The Dependent City

Abstract

Placed within a larger politico-economic order, city governments are captives of many slowly changing forces that shape and limit community choices. This article seeks to conceptualize some of these dependency relationships and evaluate their historic impact on the politics of urban economic development. The central argument is that the major components of the liberal-democratic political economy have interacted during American history to precipitate three major eras of urban development politics; in each, the prevailing strategies for promoting urban development and the political arena for determining policy has differed. Changing obstacles to popular control of economic development policy have limited the opportunities for community choice and democratic governance.