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ABSTRACT
Austerity is a common method by which capitalists and governments discipline cities. Cities, neighbourhood residents, and social movements often resist.
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Notes
1 Urban and Regional Planning in an Age of Austerity (Citation1980), from a formative conference of the Planners Network, examines efforts by U.S. city planners, housing activists, and academics. Goldsmith and Blakely (Citation2010) documents how U.S. austerians target African Americans, Latinos, and single women with children. Goldsmith (Citation2016) explains how austerians target cities for political and economic rewards.
2 Quoted in Goldsmith (Citation2016, 57).
3 Krugman (Citation2012).
4 E.g. Red Vienna’s housing. Hochhäusl (Citation2011). But scholars generally agree that localities cannot redistribute income or wealth, except through direct intervention, such as in the provision of social housing.
5 Krugman (Citation2012).
6 Edsall (Citation2012).
7 Castle (Citation2019). Quotation: Jonathan Portes, King’s College, London.
8 Kuttner (Citation2014).
9 Martin and Gabay (Citation2018) and Martin (Citation2013).
10 Today the federal share of municipal expenses is roughly half. Localities raise very substantial (c. 30%) of their funding locally, about half of that for public schools. For federal, state, and local shares from 1902 to 2013, see Randall, Gault, and Gordon (Citation2016).
11 Racial gaps persist. Goldsmith and Blakely (Citation2010); Glaeser and Vigdor (Citation2012).
12 On the special nature of this period, see Goldsmith and Blakely (Citation1992); Noah (Citation2012); Galbraith (Citation2000); Wilson (Citation2012). Scruggs-Leftwitch (Citation2006).
13 The post-war consensus provided these benefits mainly to working-class whites and more to suburbs than to cities. Urban Renewal destroyed much central-city housing, and deindustrialization took jobs out of cities, while racist policies kept people of color out of suburbs. Frustration with these city failures led to African American uprisings in the late 1960s.
14 Judis (Citation2000); Packer (Citation2011).
15 Sugrue (Citation2012).
16 Freeman (Citation2012). Review by Sugrue (Citation2012).
17 Kuttner (Citation2017), notes an ‘unholy trinity of economic policies’: free trade, reduction of labor-market safeguards, and austerity.
18 See, e.g. Candeias (Citation2019).
19 Calao (Citation2015).
20 Goldsmith (Citation2016, 57).
21 Peck (Citation2012).
22 Harvey (Citation2007).
23 Sugrue (Citation2012). Also Goldsmith and Derian (Citation1979); Glickman (Citation1980).
24 Clinton won 2.9 million more votes, but because most votes are allocated in a winner-take-all pattern, Trump won. More notably, nearly 56% of registered voters did not vote at all, each candidate receiving votes from only slightly more than one-quarter.
25 U.S. Congressional districts have roughly equal numbers of residents.
26 Rodden (Citation2019); also see Starr (Citation2019).
27 Congressional districts elect single members, with first-past-the-post, winner-take-all voting rules. Winners need win only 50+% of the vote, so voting statistics overstate geographic divisions. Maps of red (Republican, conservative) and blue (Democratic, liberal) districts exaggerate even more, because Democrats tend to be elected from small geographically compact, dense cities, and Republicans from expansive, thinly populated areas.
28 Many large spending programs are sacrosanct: Big Agriculture, the Pentagon, Social Security, and Medicare
29 See ‘Cities as Political Targets’. Ch 1 in Goldsmith (Citation2016).
30 Clavel (Citation2010).