A Growth Machine’s Plan B: Legitimating Development When the Value-Free Growth Ideology Is under Fire

ABSTRACT:

Growth machine theory portrays the promotion and legitimation of urban development strictly in terms of the value-free growth ideology—the claim that growth benefits everyone, that it is a collective good. Based on an analysis of planning documents, newspapers, interviews, and public meetings in San Diego, California, this research argues that the persuasiveness of the value-free growth ideology is highly variable. Pro-growth elites bolster the ideology with a range of secondary arguments when the costs of growth are rising. The way growth is both supported and criticized by the same people suggests that they have more fluid and contradictory relationships to urban growth than machine theory’s dichotomy of “the machine versus residents” implies. This inconsistency can work to the advantage of pro-growth elites.