The 'growth machine' reconsidered: Revitalization, gentrification and the culture of urban redevelopment

Examined in this dissertation are eight urban redevelopment projects undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s and the social and economic impact they had on the neighborhoods they were designed to revitalize. Two projects are examined from each of four American cities: Atlanta; Portland, Oregon; New Orleans; and, Minneapolis. The purpose of this examination is twofold. First, I consider which of two major policy approaches to urban redevelopment comes closer to producing community revitalization. Second, I assess the extent to which rational-economic, political-economic, or cultural theories of redevelopment best explain the changes that occurred in these areas. Individual redevelopment projects are characterized as employing what, I conceptualize as either "active" or "supportive" public-sector approaches to inner-city redevelopment.;"Active" revitalization strategies emphasize a strong public sector role in both the planning and funding of central-city redevelopment projects. These strategies make substantial use of local, state and federal funds to implement publicly developed revitalization plans. "Supportive" revitalization strategies, on the other hand, emphasize private sector initiatives. The public sector role in the development process is reduced to leveraging private funds for redevelopment activities and encouraging business and community involvement in redevelopment projects.;Changes in the economic and social profiles of the neighborhoods that hosted these eight redevelopment projects are compared to changes in neighborhoods contiguous to them that were not touched by redevelopment. These changes are tracked from 1950 to 1990 using data taken from the United States Census, thus allowing a before-and-after-redevelopment analysis of the experiences of the neighborhoods being studied. Descriptive narratives are used to establish what happened in each of the studied areas. Analysis of the changes experienced by redeveloped neighborhoods suggests that rational economic and political-economic theories of urban redevelopment do not provide the best way to understand inner-city redevelopment. The findings suggest that neighborhood redevelopment experiences may be best understood as being functions of the unique local "culture of redevelopment" present in each of the four cities examined.