U.S. Urban Political Economy

U.S. Urban Political Economy is a field that examines the intricate interplay between political and economic forces within urban environments. Emerging in the late 1960s, this school of thought critiques earlier urban sociology models—for instance, the Chicago School, which primarily focused on spatial and ecological aspects of cities, often overlooking historical and contextual factors that shape urban life. The Urban Political Economy framework includes significant contributions from neo-Marxist perspectives and has evolved to address issues like social conflict, state intervention, and economic disparities. A notable aspect of this field is its exploration of how urban structures and policies impact marginalized communities, highlighting the interconnectedness of race, class, and urban planning.

Three main schools have shaped this discourse: the Chicago School of Urban Ecology, which emphasizes central business districts (CBDs) and urban organization; the neo-Marxist Urban Political Economy; and the Los Angeles School, which critiques and expands on both previous models by examining the unique characteristics of urban development in Southern California. Notably, the LA School posits that suburbanization and edge cities now play a critical role in defining urban dynamics, a departure from the traditional focus on the CBD. This evolving understanding of urban political economy underscores the importance of diverse perspectives and factors—cultural, social, and economic—in shaping the urban landscape.

Published in: 2021

By: Klassen, Jeff

Subject Terms

U.S. Urban Political Economy

Abstract

This article presents an overview of urban political economy, a term that refers to a specific school of urban sociology that emerged in the late 1960s and to a more general field of social science that includes related elements of political science and economics. Political economy as a discipline studies the interpenetration between political and economic forces within society. Urban political economy generally studies scenarios in which political science and economics overlap, particularly in relation to laws and customs. Three distinct schools of urban sociology emerged in the twentieth century: the Chicago School of Urban Ecology in the 1920s; the neo-Marxist school of Urban Political Economy in the late 1960s; and the often neo-Marxist and postmodern Los Angeles School (or LA School) of Urbanism in the late 1980s.

Overview

Three distinct schools of urban sociology emerged in the twentieth century: the Chicago School of Urban Ecology in the 1920s; the neo-Marxist School of Urban Political Economy in the late 1960s; and the often neo-Marxist and postmodern Los Angeles School (or LA School) of Urbanism in the late 1980s. The loose-knit Urban Political Economy school addresses some important issues that the influential and often predictive theories of the Chicago School largely neglected, particularly contextualized (that is, historical) political and economic factors. The LA School encompasses the earlier two schools in the sense that it extends the earlier neo-Marxist political-economic critique but also develops a new theoretical framework and qualifies the Chicago School's influential concentric zone model of urban organization.

A so-called "fourth school," which can grouped together as Urban Culturalists, examined the less obvious social factors about urban sociology that a political-economic investigation is likely to overlook. Much of the debate surrounding the LA School involves the degree to which the often extreme manifestations of urban structure and urban change (particularly decentralized urban organization, or in short, "the suburbs") are representative of national and international trends, or whether the "Southern California" condition is more of an exception to the normal rules of urban development as it has usually been seen; the sociological and cultural elements of this Southern California condition are often as pronounced as the political and economic elements.

The Chicago & LA Schools. A central theoretical idea of the Chicago School of Urban Ecology is that the Central Business District (CBD), or downtown core of a city, influences the expansion of the outer areas of a city and generally organizes urban structure. The LA School asserts that this long-standing principle of urban sociology has reversed course: the suburbs or "hinterlands" organize and determine the often depleted remains of inner-cities. The fragmentation of urban structure is the resulting national trend (Dear, 2003).

This dramatic one-hundred-and-eighty degree change in thought about urban organization is not exactly a reversal of theoretical orientation. Rather, the change is indicative of a drastic change in the manner in which cities function. The movement of middle-class households to suburban areas was well established by the 1960s, and the resulting loss of tax revenue in inner-cities only exacerbated the decline in urban infrastructure, school funding, and general social order; conversely, the suburbs flourished (Brenner, 2002).

As the LA School of Urbanism emerged, some of its adherents argued that Los Angeles might be considered the "capital of the twentieth century," evoking Walter Benjamin's characterization of Paris in the nineteenth century; they also predicted that the LA model would replace Chicago's role as the model of a metropolis (Dear, 2003). LA's defining traits include:

A broadly diffuse (that is, spread out) population;
Decentralized business sectors (as opposed to the conventional model of a centralized business district);
Large-scale commuting (often between suburbs);
Economic restructuring; and
The prominence of the economic and demographic effects of globalization (Engh, 2000).

In short, Southern California exemplifies suburban regionalism. LA is often described as the first city deliberately organized around the assumption that car ownership and commuting would be the norm, but political organization in Southern California has also long been fragmented and highly regional (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 2000).

The national proliferation of what are termed edge cities has increasingly rendered LA a model for regional urban development. Edge cities are largely independent clusters of office buildings and retail malls along outer rings of large cities (Dear, 2003). The growth of edge cities was encouraged by tax policies of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Those policies were intended to encourage American businesses to be internationally competitive, but evidently some of those "corporate gains windfalls" flowed into suburban commercial real estate development. About 250,000 middle-class residents of LA relocated to newer suburbs in the 1980s, and they were replaced by about 328,000 Mexicans who primarily found work in the service sector (Davis, 2002, p. 251-252).

According to the Chicago School's concentric zone model of urban organization, greater distance from the CBD corresponds with higher income and status. This element of the concentric zone model remains relatively accurate, though suburban poverty has increased as the suburban population has increased. The broader theoretical model of the Chicago School is "organic" in the sense that it attempts to explain urban structure through an analogy with competition, equilibrium, and change in natural ecologies and the natural sciences, but also in that it tends to construct the functioning of urban structures as a whole (or perhaps as a "closed system"), irrespective of some economic, political, and even social factors (Chen, 2006).

Urban Political Economy. Studies by the Urban Political Economy school would later address many of these neglected issues with particular emphasis on social and political conflict, state intervention in the economy, state social programs, and capitalist modes of economic production. A characteristic study in the field of Urban Political Economy illustrates how the city of Houston, for example, grew as the result of the development of the oil industry in Texas with the aid of tax subsidies and public-works projects (Chen, 2006). A typical Chicago School study might not address these formative issues.

The manner in which state programs and economic structure combined to reinforce racial segregation in the 1980s is a key example of how politics and economics interact (Chen, 2006). Early studies of the Chicago School found much of their impetus in contemporary race riots in that city, and racial uprisings in LA in 1965 and 1992 mark central periods in studies by the LA School (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 2000).

Spatial & Theoretical Models of the City

Concentric Zone Model. Map-making was a common means of studying demographic patterns of social behavior, particularly deviant behavior and crime, for members of the Chicago School. As such, spatial patterning in urban models has received extensive attention among later urban sociologists. The "zone of transition," the second of the five areas in the concentric zone model, usually receives the bulk of the attention. The zone of transition, which surrounds the CBD in the conventional model, is characterized by the conversion of aging private homes into smaller apartments, offices, or locations of light industry. The dense population, proximity to the CBD, and general social disorganization result in low property values and, as such, new immigrants tend to reside there. Many of the principles underlying the Chicago School's concentric zone model and its roughly corresponding ecological analogy involve the assumption that minorities residing in the zone of transition would assimilate into the general population as they achieved social mobility and progressed to outer, more prosperous area of the city, much as earlier immigrants had done. Those assumptions were obviously overly optimistic about some minorities' prospects for social mobility (Chen, 2006). The CBD and the zone of transition are also characterized as the areas in which most of the commuting population is employed in this model (Dear, 2003).

The concentric zone model has proven to be predictive and highly malleable (Chen, 2006). Dear (2003) attributes its resonance and applicability to numerous cities to its "beguiling" simplicity. Several variations on the concentric zone model have emerged, but most confirm that patterns originating in the CBD influence the outer areas of a city. One early variation noticed that recognizable urban patterns form in pie-shaped wedges extending from the CBD, and that residents in each pie-slice section of the city tend to have similar economic and social status (Hoyt 1939; Chen, 2006). Most of the variations on the concentric zone model have confirmed that patterns or variations that begin in the CBD are likely to reappear in outer areas of cities (Dear, 2003).

Multiple-Growth Nuclei. Another variation, termed the multiple-growth nuclei, is of particular importance in relation to urban structural patterns in Southern California. According to this model, suborganizations resembling smaller versions of a CBD form and grow in outer areas of a single city. An example would be a cluster of housing and businesses that form around a prominent employer. The multiple-growth nuclei model also confirms that earlier growth within a "nuclei" often shapes later urban developmental patterns (Dear, 2003; Chen, 2006). This model fits the spatial organization of LA very well. A common variation within this variation is that satellite cities — often industrial sectors outside but dependent on a large city — can be incorporated as the larger city grows. In such a circumstance, the satellite city can lose its economic identity but also influence the structure of the larger city (Dear, 2003).

Chen (2006) describes the Chicago School's construction of urban development as a "free-market" (that is, essentially capitalist) approach to spatial disorganization and reorganization. The Chicago School's intended model was one of "natural areas" that perform a required function within the ecology of a city. Although it is probably more accurate to claim that the Chicago School neglected political and economic issues in an attempt to elaborate an empirical and scientific sociological methodology than to describe their conceptual framework as "capitalist," Urban Political Economy does indeed identify numerous theoretic questions necessary for addressing political and economic issues. These issues include: how the interaction of government policies and economic changes affect minorities and immigrants; how adaptation to an inhospitable environment (such as the "zone of transition") might occur through a means other than moving to a more prosperous neighborhood; and how technological change is intertwined with the political and economic forces that shape urban structure. Chen's accompanying critique — that the Chicago School constructed technological change as simply a part of the physical environment — seems sound on these grounds (2006).

In a 1925 anthology by Chicago School sociologists, "The City: Suggestions of Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment," Louis Wirth appears to have predicted the role that globalization (that is, the growth of international trade) would play in shaping urban structure. Wirth (1925) observed that advancements in communications technology allowed information about economic markets and industrial inventions to be incorporated into businesses anywhere almost immediately. Dear (2003) describes this observation as a prediction of the change from an industrial to a post-industrial (or knowledge-based) economy, which is emblematic of the LA School of Urbanism. In theory, it would seem that the de facto CBD or multi-growth nuclei form of economic organization need not have a specific, stable physical location in a post-industrial economy.

Diseconomic Factors. Another, very different, qualifying factor to the influence of a CBD or a multi-growth nuclei model is known as the "diseconomic effect." The Urban Culturist school illustrates how non-economic factors can upset the conventional model of how the CBD is expected to function. For example, a 1945 study found that a high-end cluster of housing in downtown Boston known as Beacon Hill had not been overtaken by the CBD, nor had a series of public areas including cemeteries, parks, and a forty-eight-acre area that comprised an early common-area of the city. Residents of Beacon Hill could have found cheaper and comparable or superior housing without moving more than several blocks. In this case, the diseconomic effects likely derived from a sentimental attachment to the neighborhood, social-bond formation in that community, and possibly a desire to avoid integration into an ethnically diverse neighborhood (Firey, 1945; Borer, 2004). Other diseconomic effects can include the preservation of historic buildings or even purchasing choices based on factors other than economic self-interest (Dear, 2003). The reverence granted to cemeteries and other established, traditional inner-city locations seem to reflect a more straightforward and socially-accepted diseconomic effect.

Los Angeles's "Exceptionalism." The diffuse population and highly regionalized governmental structure in Southern California has usually been considered an exception to national trends in terms of urban development. Studies by the LA School occasionally preface scholarly discussions of urban sociology with a brief account of the historical and cultural eccentricities associated with LA that often produce bafflement among east-coast commentators (Dear, 2003). One such study describes the commercial culture and general atmosphere of Southern California as "a lifespace comprised of Disneyworlds" (Soja, 1989, p. 246). Local governmental organization in Southern California had long been described as incoherent, but the riots in 1965 and 1992 illustrated that efforts to restructure the economy had largely failed and that a more serious and intensive investigation was needed (Engh, 2000). Before 1965, academics generally considered New York, Chicago, and Boston to be the prototypical American cites (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 2000).

The original 1907 plan for LA was termed "The City Beautiful," and an early view of the city as an "engineered utopia" soon emerged. In the 1970s, the view of the city as "the great exception" to national urban trends appeared as consensual characterization among the public and academics. By the mid-1980s, however, some academics had reversed this trend and argued that LA had become the characteristic American city (Dear, 2003).

Davis (2002) identifies seven urban trends (or "sins") that originated in LA and then spread elsewhere in the Southwest:

High levels of water use;
Land-intensive (that is, diffuse) housing and industry;
Lack of public space;
Inadequate environmental conservation and management of natural disasters;
The fragmentation and subordination of local governments to private developmental prerogatives;
Car-centered urban planning; and
Acceptance of high levels of racial and social inequality (p. 92).

The term "suburban" tends to be rendered moot in the absence of an "urban" area with which to contrast an outlying area (Dear, 2003). In 1971, a visiting British historian admiringly commented on Southern California's "anti-urban structure" and identified it as model for future urban organization. A typical Southern Californian suburban neighborhood, resembling edge cities in denser metropolises elsewhere, features medium-density homes, a family health clinic, office and small-business buildings, small industrial spaces, and strip malls and a large shopping mall with theaters. This "unordered" but expediently compartmentalized and fragmented urban structure appears to reflect the high value placed on private property and convenience, but also the political will and ability to shape the landscape to meet these priorities (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 2000). The deconcentration of the middle class, however, is widely evident. Buffalo and Pittsburgh both experienced population declines in the 1990s, and yet both cities continued to develop suburban communities (Chen, 2006).

Further Insights

In historical terms, modern Southern California was partially built upon an oil boom between 1900 and 1920, but the crucial aspect of urban organization is probably the development of an irrigation and water-control system that was constructed through a public-works project derived from the New Deal. As such, LA remains a monument to the ability of technology to shape and control the environment, but it has since earned an international reputation for severe pollution (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 2000).

Boston and San Francisco are cited as cities that counter the LA-led trend of urban regionalism, fragmentation, and the privatization of land use, but a majority of Southwestern cities appear to have moved in the opposite direction. The level of residential insulation in the form of architectural protection and security systems in LA is comparable to that of Tokyo and Singapore, and all three cities bombard residents with "hyperstimulations," apparently meant to entrench the proliferation of consumer culture. LA can also be compared with Johannesburg, South Africa: both have attempted to restructure their economies based on a natural resources (oil and gold, respectively); both feature a similar variety of architecture, gated homes, energetic creativity, and highly developed and luxurious urban sectors that are surrounded by pockets of extreme poverty; and both have struggled to counter a history of racial segregation (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 2000).

These "snapshots" of Southern California clearly illustrate the relevance of the type of analysis Urban Political Economy employs. The "ecological" approach of the older Chicago School would not reveal a great deal about the organizational and economic factors that contributed to, and maintains, the fragmented and diffuse population of Southern California.

Urban Culturalism ("The Fourth School") & the LA School of Urbanism:. Although some Urban Culturalists often separate themselves from political and economic matters, these cultural studies can inform some of the data about LA that the Urban Political Economy school might not be able to explain. Borer (2004) attempts to counter the conventional view that metropolitan areas foster autonomy, general social disorganization, and prevent the formation of a common culture. What are termed "identity enclaves" among subcultures can be quite strong in urban areas: individuals pursue relationships with those of the same ethnic, race, class, lifestyle or professional orientation. In fact, a large population can even be necessary for these social networks to form due to the highly-specialized traits that these subcultures share. More generally, Urban Culturalists emphasize "urbanism" over "urbanization," and Borer (2004) argues that all three schools of urban sociology implicitly build a schism between culture and place. In other words, urban sociologists appear to view culture as something that is imposed or external to individuals. An alternative view is that culture can be used in a functional manner to cope with the obstacles an urban landscape creates (Borer, 2004).

Scholars of the LA School, however, are fairly quick to comment on how LA's cultural trends are as eccentric as its political traits. Film and tourism are of key importance to the economy. Other prominent fields include automobile design and furniture design and production (Engh, 2000). And yet, no single industrial sector, nor an ethnic group, philosophy, or way of life dominates the commercial culture. In short, everyone is a minority of some sort and unusual cultures and philosophies proliferate. The precarious ecological climate seems to instill an apocalyptic cultural atmosphere (Dear, 2003). The vast diversity of the architecture has earned the term "heteropolis," and LA residents are described as "heterophiliacs" who thrive among thirteen major ethic groups, eighty-six different languages, and eighteen urban villages. Pluralism is — ironically — pervasive to the point of conflict. This last observation had been made about New York decades earlier (Engh, 2000).

The Urban Culturalists also provide relevant information that the conventional approaches to urban sociology can overlook through different methodological approaches. An ethnographic study in the 1960s found that former residents of a run-down section of Boston that had been demolished later expressed noticeable regret over the loss of familiar buildings. City officials were evidently unaware of this circumstance. This case is meant to illustrate how specific urban locations, however unpleasant to the casual observer, can assume symbolic value to local inhabitants and even be conducive to group stability and personal interaction. An ethnographic study appears to be the only way to collect this sort of information (Gans 1962; Borer, 2004).

Viewpoints

Borer (2004) takes a more aggressive tack in criticizing the cultural assumptions of the other schools of urban sociology, particularly the Chicago School. According to this critique, Chicago School studies tend to collect data from a few neighborhoods (or "natural areas") and extrapolate that information into a falsely representative portrait of an ethnic group, and the later two schools treat culture largely as a component of marketing techniques or consumer choices. The central thrust of this argument is that urban sociology tends to treat culture as something that individuals absorb and transmit but cannot actively direct or form. The alternative model proposed to the over-emphasis on an objective portrayal of cultural patterns (the "top-down" classical model of the Chicago School) or a relativistic treatment of culture as a subjective matter (the LA School's voluntaristic, liberal "bottom-up" model) is that both are equally accurate, but also that culture is actively created — in the process of constructing a functional view of one's surroundings — as it is absorbed and transmitted. Borer (2004) also accuses the Chicago School of portraying culture as a static force based on personal inheritance that is associated with rural social organization, by contrast with the "civilized" condition of urban life (Borer, 2004).

Dear (2003) takes a rather different view. He argues that the LA School has replaced the classical, rationalist, and modernist "linear evolutionist urban paradigm" of the Chicago School with a non-linear, chaotic cultural model that is appropriate for describing the corporate "connectivity" that dominates the "communications-driven" globalized economy. Dear (2003) also identifies himself as postmodernist, which he describes as a combination of stylistic, cultural, and economic characteristics and a methodological and philosophical approach that works to counter the Enlightenment emphasis on rationality. In other words, the LA School, as Dear describes it, attempts to make a radical break with the past. As such, the LA School is not so much a single doctrinaire "school" but a group of scholars working on a series of related issues, in keeping with the anti-hegemonic, non-uniform, and non-conforming nature of the architecture and culture of LA. In short, the idea that LA has moved from "exceptional" status to a representative role does not mesh well with the city's cultural history (Dear, 2003).

Scholars who identify themselves with the LA School can agree that more centralized planning and collective action is necessary to improve the poor state of public transportation and exploitive land use in South California (Engh, 2000). An obvious concern with this seemingly obvious conclusion is the urban planning has been extensively involved in the establishment of the social inequality and environmental damage that exist in Southern California (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 2000).

New Perspectives. Several new schools of urban sociology have appeared, including a Miami School, a Las Vegas School, and an Orange County School that claims to describe an entirely unique version of an independent, multiple-growth nuclei county that is the culmination of trends evident in LA. Dear (2003) identifies four hypothetical models of the city that can be used to further understand urban sociology:

The World City, in which relatively few physical locations exert substantial influence over a globalized economy;
The Dual City, in which social polarization and income inequality, both between individuals and between nations, is measured;
The Hybrid City, in which cultural hybrids and other new cultural modes extend communicative abilities and displace conventional communities; and
The Cybercity, in which communicative technologies alter existing forms of physical space (Dear, 2003).

Savitch (1988) applies the concentric zone model to local efforts to rejuvenate the urban centers of New York City, London, and Paris in the 1980s. Interestingly, the Chicago School's model is turned on its head when parts of New Jersey and Connecticut are included in the model of New York City: greater distance from the CBD correspond with lower rather than higher income and status. Each of these cities had a specific goal in mind in the 1980s: New York sought to bolster its economic productivity; London sought to conserve its architecture and provide a protective social environment; and Paris sought to construct a radically distinctive cultural and aesthetic environment. In New York, the construction and renovation project was funded by a "corporatist-pluralist" hybrid of public and private organizations (p. 21). Savitch (1988) includes a critique of the debate between the Urban Political Economy school and a free-market group of capitalists: whereas the former tends to view the state as the skillful protector of the interests of capitalists, the latter tends to view centralized state agencies as inept and to favor the options that multiple — LA-style — municipal governments provide to private interests (p. 6).

Terms & Concepts

Central Business District (CBD): The Central Business District, or downtown core, is the center of the concentric zone model of urban organization, as designed by Earnest Burgess of the Chicago School of Urban Ecology. The CBD is characterized by the close proximity of buildings and individuals, the concentrated use of space, and the frequently conversion of buildings or land into new or alternative commercial use; its crucial feature is the influence it exerts on urban growth (Chen, 2006).

Chicago School: The Chicago School of Urban Ecology is associated with sociological studies undertaken between 1915 and 1935 at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Robert Park. The Chicago School was influential in establishing and shaping sociology as a distinct academic discipline in the United States. It was more of a group of practicing sociologists than a "school" with a specific program of study. Park advocated a rigorous and "detached" method, whether practitioners undertook qualitative (that is, descriptive) or quantitative (that is, statistical) projects (Cortese, 1995). Topics of Chicago School dissertations include: deviant behavior, crime, strikes, ghettos, homelessness, and brothels (Abbott, 1997).

Concentric Zone Model: The concentric zone model of urban organization postulates a five-area prototype of the contemporary city; the generic model is that of a downtown core (the Central Business District or CBD) surrounded by four areas (or rings) of inhabited by individuals with successively higher levels of income. The second ring, the "zone of transition" that is characterized by architectural and social disorganization, receives much of the attention in the relevant scholarship. Ernest Burgess is the chief author of this model.

Edge Cities: The term "edge city" is more specific than "suburb" in the sense that the former refers to office buildings and retail stores that proliferated along the borders between inner cities and suburbs or along transportation corridors and in new suburban developments after the 1980s. The term edgeland is sometimes used in this context to describe how suburban communities are developing into independent cities-within-cities. Joel Garreau popularized the term in a 1991 book. Davis (2002) terms the formation of edge cities a "racial sorting-out process" that resulted in the resegregation of minorities (p. 255).

Los Angeles School of Urbanism (LA School): The neo-Marxist and postmodern LA School of Urbanism began to form in 1986 in response the probability that other American and non-American cities were emulating LA's decentralized and fragmented urban structure. In 1993, the LA School was described as a combination of the Chicago School and the Frankfurt School (a Marxist school of thought in 1920s Germany). The economic restructuring of Southern California provided topical material for the LA School throughout the 1990s. Neo-Marxist geographers are strongly represented in the loosely-affiliated group, which reflects the prominent role of environmentalism in the school; later historians and scholars studying international issues became associated with the group. It is often viewed as "dystopian" (Dear, 2003). Affiliated scholars include Michael Davis, Michael Dear, and Edward Soja.

Multiple-Growth Nuclei: Chicago School sociologist H. Hoyt developed the idea of multiple-growth nuclei in the 1930s, but it became increasing relevant as American cities expanded and incorporated smaller towns or satellite communities. In this context the conventional model of a city with a CBD would be a "single-growth nuclei," and that single "nuclei" would exert influence on the outward growth of the city. A multiple-growth nuclei city features several centers of influence that exert influence on the pattern of urban growth. LA is a straightforward example.

Post-Industrial Economy: A post-industrial economy, also known as a knowledge-based economy, has three implications for the workforce: "It encompasses a change in what we do to earn a livelihood (processing or services rather than manufacture) as well as how we do it (brains rather than hands) and where we do it (offices rather than factories)" (Savitch, 1988, p. 4).

Urban Culturalism: Urban Culturalism, also termed the "Fourth School," emphasizes cultural practices in the contexts that the Chicago School, the Urban Political Economy school, and the LA School study more easily definable factors such as demographics, political influence, or economic activity. For example, residents of San Francisco might attach personal meaning to the Golden Gate Bridge; that bridge might symbolically represent an individual's self-identification with the city in which he or she lives. More broadly, an Urban Culturalist might seek to demonstrate how local residents of a specific community look beyond short-term economic use of a place and how their interpersonal relationships are shaped by an urban environment. Subculture is a common topic of study. It also resembles anthropology in that it attempts to extrapolate upon social significance from physical objects. The lineage of this vein of study is traced to Tocqueville on manners and civic life, Durkheim on collective representations, Weber on beliefs and actions, and Simmel on social forms and types. Walter Firey is identified as an early practitioner (Firey 1945; Borer, 2004).

Urban Political Economy: Urban political economy generally studies scenarios in which political science and economics overlap, particularly in relationship to laws and customs. In the nineteenth century, political economy was called "economics." Much urban political economy in the social sciences is characterized by Marxist treatments of the interpenetration of financial interests and political influence. Societal factors enter the equation, for example, when the combined influence of financial and political interests are able to exert influence over labor groups and union or non-union wages. Contemporary political economists often refer to cities as "growth machines." Practitioners include David Gordon, Michael Storper, David Walker, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Allen Scott.

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U.S. Urban Political Economy

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U.S. Urban Political Economy

Abstract

Overview

Spatial & Theoretical Models of the City

Further Insights

Viewpoints

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading