Rethinking the Politics of Downtown Development

ABSTRACT:

In the political science literature, downtown redevelopment has long been seen as the project of a region’s economic elites. But in recent years, large corporations, banks, and department stores have in many cases abandoned central business districts, and downtowns are now more likely to be developed as centers of entertainment and culture, or as residential districts. This article posits that changing downtown land uses are accompanied by changes in the downtown influence structure, with nonprofit sector and real estate industry leaders now dominating downtown business organizations.

Notes

1 http://www.greatergreenville.com/development/dt_fun.asp.

2 http://www.downtownstl.org/.

3 In some cities, downtown housing development benefits from an array of producer subsidies, so “market rate” is not an entirely accurate term. Most new downtown housing is not, however, “assisted” housing, with consumer subsidies and restrictions on residents incomes.

4 The extent of the downtown residential “boom” should not be exaggerated—Birch notes that, in the 45 cities she studies, the net gain in downtown population between 1970 and 2000 has totaled 35,000, while during the same period the suburban parts of these metro areas have gained 13 million residents. But these aggregate numbers obscure the significant downtown residential gains in some cities, where entire new residential districts have been established in downtown areas.

5 Of course, these represent “snapshots” of business leadership in each city at two points in time; this method does not reveal the timing of these transformations. This research also cannot shed light on the causes of these changes; for the most part, cities and their downtown leadership have been shaped by national and global factors (deregulation; outsourcing of industrial jobs) well beyond the control of local leadership.

6 From the Greater Baltimore Committee statement of priorities, found on their website (http://www.gbc.org), accessed March 2006.

7 For example, the Allegheny Conference for Community Development, which had spearheaded the redevelopment of Pittsburgh’s “Golden Triangle” through urban renewal programs, is now part of a larger regional alliance with no downtown program focus, while since 1994 a Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership has taken up the task of promoting the downtown.

8 BIDS are not only found in downtowns, but in outlying business areas as well. A 1999 survey found 404 BIDS in 43 states (although some states use other terms for them). Mitchell, 2001; Morçöl & Zimmerman, 2006.

9 Mitchell (2001) also finds many groups reporting involvement in “advocacy,” but here advocacy is meant to describe activities working to link public and private sector actors engaged in downtown, rather than a broader involvement in political affairs.

10 Some of these observations are drawn from interviews with heads and board members of downtown organizations in Philadelphia, Seattle, Charlotte, and Detroit between 1999 and 2002 conducted by the author for an earlier research project. Several of those interviewed specifically talked about the decline of CEO board representation, and the strategies they employ to remain effective despite the diminished prominence of their board representation.

11 There is a professional organization, the International Downtown Association, to which most downtown organizations belong. See Gendron (2006) for more on this organization’s significance.

12 Although, as Healey and Barrett (1990) note, this process is not unproblematic.

13 A few cities, such as New York or London, have such a concentration of very large real estate interests (developers, architects, financiers) that they do, indeed, export real estate services. In cities that are first-order tourism or second home/retirement magnets, real estate could also be seen as an export industry, as the end users of real estate products spend money earned somewhere else. In these cases, real estate is a more dominant economic sector, and prominent real estate capitalists may also have a more central role in political and civic life.

14 There are some interesting histories of the national real estate industry—see Weiss (1987); as well as local case studies that address the importance of real estate lobby groups in the policymaking process—see Gotham (2002)—but these do not really ask how and why individual property owners and developers organize to effect change in the central business district.