GEOGRAPHY 660 (2002) URBAN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

*****Click here to access the modules*****

Instructor: Kevin R. Cox

Telephone: 292-7948 (office); 888-6292 (home)

E-Mail: cox.13@osu.edu. I encourage you to contact me by e-mail with questions as they arise.

Office and Office Hours: 1106 Derby Hall: 2:00 - 3:00 Mondays and Wednesdays; 1:30 - 3:30 Fridays; or by appointment.

Reading
The course is organized into eleven modules. Each module is accompanied by a lengthy (25 - 35 pp.) narrative that will be online and accessible through the Department website (go to Class Resources and then to Geog 660). There will also be additional readings to accompany each module. These will be available in two volumes from the Tuttle copying facility (east side of the Tuttle parking garage). The first volume is available now. In interpreting these outside readings it is important that you take your cues regarding what is significant (and what is not) from the narratives that accompany each module.

Assessment:
1.There will be five essays, distributed every two weeks. Each one will focus on the issues we have been exploring in the modules and accompanying reading. I expect at least five double-spaced, typewritten pages. Each essay will be worth 10% of your final grade.

2. Local newspapers are an excellent source of materials on urban politics: landuse conflicts, issues of local/State funding of services, growth coalition projects, etc. I think it useful that you develop a skill in interpreting these materials. I will suggest a set of topics and make available a set of newspaper clippings which you can use in putting together a paper. You can also develop your own topic if you wish. This need be no longer than 10 double-spaced typewritten pages. This will contribute 15% to your final grade. It will be due November 27.

3. There will be a take home midterm worth 15% of your final grade; this is due

4. The final exam will be a take home exam and will be worth 20% of your final grade. It will be on Wednesday, December 11 at 5 :00.

Study Hint:
Compile a Dictionary of basic concepts! e.g. 'local dependence', 'local growth coalition', 'spatial division of labor', 'no-growth policies', 'neighborhood activism', 'redlining', 'impact fees', 'landuse zoning', 'gentrification', 'neighborhood school concept', 'busing', 'NIMBY', 'right of eminent domain', 'jurisdictional fragmentation', 'land rent', 'neighborhood change', 'the New Urban Politics'.

The Approach:
I have chosen four topics as windows on the political geography of the American city. In order of treatment they are:

The politics of local economic development

The politics of neighborhood

The politics of land development

Arenas of local politics: or why 'local' is preferable to 'urban' and why local politics isn't always 'local'

Contexts of local politics: the role of period and place and why the US is different and why what has happened since WWII is different from what went before.

Some of you will recognize the approach I have adopted as dominantly 'political economy'. 'Political economy' is subject to a wide range of interpretations but what is common to all is a prioritizing of the relation between politics and economics: the way in which economic issues are political issues and the way in which the economy is about power. Beyond that you will see that I frame the questions I ask of the topics above in terms of categories like 'capitalist development', 'class', 'stratum', 'profits, wages, and rents', and 'markets'. As befits a geographical approach it is the way these intersect with questions of neighborhood, locality, place and territory that is significant. It is only 'dominantly' (and not entirely) political economy issue because I will occasionally talk about cultural issues and ones of identity ('the politics of difference') and how they intersect with urban/local politics.

Some Useful Web Sites:
The Urban Institute: www.urban.org/
Radical Urban Theory: http://www.rut.com/index.html
Center for An Urban Future: www.nycfuture.org/
Netherlands Megacities Research Institute: www.megacities.nl/main.htm
The Inner City Press: http://www.innercitypress.org/

Some Key Books
Mike Davis (1990) City of Quartz. New York: Vintage Books

David Harvey (1989) The Urban Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Andrew Jonas and David Wilson (eds.) (1999) The Urban Growth Machine. Albany NY: SUNY Press.
John Logan and Harvey Molotch (1987) Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Gareth Stedman-Jones (1971) Outcast London. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Calendar

Readings
Note: Asterisked readings are obligatory for the graduate students only. They will be found on the shelf to the right of the sink in the Geography Mailroom (Derby 1035).

Module 1
None.

Module 2
R J Morris on Urban Space and the Industrial City in Britain: http://www.ehs.org.uk/pdfs/Morris%2028b.pdf

On West Virginia company towns and union struggles: http://www.wvculture.org/history/minewars.html

H J Dyos and D A Reeder, "Slums and Suburbs"
M Anderson, "Migration to Towns in Nineteenth Century Lancashire"
T Philpott, "Pullman"
O Zunz, "The Self-Contained Ethnic Neighborhood"
F Engels, "Extract from The Housing Question'"

Module 3
C.Rosser and S.S.Harris, "Families in a Mobile Society". Chapter One from The Family and Social Change.
*John Alt, "Beyond Class: The Decline of Industrial Labor and Leisure", Telos 28 (1976), pp.55-80.
B Checkoway (1980) "Large Builders, Federal Housing Programmes and Postwar Suburbanization"
D Massey, "Spatial Structures of Capitalist Production"

Module 4
Kevin R. Cox and Andrew Mair, "Locality and Community in the Politics of Local Economic Development," Annals, Association of American Geographers 78:2 (1988), 307-325.
Joan Fitzgerald Ely and Kevin R. Cox, "Urban Economic Development Strategies in the USA", Local Economy 4:4 (1990), 278-289.
John P. Blair and Barton Wechsler, "A Tale of Two Cities: A Case Study of Urban Competition for Jobs". Chapter 14 in Richard D. Bingham and John P.Blair (eds.), Urban Economic Development. Beverly Hills, Ca.: Sage Publications.
Paul Herr, "Metropolitan Political Fragmentation and Conflict in the Location of Commercial Facilities: South Bend vs. Mishawaka". Chapter 2 in Kevin R. Cox and Ronald J.Johnston (eds.), Conflict Politics and the Urban Scene: Case Studies in Urban Political Geography. London, 1982: Longman.
Harvey Molotch, "City as a Growth Machine", American Journal of Sociology 82:2 (1976)m 226-238.

Module 5
* Kevin R. Cox and Andrew Jonas, "Urban Development, Collective Consumption and the Politics of Metropolitan Fragmentation," Political Geography 12:1 (1993), 8-37.
* Kevin R. Cox and Andrew M. Wood, "Competition and Cooperation in Mediating the Global: The Case of Local Economic Development," Competition and Change 2:1 (1997), 65-94.
Otto Davis and Andrew Whinston, "Economic Problems in Urban Renewal" In E.S.Phelps (ed.), Private Wants and Public Needs. New York: 1965 W.W.Norton.

Module 6
Pierre Clavel, "Hartford: From Projects to Programs, 1969-1969". Chapter Two in Clavel, The Progressive City. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
Katharyne Mitchell, "Multiculturalism, or the United Colors of Capitalism?" Antipode 25 (1993), 263-294.
Michael Peter Smith, Gregory A. Guagnano and Cath Posehn, "The Political Economy of Growth in Sacramento: Whose City?" Chapter 14 in Gregory Squires (ed.), Unequal Partnerships. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.
Bryan Jones and Lynn W. Bachelor, "Local Policy Discretion and the Corporate Surplus". Chapter 13 in Richard D. Bingham and John P.Blair (eds.), Urban Economic Development. Beverly Hills, Ca.: Sage Publications.
AnnaLee Saxenian, "The Urban Contradictions of Silicon Valley: Regional Growth and the Restructuring of the Semiconductor Industry," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 7:2 (1983), 237-262.

Module 7
Mike Davis, "Homegrown Revolution." Chapter 3 in Davis, City of Quartz. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Martha Reynolds: "The City, Suburbs and the Establishment of the Clifton Town
Meeting, 1961-64".
Charles Wolfe and Eleanor Lebeaux: "The Bagley Community Council".
James Little: "University City: End State Aborted".
Testimony of Mr A J Wilson, Director, University City Human Relations Commissioni
and Mrs Leo Drey, University City, Missouri.

Module 8
Don Parson, "The Development of Redevelopment: Public Housing and Urban Renewal in Los Angeles (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 6:3 (1982), pp.393-415.
Loic Wacquant, "Urban Outcasts: Stigma and Division in the Black American Ghetto and the French Urban Periphery" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17:3 (1993): 366-383.
Kevin R. Cox, "Residential Mobility, Neighborhood Activism and Neighborhood Problems" Political Geography Quarterly 2:2 (1983), 99-118.

Module 9
*Francois Lamarche (1976) "Property Development and the Economic Foundations of
the Urban Question." In Chris Pickvance (ed.) Urban Sociology: Critical Essays.
London: Methuen.
Bernard Frieden, "The New Regulation Comes to Suburbia", The Public Interest No.55 (1979), 15-27.
*Ronald Bordessa and James Cameron, "Growth Management in the Toronto-Centered Region". Chapter 7 in Kevin R. Cox and Ronald J.Johnston (eds.), Conflict, Politics and the Urban Scene. London: Longman.
*George Carey, "Land Tenure, Speculation and the State of the Aging Metropolis", Geographical Review 66:3 (1976), 253-265.
Alfred Balk, "Invitation to Bribery", Harper's Magazine 233: 1397 (1966), 18-24.
"The Economic and Social Stake in the Central City". In The Central City Problem and Urban Renewal Policy. Washington DC: USGPO, 19-22.
Ralph Woods, "Destructive of Urban Values?" From Woods, America Reborn: A Plan for Decentralization of Industry. New York: Longman, 1939.
David Harvey, "Landlords and Financial Institutions in Inner City Property Markets." From David Harvey, Society, The City and the Space-Economy of Urbanism. Washington DC: Assocation of American Geographers, 1972. Pp.38-46.
Lachman and Mitchell, "New Construction and Abandonment: Musical Chairs in the Housing Stock," Nation's Cities 15:10 (1977), 14-15.
Frances Fox Piven, "Planning and Class Interests" American Institute of Planners Sept. 1975, pp.308-310.

Module 10
Mike Davis (1992) "Junkyard of Dreams." Chapter 7 in City of Quartz. New York:
Vintage Books.
Richard Walker and David B.Large, "Urban Development and Economic Interests". Extract from "The Economics of Energy Extravagance," Ecology Law Quarterly 4 (1963) 969-978 (extract).
Marion Clawson, "Federal Programs as a Stimulus to Suburbanization". From Marion Clawson, Suburban Land Conversion in the United States. RFF, 1971. Pp.41-44.
Michael Danielson, "Segregation and Political Fragmentation in the American Metropolis". In A.K.Keir Nash (ed.), Governance and Population. Washington DC: USGPO, 1970.
David Harvey, "De Facto Urban Policy and Creating an Effective Demand".
J Allen Whitt, "Californians, Cars and Technological Death".

Module 11
Marion Clawson and Peter Hall, "Services, Planning, Land Prices and Densities". Extract
from Planning and Urban Growth. RFF, 1973. Pp.128-132.
* Kevin R. Cox, "The Politics of Local and Regional Development, the Difference the State Makes, and the US / British Contrast" (unpublished ms.)
Kevin R. Cox, "The American Politics of Local Economic Development: From Locality to Center and Back Again" (unpublished ms.)

Click here to go back to the Geography home page