in New Jersey fol-

lowing a state-level policy change, or exogenous shock. They find evidence that the

perception of increased market competition for cable services in influenced by state-

level policy (Malatesta & Smith, 2011).

S64 Policy Studies Journal, 43:S1

Scholars have continued to coalesce around alternative methods for service deliv-

ery that cross municipal borders in the face of urban “shrinkage” where populations

are increasingly sorted by race, ethnicity, income, employment, and education. They

argue development and growth, while still central motivations for actors within

cities, are no longer a singular “regime” because cities are also directing more focus

to the classical externalities of energy waste and pollution. Pluralism can be reconsti-

tuted by emphasizing the greater role that “diverse ethical and political principles in

community politics” play rather than an oversimplistic treatment of group power

which may be less reflective of the modern metropolis. In many instances, these moti-

vations of policymakers may be considered “groupless issues” where classic pluralis-

tic explanations of “who gets what” have relatively less leverage (Schumaker, 2013).

As the focus on intergovernmental collaboration, networks, and regionalism has

grown in importance to researchers and practitioners (Feiock, 2007), urban policy

research has increasingly become dichotomized according to the problems faced by

rising and falling cities. One common denominator is an increased attention to sus-

tainability initiatives—how well or poorly declining cities utilize new technologies to

redevelop deteriorated areas, foster community buy-in, rejuvenate their tax bases,

and attract new residents, along with whether burgeoning metropolitan areas are

compromising their economic growth to confront the environmental and ecological

impacts (Bulkeley & Kern, 2006; Kousky & Schneider, 2003).

New Directions for Urban Public Policy

Sustainability and Equity in Urban Studies

Sustainable urban development has come to occupy a bridging position between

camps of scholars concerned with issues of equity and service delivery, land use and

planning, environmental protection, and economic development (Fiorino, 2010). The

term sustainability is usually defined as a measure of the capacity for society to main-

tain a quality standard of living without degrading the natural systems that support

human settlement (Mazmanian & Kraft, 2009). However, that definition is not with-

out its problems. Some scholars have identified a lack of conceptual clarity behind

the term as city officials pursue “sustainable polices” which may place greater

emphases on questions of urban design, economic development, or social equity

(Zeemering, 2009). Sustainability presents unique contextual challenges for cities, but

also shared dilemmas in meeting the growing demands for water, housing, expanded

and improved transportation infrastructure, education, food supply, and energy. As

such, sustainability is usually conceptualized along three dimensions of social equity,

environmental protection, and economic advancement (Paehlke, 2013). These often-

conflicting aims can lead to policy trade-offs among public officials, businesses, and

environmental groups. The inability to adequately preserve natural spaces and

resources poses classical distributional fairness questions of who gets what, as well as

problems of intergenerational equity as urban infrastructure degrades and green

spaces disappear (Portney, 2013). At the same time, all three dimensions can

also present opportunities for more equitable distribution of public goods, from

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S65

green-jobs incentives to urban infill and “greening” efforts, walkable access to parks

and recreation resources, and reduced pollution and solid waste. Improvement of

manufactured spaces is an economic objective with implications for redevelopment

of blighted neighborhoods. Water quality and supply demands are also a “wicked

problem” drawing collaborative partnerships with nongovernmental agents in order

to address nonpoint sources of pollution which can impact communities dispropor-

tionately across the social spectrum (Morris, Gibson, Leavitt, & Jones, 2014).

Evidence of the Three “E’s” in Sustainability. Research examining social equity has sug-

gested American cities often neglect or ignore this dimension of sustainability in

favor of environmental and economic pursuits. Yet, for the last decade, increased

attention has been paid to social injustices and environmental inequities across

racial/ethnic, income, and temporal dimensions (Vig & Kraft, 2013). Using Interna-

tional City/County Manager Association survey data, Opp and Saunders (2013) con-

duct correlation analysis with indices they develop to capture environmental,

economic development, and equity policies. Their findings suggest local govern-

ments with more diversity, particularly higher Hispanic populations, score higher on

their sustainability index. Cities located in the West also score higher. But, the study

does not directly test hypotheses of why cities engaged in serious climate action are

also accounting for equity and economic considerations, or not.

Efforts such as Philadelphia’s “Greenworks” initiative to lower energy use, cut

greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20 percent, improve air quality, increase walk-

able access to healthy food, and add “greened acres” to manage storm-water are

examples of governance strategies that combine growth needs, equity, and environ-

mental stewardship (Dews & Wu, 2013). Urban sustainability initiatives are being

rapidly developed and deployed globally in the face of population growth, the

expected urban migration of three billion people by 2050 (United Nations Population

Fund, 2011), and the beginning of a new era of resource scarcity leading to greater

collaboration between the governmental, nonprofit, and business sectors (WBCSD,

2014).

Sustainability is also a multilevel governance question with state, federal, and

international institutions, and economic and physical forces at work. Some attention

has been paid to differences in incentives for regulatory, voluntary, and collaborative

approaches to land conservation (Tang & Tang, 2014) as well as decentralized and

collaborative service-delivery mechanisms (Feiock, 2013; Lubell, Feiock, & Ramirez

de la Cruz, 2009). But with cities as the primary focal point of climate-change poli-

cies, scholars are laboring to understand basic processes and how they relate to envi-

ronmental outcomes (Ramirez de la Cruz, 2009). Here, there is an emerging

consensus that sustainability policy tools such as energy efficiency measures, com-

pact development incentives, and greenhouse gas reduction inventories and

reduction targets are not uniform in their social and political costs, and communities’

actions are not unitarily constrained by financial needs. Political economy explana-

tions for sustainability policy output are also continuing to develop. Hawkins (2011)

analyzes why Massachusetts municipalities apply to earn incentives through “smart

growth scorecards” identifying the intergovernmental planning tools and policies

S66 Policy Studies Journal, 43:S1

they have adopted. The study finds support for resource dependency arguments

that cities in better financial condition will be less likely to participate in the program,

and those with greater business and neighborhood group presence will adopt fewer

smart-growth policies (Hawkins, 2011).

Still, the politics of growth is dimly understood in terms of business influence

over environmental policy and public officials’ responsiveness to varied community

needs (Feiock, Portney, Bae, & Berry, 2014; Krause, 2011a). The motivators of city

sustainability policy action could tilt anywhere between altruism and economic

opportunism based on the multidimensionality of the types of policy tools consid-

ered “sustainable.” Cities are generally more willing to adopt “win-win” policies

characterized as the “low-hanging fruit” of green governance, unless confronted

with greater hazards such as sea-level rise (Wang, 2013). An analysis by Sara Hughes

(2012) shows that California urban water agencies that join voluntary environmental

programs are no more likely to reduce per capita water use than public utilities

which do not join. Hughes concludes voluntary programs may not be useful for

resource protection without stringent performance measurement and third-party

enforcement. Yet, this often reduces the likelihood of local government commitment

to such programs. And as prior research suggests, these findings are not uniform.

Still, Koski and Lee (2014) find evidence that when local governments increase their

commitments to “green buildings,” private actors are more likely to follow suit. This

so-called “policy by doing” influence is stronger for local government actors than

state or federal actions, and suggests even climate-protection actions deemed

“symbolic” can have positive externalities within a community.

The political, economic, and institutional determinants of local government cli-

mate actions are the subject of tremendous activity even if they remain motivation-

ally enigmatic activities. Sharp, Daley, and Lynch (2013) find that the fiscal stress

positively influences the likelihood of joining climate-change networks such as the

International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. The authors speculate this

may be explained by city manager-run governments’ interest in containing energy

costs (Sharp, Daley, & Lynch, 2013). However, Krause (2011b) finds in a survey of

climate action in Indiana cities that adopting GHG goals through network member-

ship is a poor predictor of actual implementation of GHG-reduction goals. Many of

these studies involve unrepresentative samples of cities from one state. However,

some scholars are attempting to develop an integrated nationwide database of city

sustainability actions which holds the promise of establishing stronger claims of

external validity for local government actions (Feiock, Krause, Hawkins, & Curley,

2014). Last, the extensive sustainability work focused on climate change mitigation is

not complete without mentioning climate adaptation and resiliency, and the volumi-

nous amount of work being engaged in to prepare communities worldwide for the

challenges of climate change expected in coming decades (Schipper, Ayers, Reid,

Huq, & Rahman, 2014). Adaptation will likely become increasingly transparent in

urban research in the coming years as cities begin making larger scale decisions

based on change climates and resource depletion. While the worst of climate-change

adaptation is expected to occur in developing regions, these are also communities

with the least capacity for adaptation. While much of the climate-change adaptation

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S67

work is being conducted outside the realm of urban politics and policy, urban

capacity-building for sustainability has gained some traction in recent years.

Capacity for Sustainability. Little, if any, of the extant sustainability research examines

the effectiveness of policies adopted. Another stream of recent analysis has looked

beyond the basic question of why local governments commit to sustainable policies,

and focused on the extent to which cities are developing the fiscal, political, techni-

cal, and managerial capacity to implement and maintain sustainable practices

(Wang, Hawkins, Lebredo, & Berman, 2012). If sustainability is the capacity to pre-

serve biophysical spaces human civilization depends on without reducing the qual-

ity of life, then identifying and measuring types of organizational capacities to reach

this state of natural equilibrium is a critical stage of scientific advancement. Organi-

zational capacity can range from the technical expertise required to implement and

enforce GHG-reduction targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions. It can include the

managerial capacity to oversee grant awards and apply inclusionary zoning tools or

impact fees to curb sprawl. It also encompasses the political ability to build stake-

holder and citizen support for smart-growth goals. Those “capacity-building” inter-

ests extend beyond the traditional universe of urban political players—the mayors,

business elites, unions, and policy entrepreneurs—to city administrators, community

organizers, neighborhood councils, and virtually every concentric circle of urban

governance. Recent literature has honed in on the gap between what scholars have

long documented in the determinants of urban decay and fiscal stress, and systemic

empirical analyses of such capacity-building.

These research efforts viewed cumulatively raise the possibility that a cogent

research agenda built around sustainable growth and equitable distribution of public

goods could supplant mobility as a new philosophical grounding for urban studies.

Cultural Identity, Toleration, and Urban Revitalization

One sign of the emergence of a more holistic theoretical view of urban systems

is the recent competition among economic, political, and cultural models for explain-

ing policy output. This has produced some encouraging empirical work examining

the role of women in the workforce; religious participation; support for the arts;

degree of inclusion of gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual communities in

decision making; and other cultural contextual variables in studying the policy out-

puts of urban systems (Rosdil, 2010; Scott, 1997; Sharp, 2007). This can be traced to

the arguments of Putnam (1995), Florida (2004), and others emphasizing the influen-

ces of trust, social capital, and diversity in spurring economic growth. Although Flor-

ida’s “creative class” argument has come under attack for lack of empirical support,

some studies have nonetheless found cultural variables influence attitudes and urban

policy output (Deleon & Naff, 2004).

Urban studies have continued to explore problems through the prism of gender

and sexual orientation. Alozie and McNamara (2010) find evidence in a survey of

Phoenix, AZ, residents of a modest gender gap in willingness to pay for public serv-

ices, with women slightly more willing to do so along a spectrum of 28 difference

S68 Policy Studies Journal, 43:S1

services. Rocha and Wrinkle (2011) explore gender and ethnic effects on public policy

through an analysis of the democratic representation of disposed subgroups of tradi-

tionally disadvantaged electoral groups. Specifically, they test whether the presence

of Latina women on Texas school boards is more strongly associated with support

for bilingual education policies. They find that contingent support for bilingual poli-

cies is stronger when the percentage of Latina board members is higher as opposed

to higher percentage of Latino board members, although both subgroups are posi-

tively associated with support for the policies.

Economic development justifications have also been extended to urban policies

such as child care, which also have gender equity and justice benefits (Warner &

Prentice, 2013). Rather than narrowing the policy space of social rights, Warner and

Prentice argue in an analysis of 90 studies on child-care policies that casting of the

programs in terms of beneficial “social infrastructure for economic growth” is an

innovative development that broadens opportunities for gender justice.

Urban leaders are also turning to arts-focused strategies for urban development,

and predictive models for where cities can focus efforts to foster arts-centered rede-

velopment policies have emerged from case studies (Ryberg, Salling, & Soltis, 2013).

These efforts imply that encouraging artist cohabitation in areas with high vacancy

rates could be viable for medium-sized cities often overlooked in the discussion of

arts-friendly metropolitan hubs. Evidence is aired showing how internationally, tools

for promoting urban cultural spaces or “creative industry clusters” are utilized for

both urban growth and governmental revenue generators (Zheng, 2010). Last, Budd,

Lovrich, Pierce, and Chamberlain (2008) find evidence that both “a moralistic cul-

tural heritage and strong social capital” are correlated with cities’ sustainability

efforts, adding cultural dimensions to the previously discussed environmental and

economic development incentives to pursue green policies.

This sampling of scholarship represents the potential for richer research agendas

accounting for a dynamic and complex policy space that empirically captures the

changing landscape of cultural norms and nonconventionalism. One new framework

developed from this shift in thinking is a “typology of spaces” in urban settings and

their relation to the types of tolerances in given cities (Chiodelli & Moroni, 2014).

This adaptation of pluralism recognizes tolerance as not just a phenomenon pro-

duced by social sorting, but a product of the types of interactions between individu-

als within social spaces. In other words, the different degrees of interaction required

by different, more shared public spaces may influence the levels of tolerance. As

such, the subcategories of public and private spaces within urban areas can be a

fruitful way to operationalize the degree to which forced interactions relate to

whether tolerance is morally required out of recognition that people are fundamentally

due respect, or prudentially desirable to reduce conflict and smooth over societal rifts.

In this sense, tolerance can be conceptualized via a spatial dimension.

These studies raise intriguing questions about the potential for diversity and tol-

erance to affect realignments of coalitions for exercising political power. When eco-

nomic conditions change, the presence of more varied and autonomous social

cleavages could mean policymakers are more likely to respond to ideological or life-

style preferences than purely political-economic business pressures (Rosdil, 2010). In

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S69

other words, the deindustrialization of cities means rethinking the classic growth

regimes as policymakers become more responsive to quality-of-life and social issues.

To what extent does postindustrialism in cities which have seen manufacturing

employment sectors decline render older theories of clientelism obsolete? Does it

augment or supplant urban political economy? A key question since the 1990s has

been whether this so-called “New Political Culture,” defined by citizen sensitivity to

women’s and gay rights, environmentalism, abortion, and other issues, is restricted

to urban settings that share higher levels of affluence and education (Clark &

Hoffmann-Martinot, 1998). Or, can the rise of cultural politics generally augment

political-economic explanations for policy decisions in less affluent cities, too? Some

scholars argue the postindustrial trends are leading to the creation of New Political

subcultures generally, although the empirical testing of such hypotheses has been

limited so far. Others go so far as to consider cultural amenities a new form of devel-

opment policy which is replacing the “smokestack chasing” economic-development

strategies of the 1970s (Horrigmo, 2013). Horrigmo’s analysis of Norwegian cities’

cultural spending finds evidence that cultural variables including secularism, unmar-

ried households, and tolerance have more power to explain spending on cultural

amenities such as libraries, cinema, sports infrastructure, and museums, than tradi-

tional political and economic variables. In the U.S. context, Owens (2010) finds evi-

dence in a statewide survey of Georgia that willingness of people to support

regional goals and resource-sharing is influenced by their religious affiliations and

salience of religiosity. Specifically, adherents to more liberal religious traditions, such

as Black Protestants and Catholics, were more supportive of regional goals such as

air, water, and green-space protection. Collectively, these “culture explaining

culture” findings highlight the need for developing more generalized empirical mod-

eling that incorporates cultural influences into political and economic analyses of

urban growth.

“Back to the Basics” in Urban Governance

Urban studies has found a renewed energy and purpose as scholarship has

focused on new service obligations municipalities are confronting. But, the future of

the field may also be one in which a refocused effort is placed on the basic functions

of successful local governance. Elaine Sharp (2014) argues that areas such as public

infrastructure and policing are ripe for a “back to the basics” approach for urban pol-

itics. She makes the case that public infrastructure systems (roads, sewers, bridges,

etc.) remain the vital physical means for delivering public services, they are in sub-

par condition in the United States due to underinvestment, and climate change

impacts on cities may require that they be re-engineered in the future. Sharp contin-

ues that urban policing has been ceded to the topically specialized criminal justice

field, in which political variables of interest to urban politics scholars may be omit-

ted. From an equity perspective, both topics would benefit from renewed data collec-

tion on how infrastructure placement and policing activities relate to communities of

racial minorities.

S70 Policy Studies Journal, 43:S1

One potential future strategy for tackling this research challenge would be to

organize inquiry around the relationship between people and spaces. Scholars are

increasingly curious about how diversity and equity may be related to the often lim-

iting or oppressive physical spaces of cities (Frug, 2014). A framework developed by

Kim, LaGrange, and Willis (2013) takes into account the sociological influences of

“place” and “space” in differentiating the geographical coordinates of neighbor-

hoods from the “people, practices, objects, and representations” which become

“emplaced” within it. The Kim et al. framework combines the sociology of place

with environmental criminology, improving upon the “broken windows theory” of

gang violence and why criminal activities are more likely to remain entrenched in

certain neighborhoods. They argue crime committed closer to the offenders’ place of

residence is more likely to be “expressive” in defense of home turf or perceived ego

challenges, and therefore more violent, than “instrumental” criminal activities aimed

at material gain. These types of innovative theoretical applications have obvious pub-

lic service delivery import for deployment of differential crime prevention strategies,

from public lighting and cameras for discouraging the materially motivated space-

based crime to increased community policing for place-based crimes. But, they may

also provide an avenue for examining why some citizens choose to engage in the

policymaking process and others do not.

Another classic question is the time-honored question of how to engender public

participation in governmental decision making. Community participation has been

long viewed as an important component of overcoming poor urban service delivery

by more effectively communicating “street level” conditions to elected officeholders

and administrators (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993). Civic engagement is also one

of the by-products advocates of “community building” efforts in inner cities have

espoused for decades. Yet, community participation mechanisms have also been

criticized for being theoretically and empirically na€ıve. In a study of three Chicago

mixed-income housing developments, Chaskin and Joseph (2010) argue that arrange-

ments intended to foster resident participation “seem largely to reinforce rather than

break down divisions” between renters and owners, and low- and high-income

neighbors.

Citizen participation organizations, according to critics, represent a “local trap”

due to their propensity to over-represent higher socioeconomic status (SES) classes,

thus affording higher income enclaves more avenues to make their preferences heard

(Purcell, 2006). Jun and Musso (2013) present evidence that contradicts Purcell’s

“local trap” thesis, which expects local participation organizations will advantage

the property interests of middle-class homeowners. By analyzing 4,000 meeting

agenda items from neighborhood councils in Los Angeles, the authors find evidence

that neighborhood councils in both high- and low-income neighborhoods confronted

undesirable land-uses, even though the membership of LA’s neighborhood councils

was considerably wealthier, more educated, and composed of more whites than the

mean resident of Los Angeles. Although the validity of the findings should be

explored in other areas, the insight that disproportionate representation within com-

munity organizations by higher socioeconomic classes may not result in diminished

agenda-setting ability for lower SES groups is an important advancement.

Deslatte: Research in Urban Public Policy S71

Trounstine (2013) finds evidence that cities with low-turnout institutions includ-

ing early voter-registration requirements, different municipal election dates from fed-

eral levels of government, and polling-location ambiguity are associated with higher

proportions of incumbents running and winning re-election. These low-turnout envi-

ronments demonstrate policy outputs that are beneficial to particular community

subgroups.

Access to local government information also has an effect on voter turnout. Filla

and Johnson (2010) study the influence on local news coverage of municipal elections

in municipalities within Los Angeles County and find that restrictions in access to

news coverage are associated with lower voter turnout. Specifically, they use a media

market filter to examine the dearth of local government news coverage in commun-

ities without their own local outlets. Respondents living outside Los Angeles whose

communities have daily newspapers are more likely to vote than those who do not.

Answering the questions of how to engender public interest and engagement in

urban decision making—as an elector, gadfly, community organizer, protestor, or

adviser—will undoubtedly remain a critical yet cumbersome research focus in future

years.

Conclusion

Mobility remains a dominant feature of policies aimed at solving the plights of

urban settlements. Yet, scholarship is moving toward establishing systemic research

interests around the concepts of cultural development as urban revitalization, sus-

tainability, and equity in service provision. Urban research has found new life as

cities have confronted new challenges. It has also returned home to classic questions

of who governs and how well cities handle the basics. These research veins are

increasingly interrelated as metropolitan regions accelerate collaborative efforts to

share services and reduce externalities; steer economic development back toward

urban power centers; and as inner cities blend economic growth objectives with the

growing demand for sustainable development of energy, food, water, and other

resources. While urban studies remain “contested terrain” theoretically, research

continues to coalesce around prescriptive solutions to problems for both growing

and shrinking cities.

Aaron Deslatte received his doctorate from the Askew School of Public Adminis-

tration and Policy at Florida State University. He will begin work as an assistant

professor at Northern Illinois University in Fall 2015.

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