1,720,975 research outputs found
Decline Industry: The Market Production of Detroit
No full textDeclining cities are active sites of capital accumulation. Spaces of decline mark a shift in accumulation strategies rather than a withdrawal of capital. These practices are extended through the deployment of law and policy that privilege private markets and embed market logics in urban governance. The production of urban decline is deepened and extended in the relationship of capital and the state through law and policy. Fundamental to these activities is a conception of private property as the driving force in creating stability and growth within urban areas. The ideological power invested and manifested in private property has driven many of the policy responses to urban decline over the past two decades. The centering of private property as the foundation of urban growth generates policy approaches that appear incapable of addressing the deepening social inequalities of urban life and the uneven development of cities in North America.
Declining cities are frequent sites of market-based intervention, yet the outcomes of policies that have entrenched and deepened decline are attributed to the absence or withdrawal of capital rather than the active practices of accumulation. The development and deployment of laws and policies that conceptualize property as merely a stabilizing force, obscures the practices of property, and allow destructive forces of speculative and predatory investment to persist and expand.
This work identifies shifting accumulation strategies in spaces of decline. It is a study of activity rather than absence or loss. This allows three interventions in urbanization more broadly and declining cities specifically. First, it integrates declining cities into broader discussions on urbanization and neoliberalization. Second, by exploring declining cities as active sites, the cases both unsettle and expand current understandings of disinvestment, the reach of financialization, and the sites targeted for policy development and transfer. Finally, given the current trajectory of urban austerity, the downloading of crisis to the local level, spaces of decline demonstrate possible trajectories and outcomes as austerity is an already ongoing process in these cities. It also demonstrates how these policies and practice are multi-directional and multi-scalar.Ph
Resource Boom to Revitalization: The Local Economic Planning and Governance Implications of Fracking in Northern Appalachia
Full text linkSmall cities in Appalachia have been battling an ongoing struggle against economic decline for decades, but now some find themselves amidst a new natural resource boom. The technological innovation of hydraulic fracturing drilling, commonly known as ‘fracking’, has revolutionized global energy markets overnight, leaving a gap of understanding about its local implications in the process. Most early research focused on documenting the environmental risks of fracking, but little work has gone into understanding its local economic and planning impacts. Promises of economic growth and blue-collar jobs give hope to this declining region, but resource extraction municipalities often struggle with inadequate fiscal and administrative capacity to deal with the environmental and infrastructure externalities caused by the industry. As municipalities grapple with these challenges, the ‘boom-bust cycle’ may become reflected on their balance sheets, putting their fiscal health at risk. What are the local economic planning and governance implications of the fracking boom in Northern Appalachia?
Additionally, because of the newness of fracking, this specific industry in this specific region offers a rare opportunity to study the impact the introduction of natural resource development impacts local economic resilience. My doctoral dissertation offers a unique theoretical contribution, as tension in literature exists on whether contemporary extractions industries positively or negatively impact diversification. It also offers a practical contribution, considering that little research exists on job estimates and governance issues that arise with fracking. Each chapter of this dissertation, intended to be independent academic works with their own literature reviews and methods, contributes to our understanding through: (Chapter 1) introducing the geography of the region, (Chapter 2) overviewing the economic history of Northern Appalachia; (Chapter 3) testing changes in economic diversity indices; (Chapter 4) investigating migration, housing, and employment patterns; and (Chapter 5) surveying local planners about regulatory responses. Finally, my dissertation concludes with a review of findings and a brief set of policy recommendations. The goal of this research is to provide information that helps small cities best plan and manage the fracking boom; finding that the industry is not dramatically altering patterns of long-term decline in Appalachia.Ph.D
“If We’re Going to do Anything, We Have to Do It Ourselves” - The Case for Drug User Self-Management
Full text linkThis research project looks at the (self-)management strategies of drug users amidst the hostile socio-political environment manifested through 100 years of prohibition. This thesis focuses on Vancouver, B.C., Toronto, Ontario and various Canadian regions, analysing how current measures of policy enacted to address the worsening drug poisoning crisis have not been sufficient considering the crisis' death toll. An examination of strategies of drug user (self-)management is illustrated through a study of different strategies of drug user (self-)management, examining moments of drug user self-management that illustrate that drug users are not an ambivalent, apolitical group, but rather a highly radical, organised and effective political force that has forced drug policy forward for the last 30+ years. Further, this thesis will examine and interrogate literature surrounding limitations to harm reduction implementation, problematization procedures, and the current literature on self-management. This thesis works to legitimise and celebrate the revolutionary work of drug users throughout Canada.M.A
The Financial Production of Bankruptcy: Denaturalizing Fiscal Crisis in the City of Detroit
Full text linkAccounts of urban crisis in the United States focus largely on issues of deindustrialization, depopulation, property abandonment, and racial conflict. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, however, another issue has come to light: the role of financial shocks and volatile debt arrangements in shaping urban outcomes. Through a case study of the City of Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy, this thesis questions the seeming inevitability of fiscal crises in declining cities. Instead, it analyzes the ways in which fiscal crises can be understood as products of risky financial relationships and debt structures. Drawing on archival data, policy analysis, and quantitative financial data, the thesis focuses on the City of Detroit’s use of one risk-laden financial instrument—the interest rate swap—and follows this instrument through the city’s fiscal crisis. In so doing, I map out how this volatile financial instrument shaped both the economic and political dynamics of Detroit’s bankruptcy.M.A
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The Financial Production of Bankruptcy: Denaturalizing Fiscal Crisis in the City of Detroit
No full textAccounts of urban crisis in the United States focus largely on issues of deindustrialization, depopulation, property abandonment, and racial conflict. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, however, another issue has come to light: the role of financial shocks and volatile debt arrangements in shaping urban outcomes. Through a case study of the City of Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy, this thesis questions the seeming inevitability of fiscal crises in declining cities. Instead, it analyzes the ways in which fiscal crises can be understood as products of risky financial relationships and debt structures. Drawing on archival data, policy analysis, and quantitative financial data, the thesis focuses on the City of Detroit’s use of one risk-laden financial instrument—the interest rate swap—and follows this instrument through the city’s fiscal crisis. In so doing, I map out how this volatile financial instrument shaped both the economic and political dynamics of Detroit’s bankruptcy.M.A
“A Capital Experience:” National Urban Renewal, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance on LeBreton Flats in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
No full textThis thesis investigates both Keynesian and neoliberal urbanism on LeBreton Flats, a mixed working-class district deemed a “blighted” slum unfit for a national capital. By studying the time-delayed embourgeoisement of the Flats, this study considers the production of the modern capital as an “event” with significant “afterlives” – both backwards and forwards. Using a historical and comparative perspective, this thesis engages with the literature on neoliberal urbanism and neoliberal urban governance to show how the NCC has adopted and adapted neoliberal practices and strategies of New Urban Policy (NUP) to postwar modernist planning imperatives.
The initial expropriation of LeBreton Flats in April 1962, and the dislocation of its marginalized, stigmatized, and racialized residents emerged from an ambitious state-led initiative to remodel Ottawa into a centennial showcase. The model urban redevelopment was part of national subject formation anchored in “pedagogies of the nation.” Although the Keynesian dream ultimately faltered, three decades later, a new project to fill the “empty” national space was initiated. The NCC’s updated redevelopment plan promised to re-write the script, this time governed according to the “Golden Path” of urban entrepreneurialism. The present-day state-led redevelopment of LeBreton Flats can be considered simultaneously as part of the imagined community of nation-ness and as a variegated form of neoliberal policy experimentation.
Both federal interventions on LeBreton Flats are part of a longer project of state-led intervention in the National Capital. These backwards and forwards governance timelines exemplify the many ways in which neoliberalism is not a radically new project, and how the enforcement of dispossession is part of an ongoing process of socio-spatial displacement. However, there are important distinctions. In the contemporary neoliberal redevelopment, cultural logic has merged with economic rational. Discourses and images of nature and culture have been mobilized to create a site-specific redevelopment for the expression of the nation. In the synergy of capital investments and cultural meanings, this thesis provides evidence on how nature and national pedagogy are mobilized as part “naturalized” behaviour and practices of urban neoliberalism.Ph
“A Capital Experience:” National Urban Renewal, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance on LeBreton Flats in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
No full textThis thesis investigates both Keynesian and neoliberal urbanism on LeBreton Flats, a mixed working-class district deemed a “blighted” slum unfit for a national capital. By studying the time-delayed embourgeoisement of the Flats, this study considers the production of the modern capital as an “event” with significant “afterlives” – both backwards and forwards. Using a historical and comparative perspective, this thesis engages with the literature on neoliberal urbanism and neoliberal urban governance to show how the NCC has adopted and adapted neoliberal practices and strategies of New Urban Policy (NUP) to postwar modernist planning imperatives.
The initial expropriation of LeBreton Flats in April 1962, and the dislocation of its marginalized, stigmatized, and racialized residents emerged from an ambitious state-led initiative to remodel Ottawa into a centennial showcase. The model urban redevelopment was part of national subject formation anchored in “pedagogies of the nation.” Although the Keynesian dream ultimately faltered, three decades later, a new project to fill the “empty” national space was initiated. The NCC’s updated redevelopment plan promised to re-write the script, this time governed according to the “Golden Path” of urban entrepreneurialism. The present-day state-led redevelopment of LeBreton Flats can be considered simultaneously as part of the imagined community of nation-ness and as a variegated form of neoliberal policy experimentation.
Both federal interventions on LeBreton Flats are part of a longer project of state-led intervention in the National Capital. These backwards and forwards governance timelines exemplify the many ways in which neoliberalism is not a radically new project, and how the enforcement of dispossession is part of an ongoing process of socio-spatial displacement. However, there are important distinctions. In the contemporary neoliberal redevelopment, cultural logic has merged with economic rational. Discourses and images of nature and culture have been mobilized to create a site-specific redevelopment for the expression of the nation. In the synergy of capital investments and cultural meanings, this thesis provides evidence on how nature and national pedagogy are mobilized as part “naturalized” behaviour and practices of urban neoliberalism.Ph
Gentrification and Displacement in U.S. Shrinking Cities: The Role of Planning Policy and Housing Subsidies in Detroit
No full textAs shrinking cities implement regeneration initiatives to recover from years of decline, planners have been struggling with how to promote equitable development. A weak housing market with high vacancy rates does not necessarily mean increased housing affordability, especially for low-income residents. To the contrary, it can mean a precarious housing situation given the decreasing supply of decent housing that is affordable to low-income households. Revitalization efforts to improve the housing stock can create even more housing precarity, as these efforts typically attract wealthier in-movers and result in increased competition for a scarce supply of decent housing. This research shows how the conceptual boundaries between regeneration and gentrification have blurred in Detroit, as there is evidence of direct and indirect displacement. Through a critical examination of the social and housing impacts of regeneration initiatives in the greater downtown, a distinct picture of gentrification emerges and illustrates how the process occurs in a resurgent declining city.
This research employs a mixed-methods approach to explore the impacts of gentrification on the housing affordability landscape in Detroit. I do this by examining the housing impacts of revitalization initiatives from three different perspectives. First, I examine how the affordable housing opportunities of low-income households in the greater downtown have been affected by recent intense reinvestment. Second, I explore displacement effects by using evictions data as a proxy for direct displacement and by conducting in-depth qualitative interviews to explore tenant experiences with indirect displacement in a rapidly gentrifying downtown. Third, I interrogate the role that place-based subsidies and planning policies have played in helping to facilitate gentrification.Ph.D.2021-11-14 00:00:0
- …
