2013: ’Race’ is not a key element in many overall conceptualisations of urban political
processes. To what extent, and in what ways, does this matter?
Which and How urban theories have left out ‘race’
Regime Theory
Cities are governed by informal arrangements consisting of public and private sector elites
- Class, not race is the driving force behind urban politics (Stone, 1989)
- Conflates class and race, assumes working/lower class is homogeneous
Economic growth main policy objective, through mainstream development policies (Imbroscio, 1997)
Private sector elites are the driving force in the formulation and implementation of major development policies and
tend to gain the most from such policies
Working and lower-class urban residents receive meager, if any, benefits from a policy program which places
disproportionate emphasis on larger development projects.
As a method for studying power in cities, urban regime analysis de-emphasizes the open power struggles that are
often the basis for studies of racial politics in cities
Looking only at these more obviously political and contested cases, rather than agreements, coalitions, and the
long-term “flow” of decisions (Stone 1981: 508), obscures how power actually operates.
Nelson, 2000: regime theory fails to reveal ‘hierarchical racial structures and relations that systematically screen
Blacks out of informal bargaining’, resulting in blunted ‘Black incorporation into local coalitions’
Little attention paid to policies directly impacting residential neighbourhoods and role of race
- Focus on biz community shielded attention away from broader whites’ racist beliefs and actions, which
continually shape local politics and development (Kraus, 2004)
As a result, regime theory has not given counter arguments that either liberal public policies (social welfare,
affirmative action), social problems (crime, drugs, single-parent families) or inevitable economic and demographic
trends (deindustrialization, suburbanization) as the causes behind concentration of poverty
Pluralist Theories
Pluralists argued that power diffuse among many people, not centralised in a few
Posited that democracy and transparency dominates and that “the ballot box countervails wealth and social status”
(Stone 2005)
Any mobilised group can gain control, politicians are class neutral
Pluralists operationalized power through open political conflict and attention to “who wins and loses” those
conflicts.
One fundamental divide hinged on pluralists’ insistence that political preferences were developed individually,
where stratificationists thought they were determined hegemonically
- Dahl, 1961: did not view lack of black political movement as major racial exclusion (undermining fundamental
tenets of pluralism)
Does it Matter?
Race Matters! Katznelson: race as deeper fissure in cities than class (cultural reproduction of racism)
Race is still a hierarchical system that orders our daily lives
Not just different races competing for different interests with equal power through the ballot
‘Racialized social systems’ (Bonilla-Silva, 1997) adapt to new societal standards, promoting appearance of steady
progress toward equality
- These systems structure groups’ economic chances — no overt racism is needed to reproduce racist society
Race structures in historical and present decisions about urban renewal and housing, zoning, insurance,
infrastructure
All these have racial boundaries mapped onto them, created and reproduced by historical and present-day
patterns of segregation
- Racial inequality reproduced through smooth functioning of everyday city business
In how power is distributed in political processes: who participates in politics (in voting and in office), whose
interests get represented
No true democracy: strong majority rule system, white privilege, repression, residue
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,Increasing political representation and participation
Alteration in political status of black Americans since Community Action Programme’s inception
Quantity
- Black officeholding increased, 1970s: more than 100 black mayors, representation in local gov
- All industries formally required by law to be equal opportunity employers
- Black communities had better access to school systems, welfare agencies, housing officers that were of higher
quality
- More black representatives in Congress
- No longer symbolic patronage but aggressively putting forth their racial objectives
Higher representation but doesn’t mean wider political influence to promote racial progress
But need legal remedies to reverse years of institutional discrimination + doesn’t mean more representation and
empowerment is good
- Reed, 1999: dynamics that make possible the empowerment of Black regimes = those that produce the
deepening marginalization and dispossession of a substantial segment of the urban Black population
- Browning et al., 1997: rule of blacks merely temporary —> reestablishment of White rule at local level and
reversal of legislative gains
- Cloward and Piven, 1974: black poor lack resources for sustained participation in politics so political mobilisation
not as effective (poor + black)
Increasing representation but still limited power and influence
Black Urban Regimes:
Heavily limited by growth machine orientation of cities, cannot promote alternative approaches
- Constrained by biz pressure and apprenticeship within White institutions to promote pro-growth agenda (Judd,
1986), even though the people they represent least likely to benefit from pro-growth agenda (Reed, 1999)
- Despite redistributionist goals, still facilitated ‘functional transition from industrial —> post industrial or corporate,
city’
- Blacks only hold partial power, Whites still claim the right to make policy
- E.g. paradox of Baltimore: decades of Black governance have resulted in anti-Black police brutality and
downtown-focused luxury development that leaves West Baltimore shuttered and rotting (McClain, 2015)
- Atlanta: Cannot generate alternatives to development, functional forms of city replicated (Stone, 1981) on
election of Jackson
- Business threatened to withdraw from Atlanta when Mayor Jackson tried to advocate for more attention on
black needs
Vertical relationships shed more light on limits of Black urban power: Hochschild, 2008
Holden (1971) identified several realms of institutional power – administrative control, support positions, and state
governance – that were (and are) still controlled by Whites, as are the private institutions driving the growth
machine
Blacks had control over some cities in late 20th century but power that municipalities held retreated
- ‘Ripper’ legislation by state gov by which critical functions are taken away from the city gov (Holden, 1971) with
emergence of urban non-White majorities
Some urban regimes are ruled by the state, less power for municipalities
- Disproportionate use of state intervention in Black cities under Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law, especially
in 7 Michigan cities
- This disenfranchisement has been framed as technical, natural reform to eliminate corruption but are racialized
arrangements
Necessary to render ‘whiteness visible’ to understand perpetuation of urban racial inequality
- Can identify Whites and their interests as physically occupying concrete territory
- Racially exclusive nature of networks and associations permitting Stone’s coalition formation
- Even if Blacks get elected, lack of access to these organisations means they wield only partial control over
governance
- Hartigan, 1999: ‘race functions as a local matter’ and how ‘racial identities are constitutive of place’.
Buffalo’s political changes in 2002:
Blacks most of the time minority on council
City residents supported a referendum that reduced the number of council members to nine by eliminating all four
at-large seats, including council president
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, Racially divisive as 3/4 most recent members were blacks
Black candidates have twice won Democratic mayoral primary but city has never had a black mayor
Many issues have pitted whites against the blacks, neutralising the blacks
In the outcomes of political processes (segregation, poverty and inequality) and how we tackle these outcomes,
perpetuation of segregation and inequality
Geographically concentrated poverty largely because of local and federal public policy choices
Production of poor neighbourhoods leads to stigmatisation of cities to flourish —> reproduces more segregations
as whites move out —> multi-racial coalition building even harder
How race has shaped policies that impact residential neighbourhoods:
Sjoquist, 2000: continued segregation — Atlanta Paradox. Concentrated poverty in black neighbourhoods,
economically booming downtown and suburbs
Lack of access to housing due to discrimination (FHA mortgages, redlining, demolishing), segregation of schools,
withdrawal of provision of services
Much pressure put on business and government, provoking crisis of urban gov in late 60-70s.
- Mass exodus of whites to the suburbs
- Industry also moved operations to low-cost countries
- Gov capped social welfare spending in urban areas + repressive criminal justice policies in black
neighbourhoods
- Suburban whites supported policies aimed at reducing taxes funding inner cities, maximising ability to fund own
neighbourhood schools and social welfare
Black neighbourhoods became de-funded, repressed, politically isolated and demobilised.
Businesses finding labour in cities turn to willing immigrants who are less focused on democratic rights
Chicago:
Ferman, 1996: assumed divestment cause of deterioration of neighbourhoods, minimises extent of discrimination
faced by blacks in housing, employment and education. Makes city history racially neutral by implying structural
economic change hit black neighbourhoods harder than whites
Residential segregation maintained:
Federal government stressed the desirability of maintaining residential segregation when it formulated the
neighborhood composition rule, which held that any public housing development should not alter the racial
composition of the community in which it was located
Authorities used it to segregate blacks in 1930s
Othering
Portrayal of poverty —> war on poverty and related policies:
Most Americans understood that ‘poor meant black’, poverty as a disease that blacks had.
Blacks’ fault, does not look at historical, structural and institutional racism that have yet to be reversed
Social control and territorial stigmatization, justifying redevelopment and gentrification
Culture of poverty provided easy explanations of uneven development, dehumanising Blacks while tax laws, gov
programmes disproportionately benefit Whites (claiming that it is for the interest of all)
- Trickle-down philosophy used to help affluent neighbourhoods/businesses, claims that poor will benefit as well
- Attract them back so that Blacks will benefit too
Anti-growth Coalitions?
Kimelberg, 2011: developers encounter resistance by anti-growth coalitions
- Class and race salient in these
- Whiteness in opposition to growth, because growth will increase racial and economic diversity
- Santa Cruz, California: coalition of socialist-feminists, social-welfare liberals, neighbourhood activists and
environmentalists of privileged racial and class position.
- Want to protect Santa Cruz (already surrounded by racially and economically diverse populations) from
development that might cause invasion
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