CRD 245: Political Economy of Urban and Regional Development

Winter 2011

Instructor: Nari Rhee

Phone: 510-642-9316 MWF
Email: nari.rhee@gmail.com
Office: 2314 Hart Hall
Office hours: Thursdays 1:30 – 3:30pm

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This is a four unit graduate course that relies heavily on student reading and participation in seminar
discussion. The goal of the seminar is to engage critically with the political economy of urban and
regional development, focusing on key theoretical debates and historical developments as they have
evolved in tandem with each other. Key underlying questions include the following: What are the roles
of state and market in shaping urban form, distributive outcomes within the city or region, and urban
growth and decline? Who governs the city, to what end, using what means? What are the limits of
urban power? And if large-scale forces like capitalism, globalization, and neoliberalism are commonly
understood to act upon cities, in what ways does the city itself mediate these larger processes? Finally,
what agency can local communities exercise to determine their own urban future? Readings are
organized into three inter-related themes:

1) Structure and Agency in Urban Development–beyond the global structure/local agency

binary; structure and voluntarism in capitalist urbanization; and the scope of urban
governance.
2) The New Metropolis—uneven development, contemporary metropolitan urban form, and
global cities; and the role of policy, technological change, and economic restructuring in
these processes.
3) The Neoliberal City—the social, economic, and political transformation of cities as contested
sites of neoliberal restructuring; and alternative pathways.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1. Seminar Participation (50%)

a. A team of two or more students will take responsibility for leading discussion on each
week’s readings. (10 points)
b. All students should engage actively in seminar discussion each week. In order to
facilitate this, students will submit a weekly reading response, no more than two
paragraphs in length (max. 1 page single space), highlighting and critically reflecting on
key arguments. (30 points)
c. During the second half of the term, each student will present a brief progress report on
his or her research paper to the seminar, along with a 2 page research prospectus for
your research paper that outlines the research question, theoretical framework, and a
discussion of your data sources. (10 points)
2. Research Paper (50%), due at the end of the final week of class. It can be on any topic of your
choice as long as you relate it to the questions and theories from the seminar. If you would
prefer an alternate assignment to aid you in completing your Master’s project or dissertation
research prospectus, please email me a proposal for approval by Friday of the second week of
class.

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REQUIRED BOOKS

Unless otherwise indicated, the books below are available at the campus bookstore. ***However,
because students will be divided between Logan & Molotch’s Urban Fortunes and Harvey’s The Urban
Experience, please refrain from purchasing either of those books until after the first class meeting.***

• Hackworth, Jason. 2007. The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in
American Urbanism. NY: The Guilford Press.
• Harvey, David. 1989. The Urban Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Massey, Doreen B. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
• Logan, John and Harvey Molotch. 2007. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. 2nd
Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.

All other required readings will be available in electronic format on the course website.

“Recommended Readings” listed below are suggestions for students who want to pursue a topic a bit
further; they are suggestive, not representative. Most journal articles and some chapter selections will
be available in PDF format on the course website.

COURSE OUTLINE
[Subject to change with advance notice.]

Note: Selections marked with an asterisk (*) are required books. Selected articles from recommended
readings may also be found on the course website.

Week 1: Course Overview & Session Planning

PART I: Structure and Agency Across Geographical Scales

Week 2: Global and Local, Space and Place

• * Massey –pp. 1--24; 50-65; 86-190; 249-272

• Manuel Castells, 2002, “The Space of Flows,” pp. 314-366 in Ida Susser, ed., The Castells Reader
on Cities and Social Theory, Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. [Reprint from Manuel
Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford; Blackwell, 1996, 2nd edition 2000), pp. 407-
459.] Focus on pp. 314-322 & 329-349.
• Michael Peter Smith, 2001, Transnational Urbanism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Ch. 5, “Re-
presenting the Local: Beyond Communitarian Metaphors,” pp. 101-122.
• Erik Swyngedouw, 2004, “Globalisation or ‘Glocalisation’? Networks, Territories and Rescaling,”
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17(1):25-48.

Recommended
Manuel Castells, 1989, The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring,
and the Urban Regional Process, Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Manual Castells, 2000, The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell.
Michael Peter Smith, 2001, Transnational Urbanism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Perspectives, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

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 Peter Marcuse, 2002, “Depoliticizing Globalization: From Neo-Marxism to the Network Society
of Manuel Castells,” in John Eade and Christopher Mele, eds., Understanding the City:
Contemporary and Future Perspectives, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Carla Freeman, 2001, “Is Local: Global as Feminine: Masculine? Rethinking the Gender of
Globalization,” Signs 26(4):1007-1037.

Week 3: Political Economy of Capitalist Urbanization

CHOOSE EITHER
• *Logan & Molotch, entire
OR
• * Harvey, Chapters 1-5, 9. [fewer pages but denser]

Recommended
David Harvey, 1989, The Condition of Postmodernity, London: Basil Blackwell.

Week 4: Urban Governance & Development Politics

• Paul E. Peterson, 2008, “The Interests of the Limited City” pp. 14-25 in Paul Kantor and Dennis
Judd, eds., American Urban Politics in a Global Age: The Reader, 5th edition, New York: Pearson
Longman. (PDF)
• Harvey Molotch, 1976, “The City as a Growth Machine,” American Journal of Sociology 82(2):
309-330. Feel free to skip if you read Logan & Molotch for Week 3.
• Clarence Stone, 2008, “Urban Regimes” pp. 14-42, in Paul Kantor and Dennis Judd, American
Urban Politics in a Global Age: The Reader, 5th edition, New York: Pearson Longman. (PDF)
• Stephanie Pincetl, 1999, “The Politics of Influence: Democracy and the Growth Machine in
Orange County, US,” pp. 195-212 in Andrew E.G. Jonas & David Wilson, eds, The Urban Growth
Machine: Critical Perspectives Two Decades Later, Albany: SUNY Press.
• Joe Painter, 1995, “Regulation Theory, Post-Fordism, and Urban Politics,” pp. 276-295 in David
Judge, Gerry Stoker and Harold Wolman, eds, Theories of Urban Politics, London, Thousand Oaks
& New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
• David L. Imbroscio, 2003, “The Neglect of Economics in Urban Regime Theory,” Journal of Urban
Affairs 25(3): 271–284.
• Neil Brenner, 2009, “Is There a Politics of ‘Urban’ Development? Reflections on the US Case,”
pp. 121-140 in Richardson Dilworth ed., The City in American Political Development, New York:
Routledge.

Recommended
William Domhoff, 2005, “The Shortcomings of Rival Urban Theories.”
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/rival_urban_theories.html.
David L. Imbroscio, 1999, “Structure, Agency, and Democratic Theory,” Polity 32(1):45-66.
John Mollenkopf, 1983, The Contested City, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Clarence Stone, 1989, Regime politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988, Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas.
Barbara Ferman, 1996, Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and
Pittsburgh, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

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Part II: The New Metropolis

Week 5: Postwar Suburbanization and Uneven Development

• Kenneth T. Jackson, 1985, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, New
York & Oxford: Oxford University. Ch. 11, “Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: How
Washington Changed the American Housing Market,” pp. 190-218.
• Robert Beauregard, 2006, When America Became Suburban, Preface & Chapters 1- 3.
• Robert O. Self, 2005, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press. Ch. 3, “Tax Dollar,” pp. 96-131.
• Margaret Pugh-O’Mara, 2006, “Uncovering the City in the Suburb: Cold War Politics, Scientific
Elites, and High Tech Spaces,” pp. 57-79 in Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue eds., New
Suburban History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Recommended
Robert Beauregard, 2003, Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities, New York:
Routledge.
Arnold R. Hirsch, 1998, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
John M. Findlay, 1992, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture after 1940,
Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.
Doreen Massey, 1995, Spatial Divisions of Labor: Social Structures and the Geography of
Production, 2nd Edition, New York: Routledge.
Richard Walker & Robert Lewis, 2001, “Beyond the Crabgrass Frontier: Industry and the Spread
of North American Cities, 1850-1950,” Journal of Historical Geography 17(1):3-19.

Week 6: Global Cities

• *Sassen, entire

• STUDENT RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

Recommended
John Friedmann & Goetz Wolff, 1982, “World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and
Action,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6(3): 309–344.
Janet Abu-Lughod, 1999, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s Global Cities, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
John Mollenkopf & Manual Castells, 1993, Dual City: Restructuring New York, Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications.
Michael Peter Smith, 2001, Transnational Urbanism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Ch. 3: “The
Global Cities Discourse: A Return to the Master Narrative?” pp. 48-71.

Week 7: Los Angeles and Global Cities Debates

• Michael Dear & Steven Flusty, 1998, “Postmodern Urbanism,” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 88(1): 50–72.
• Edward Soja, 1989, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Social Theory, London:
Verso Press. Ch. 9, “It All Comes Together in Los Angeles,” pp. 190-221.

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 • Michael Dear, 2003, “The Los Angeles School of Urbanism: An Intellectual History,” Urban
Geography 24:493–509.
• Mark Gottdiener, 2002, “Urban Analysis as Merchandising: The ‘LA School’ and the
Understanding of Metropolitan Development “ pp. 159 – 180 in John Eade and Christopher
Mele, eds., Understanding the City: Contemporary and Future Perspectives, Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
• Jason Hackworth, 2005, “Emergent Urban Forms or Emergent Post-Modernisms? A comparison
of large U.S. metropolitan areas,” Urban Geography 26:484–519.
• Michael Peter Smith, 2001, Transnational Urbanism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Ch. 4:
“Reimagining Los Angeles from the Ground Up,” pp. 72-98.

• STUDENT RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

Recommended
Edward Soja, 1989, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Social Theory, London:
Verso Press.
Scott, Allen J., and Edward W. Soja (eds.), 1996, The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End
of the Twentieth Century, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Michael Dear (ed.), 2002, From Chicago to LA: Making Sense of Urban Theory, Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications, 2002.
Michael Storper, 2007, The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy, New
York: Guilford Press.
Mike Davis, 1990, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, New York: Verso.
Laura Pulido, 2000, “Rethinking environmental racism: White privilege and urban development in
Southern California,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90:12–40.

Part III: The Neoliberal City

Week 8: Fiscal Crises, Capital Flows, and the State

• *Hackworth, Ch. 1, “The Place, Time, and Process of Neoliberal Urbanism”, pp. 1-14; Part 1:
Governing the Neoliberal City, pp. 15-76.
• Neil Brenner & Nik Theodore, 2002, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing
Neoliberalism,” Antipode 34(3):356-386.
• Ester R. Fuchs, 1996, “The Permanent Urban Fiscal Crisis” pp. 49-73 in Julia Vitullo-Martin, ed.,
Breaking Away: The Future of Cities, New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press.
• Kathe Newman, 2009, “Post-Industrial Widgets: Capital Flows and the Production of the Urban,”
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33(2): 314-331.

• STUDENT RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

Recommended
Nike Theodore & Neil Brenner, 2002, Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North
America and Western Europe, Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell.
Michael Fitch, 1993, The Assassination of New York, New York: Verso.

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Week 9: Redevelopment, New Urbanism, and Gentrification

• *Hackworth, Part 2: The Acceleration of Uneven Development, pp. 77-172.

• Jason Hackworth & Neil Smith, 2000, “The Changing State of Gentrification,” Tijdschrift voor
Economische en Sociale Geografie 92(4):464-477.
• Lynne B. Sagalyn, 2007, “Public/Private Development: Lessons from History, Research, and
Practice,” Journal of the American Planning Association 73(1): 7-22
• Richard Florida, 2008, “The Power of Place: The Creative Class,” in Paul Kantor and Dennis Judd,
eds., American Urban Politics in a Global Age: The Reader, 5th edition, New York: Pearson
Longman.
• Neil Smith, 2002, "New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy,"
Antipode 34(3): 434-457.

• STUDENT RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

Recommended
Sharon Zukin, 1995, The Culture of Cities, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Neil Smith, 1996, New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, London:
Routledge.
John Hannigan, 1998, Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis, Routledge:
London.
Susan Fainstein, 1994, City Builders: Property, Politics, and Planning in London and New York.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hartman, Chester, 2002, City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco, Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Richard Florida, 2002, The Rise of the Creative Class: and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure,
Community and Everyday Life, New York: Basic Books.
Loretta Lees, Tom Slater & Elvin K. Wyly (eds.), 2010, The Gentrification Reader, London & New
York: Routledge.

Week 10: Contesting Neoliberal Urbanism

• *Hackworth, Part 3: Contesting the Neoliberal City, pp. 173-204.

• Kathe Newman & Elvin K. Wyly, 2006, “The Right to Stay Put, Revisited: Gentrification and
Resistance to Displacement in New York City,” Urban Studies 43(1):23-57.
• Mark Purcell, 2003, “Citizenship and the Right to the Global City: Reimagining the Capitalist
World Order,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(3):564-90.
• Margit Mayer, 2007, “Contesting the Neoliberalization of Urban Governance,”pp. 90-115 in
Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck, and Eric Sheppard, eds., Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers,
NY: The Guilford Press.
• Chris Benner, Manuel Pastor & Martha Matsuoka, 2009, This Could Be the Start of Something
Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity are Reshaping Metropolitan America, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press. Ch. 4, “Coming Back Together in Los Angeles,” pp. 107-143.

• STUDENT RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS

Recommended
Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck, and Eric Sheppard, 2007, Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers,
NY: The Guilford Press.

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Don Mitchell, 2003, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, New York
& London: The Guildford Press.
Lowell Turner & Daniel B. Cornfield (eds.), 2009, Labor in the New Urban Battlegrounds, Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press.
Peter Marcuse et. al. (eds.), 2009, Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and
Practice, New York: Routledge.