Rationalizing tax increment financing in Chicago

ABSTRACT

A central problem in planning is how planners can be both technical experts and political actors sensitive to the moral consequences of planning. Rationality refers to the reasons for choosing a means to achieve an end; a rationality that considers the morality of means and ends is value rationality, and one that does not is instrumental rationality. Through the case of using Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to subsidize corporate headquarters relocation in Chicago, I follow City follows planners’ struggle with TIF policy and their engagement with instrumental and value rationality within a state that exercised an entrepreneurial planning strategy. This position meant that planners were constrained from acting value-rationally to consider and then take action on questions about the moral content of TIF projects. Nonetheless, planning staff developed an instrumentally-rational planning and policy exercise, which they performed as a way to channel their value-rational concerns about the assumption that every economic development project is an unambiguously valuable goal.

KEYWORDS:

• Entrepreneurial planning
• rationality
• tax increment financing
• Chicago

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Rachel Weber for her helpful critique of an earlier version of this article given at the 2012 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. Lee Polonsky, Juan Rivero and John West each reviewed several versions of this article and provided important feedback and camaraderie. Bob Lake and Andrew Zitcer made extensive comments to earlier drafts, substantially improving the final product. I thank Deb Martin for her incisive editorial assistance which greatly improved the article. I also thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.