ABSTRACT:
Liberalism remains the dominant philosophical perspective underlying the development of urban public policy in the United States. At the heart of Liberal Urban Policy lies a Mobility Paradigm, which is marked by a strong emphasis on facilitating population movement as a means of addressing urban social problems. In this paper, I explicate the nature of this Mobility Paradigm across four key urban policy goals and then develop a critique of it. In its place, I offer one alternative—a Placemaking Paradigm—and discuss its contrasting conceptual attributes and policy implications. The Placemaking Paradigm points toward the nascent development of a Critical Urban Policy, which stands as an insurgent normative and empirical challenge to hitherto liberal dominance.
Notes
5 Interestingly, liberals writing from outside the realm of urban policy also have heralded HOPE VI. For example, CitationSteven Hill’s liberal manifesto, 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy, which seeks to “restore faith in government,” cites the program as an “instructive example of smart government” (2006, p. 169, 179). “The Clinton Administration,”CitationHill (2006, p. 180) lauds, “guided by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros … broke up … concentrated poverty by tearing down the public housing complexes … .”
6 A (partial) list of critics includes CitationGoetz and Chapple (2010a, Citation2010b), CitationWilliams (2003), CitationBennett and Reed (1999), CitationGreenbaum, Hathaway, Rodriguez, Spalding, and Ward (2008), CitationCrump (2002), CitationBennett, Smith, and Wright (2006), CitationManzo, Kleit, and Crouch (2008), CitationCrowley (2009), and CitationSteinberg (2010).
7 See, for example, CitationHartman (1991). As CitationSchwartz (2006, p. 37) summarizes: “ … many suburban land use restrictions inflate the cost of housing.” However, he adds: “although land use regulation can increase the cost of housing, it is not certain that the removal of such regulations would make housing affordable to the lowest income households.”
10 And, while the program itself does not inherently require it, in practice those HOPE VI families exiting public housing to the private rental market (with or without a voucher) “experienced significant rates of residential mobility, with half moving twice in two years” (CitationCrowley, 2009, p. 231). As the title of the Urban Institute report documenting this phenomenon puts it: “Hope VI’d and on the Move” (see CitationComey, 2007).
11 Such a social state, it should be noted, is inherent in the Mobility Paradigm itself, with its calls for solving urban problems by shuffling people through urban space. This residential instability would only be exacerbated by the possible need for multiple moves, but it is not wholly or primarily dependent on such moves.
13 On this point, CitationGoetz (2000), for example, insightfully refers to HOPE VI as “the new slum clearance.”
15 There has been a burst of such scholarship in recent years. See, for example, the policy chapters in CitationDavies and Imbroscio’s (2010) Critical Urban Studies, especially essays by CitationDeFilippis and Fraser (2010), CitationGoetz and Chapple (2010a), and CitationSpinner-Halev (2010). Also see the penetrating work of Greenbaum and her collaborators (e.g., CitationGreenbaum et al., 2008). Perhaps most interesting (and potentially most subversive of the liberal orthodoxy) have been the critical ripostes in three recent and important volumes that otherwise celebrate the ostensible virtues of Liberal Urban Policy. In this regard, see especially CitationPattillo (2009), CitationKelly (2009), CitationCrowley (2009), CitationSmith (2010), and CitationSteinberg (2010).
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