The Context of Radical Populism in Us Cities: A Comparative Analysis

ABSTRACT:

During the 1980s, urban scholars detected a tendency in certain US cities, called progressive, to make investment in housing and office space construction socially accountable. This paper compares five progressive cities to three booster cities which continue to promote unlimited growth. It employs cultural analysis to interpret these exceptions to the logic of growth politics. It is argued that the diffusion of higher education, changing gender roles, the replacement of traditional religious faith with secular or non-Western beliefs, the growth of nontraditional household arrangements, and the rising importance of human services employment combine to generate countercultural enclaves in urban areas. These adversarial subcultures reject the dominant culture’s emphasis on growth promotion in favor of more socially responsible policy outcomes. Under certain other conditions, such as a strong, diversified regional economy, culturally innovative cities may successfully implement a progressive policy agenda. By comparison, booster cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix display high levels of cultural traditionalism even in comparison to much smaller urban areas. The paper concludes by discussing this argument’s implications for urban policymaking.