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Reigning theories of urban power suggest that in a world dominated by footloose transnational capital, cities have little capacity to effect social change. In City Power, Richard C. Schragger challenges the existing assumptions, arguing that cities can govern, but only if we let them. In the past decade, city leaders across the country have raised the minimum wage, expanded social services, and engaged in social welfare redistribution. These cities have not suffered capital flight. In fact, many are experiencing an economic renaissance. Schragger argues that city policies are not limited by the demands of mobile capital, but instead by constitutional restraints serving the interests of state and federal officials. Maintaining weak cities is a political choice. In this new era of global capital, the power of cities is more relevant to citizen well-being than ever before. A dynamic vision of city politics for our new urban age, City Power reveals how cities can govern despite these constitutional limits - and why we should want them to.
Table des matières
- Introduction: Cities, Capital, and Constitutions
- 1. What is the City?
- Building Blocks of Economic Life
- Byproducts and Products
- The City as a Process
- Conclusion: Mystery and Modesty
- 2. Decentralization and Development
- Competition and Growth
- The Historic Vulnerability of City Status
- What Does Decentralization Do?
- Conclusion: Freeing Cities from a False Constraint
- 3. Vertical Federalism: Making Weak Cities
- Legal Autonomy and Political Influence
- Federalism and City Power
- Technocracy versus Democracy
- Conclusion: "Things Could be Worse. I Could be a Mayor."
- 4. Horizontal Federalism: Encouraging Footloose Capital
- Inter-Municipal Border Controls
- Subsidizing Mobile Capital
- Conclusion: Economic [Dis]Integration
- 5. The City Redistributes I: Policy
- The Limits of City Limits
- Mandating a Living Wage
- Land-Use Unionism
- Regulating Through Contract
- Conclusion: Exercising Urban Power
- 6. The City Redistributes II: Politics
- Municipal Politics Matters
- Immobile Capital
- Translocal Networks
- Economic Localism
- Conclusion: The Re-emergence of the Regulatory City
- 7. Urban Resurgence
- Urban Policy and Urban Resurgence
- Assessing Economic Development Strategies
- Uncertainty and Economic Development
- Conclusion: Back to Basics
- 8. Urban Crisis
- Debt and Discipline
- Of Bailouts and Bankruptcy
- The Politics of Municipal Failure
- Conclusion: Marginal Cities
- Conclusion: Can Cities Govern?
- Notes
- Acknowledgements
- Index
A propos de l'auteur
Richard Schragger is the Perre Bowen Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he has taught for almost fifteen years. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of constitutional law and local government law, federalism, urban policy and the constitutional and economic status of cities.
Résumé
Reigning theories of urban power suggest that in a world dominated by footloose transnational capital, cities have little capacity to effect social change. In City Power, Richard C. Schragger challenges the existing assumptions, arguing that cities can govern, but only if we let them. In the past decade, city leaders across the country have raised the minimum wage, expanded social services, and engaged in social welfare redistribution. These cities have not suffered capital flight. In fact, many are experiencing an economic renaissance. Schragger argues that city policies are not limited by the demands of mobile capital, but instead by constitutional restraints serving the interests of state and federal officials. Maintaining weak cities is a political choice. In this new era of global capital, the power of cities is more relevant to citizen well-being than ever before. A dynamic vision of city politics for our new urban age, City Power reveals how cities can govern despite these constitutional limits - and why we should want them to.
Texte suppl.
Cities are coming back and experimenting with new policies to improve the quality of life and reduce economic inequality. A tour de force of urban scholarship, City Power is the best single source on the possibilities and pitfalls of emerging local progressive movements.
