2013 abstracts 2013.04 - urban affairs association · municipalities that allows us to link...

Urban Affairs Association 43rd Annual Conference Building the 21st Century City: Inclusion, Innovation, and Globalization April 3–6, 2013 | Fairmont Hotel | San Francisco, California

Book of Abstracts

Diversity, Uniformity and Urban Political Participation

Jacob Aars (University of Bergen), Dag Arne Christensen (The Uni Rokkan Centre, Bergen, Norway), Tor Midtbø (University of Bergen)

Presenter’s email address: [email protected]

Our paper aims to analyse the effects of heterogeneity/homogeneity on political participation. One hypothesis is that socially and/or ethnically homogenous urban areas will have a negative impact on participation. When social groups with different backgrounds are less likely to encounter, the mobilising effect of conflict is weakened. Hence, participation will decline. Another assumption points in a different direction: Diversity may lead to paralysis. Particularly in cases of multiple identities, citizens will be exposed to cross‐pressure and will tend to abstain from participating. A crucial argument put forward in this paper is that we need to distinguish between different types of contextual effects. We therefore differentiate between a) aggregate effects of social heterogeneity on the level of participation in a community as a whole (random intercept), and b) effects on specific groups given their relative position vis‐à‐vis the dominant social group in the community (random slope, cross‐level interaction). The paper uses a unique data set consisting of approximately 11.500 individual respondents from Norwegian municipalities that allows us to link individual‐level data to municipal‐level data. Thus, we have used multilevel modelling in order to investigate the effects of contextual factors on individual behaviour. At the contextual level (level 2) we employ a data set consisting of a wide variety of variables characterizing the municipalities


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Revitalizing Urban Development in Malaysia Through the Implementation of Urban Regeneration Programme

Azmizam Abdul Rashid (Malaysia Ministry of Housing and Local Government), Dahlia Rosly (Malaysia Ministry of Housing and Local Government), Shamsaini Shamsuddin (Malaysia Ministry of Housing and Local Government)


The problems of urban decay and brownfields can be greatly alleviated by creating a rational economic framework in which the private sector may operate, respond and be guided by well‐considered, typically local, public decisions for prioritization of private‐sector driven site cleanup. In an unsubsidized setting, market economics drive the cleanup decisions of these challenging sites. With public guidance, private forces can operate efficiently to produce revitalization in places where communities most need it, but where without such public incentive, revitalization may not occur.Urban regeneration in its original form has been called a failure by many urban planners and civic leaders, and has since been reformulated with a focus on redevelopment of existing communities. Over time, urban regeneration evolved into a policy based less on destruction and more on renovation and investment, and today is an integral part of many local governments, often combined with small and big business incentives. However in many cities in the world, urban regeneration projects are still widely accused of abuse and corruption. Malaysia's modern urban growth, development and urbanisation experiences may be conveniently periodised into three major periods, based on the form, structure and functions of the urban centres. . In Malaysia, given the growing conditions of neglect and degradation of the cities centers. Since most Malaysian city centers are very old historical cities and seem to be rediscovering now the economic value of creative industries and culture. Urban revitalization and regeneration together with the issues of energy sustainability and the need to reduce pollutant emissions, are today the major challenges facing the planning of cities. The concept of urban regeneration in Malaysia's cities to promote a "return to the city", revitalise the city centre, restore activity in a fiercely competitive international context, and implement initiatives to improve the quality of the environment operating in a wide sense towards a smart growth. Urban regeneration is more than just upgrading the physical environment of an area to hopefully spark private investment. However one of most critical issue in urban regeneration is gentrification. This should not be happend in the true spirit of urban revitalition. Instead of displacing the existing community, they should be relocated to the same site. Therefore urban regeneration processes accomplishes the growing importance in literature of concepts like territorial governance, institutional relational density, creativity, social capital, city branding, city image and place marketing. Kuala Lumpur City Hall is among the municipalities practices urban regeneration by recognizing it as one of the strategic directions the city will take in an effort to encourage more sustainable lifestyles.


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Home Owner Associations and Municipal Government: An Exploration of Fiscal Issues

Neil Abercrombie (Utah State University)


The focus of this paper and research is to better understand the partnership between homeowner associations (HOAs or planned unit developments) and municipal governments. Who pays for what, and what are the arrangements in sharing of services? Do cities significantly offset costs by downloading orshifting service responsibilities to private governments? Correctly understanding these issues will drive the discussion of municipal policy regarding approving HOA developments and also agreeing to takeover once private services. The potential cost or savings to local government through shifting service delivery to HOAs is lacking strong empirical research. Ron Cheung (2008) offers the most recent and empirical economic analysis of the impact of private governments on local public finance. Cheung's econometric study significantly advances the empirical understanding of the fiscal interaction between public and private governments. However, empirical research on this fundamental question ‐‐ do HOAs produce fiscal efficiency gains ‐‐ is difficult conduct due to three challenges. First, there is a lack of good data tracking the financial arrangements that many municipalities enter with cities. Second, the uniqueness of each city financial structure and each HOA dynamic makes it difficult to make general statements or conclusions. And third, the recent proliferation of HOAs does not present much long‐termdata, leaving out a significant piece of the equation ‐ what happens when HOAs age and cannot still meet their service obligations to the HOA residents. Despite these challenges the focus of this research is to help bridge this gap in fiscal impact or efficiency studies assessing the interaction between HOAs and cities.


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Pols, Patronage, and Nonprofit Community Developers

Carolyn Adams (Temple University)


Urban scholars and activists have frequently questioned whether Community Development Corporations truly represent the community's interest in the urban neighborhoods where they renovate housing, revitalize commercial corridors, build community services, parks and playgrounds. Randy Stoecker (Journal of Urban Affairs, 1997) observed that many CDCs are captive to the agendas of their funders (e.g., corporations, foundations, lenders), forcing them to act in ways that depart from the interests of local residents. When accused of failing to follow the wishes of community residents, CDC leaders often argue that they cannot subject every project to endless discussion in neighborhood meetings because the result is either gridlock or a series of bargains and compromises that dilute any proposal's impact. Nor is it legally necessary for CDCs to operate according to the preferences of neighborhood residents. Since they are constituted as nonprofit corporations, CDCs are legally accountable only to their boards of directors, not to the wider public in the neighborhood. Against the background of this debate, I will focus on one particular source of support for CDCs ‐namely, elected politicians representing urban districts who serve as patrons for CDCs, steering government money and resources to them for development projects in the jurisdictions they represent. This fits into a longstanding pattern of elected officials helping to secure government grants and contracts for both nonprofit and profit‐making corporations in their districts. Yet the cases I will examine depart in important ways from the traditional patronage pattern. In these Philadelphia cases, powerful state legislators have gone beyond helping community‐based organizations to secure government grants and contracts. They have created their own nonprofit corporations and then steered major grants to those entities. This paper explores the advantages that politicians gain from controlling their own nonprofits to pursue large‐scale and sometimes‐controversial projects within their districts. And it analyzes the problems of accountability and transparency created by such patronage relationships between government officials, nonprofit organizations, and citizens.


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Creating Resilient Communities in the 21st Century: Analyzing How Net Zero Energy Communities Affect Community Economic Development

Kimberly Adams (Texas Southern University)


Creating a resilient community involves community economic development (CED) that focuses on structural influences to increase community wealth, growth, and development, influences socioeconomic transformation, and implements innovative technology. The key to resilient communities, then, is to locate available local assets, connect them with one another in ways that multiply their power and effectiveness. Essentially, using real property to increase current assets and collectively bridging homeowners' personal investments with community resources to create a stronger economic environment leads to resiliency. Community assets, however, are not always obvious; therefore, exploring the impact energy independent or net zero energy (NZE) communities has on economic development offers a paradigm shift in addressing community economic development concerns. This paper examines through quantitative analysis how physical capital is leveraged to gain financial capital. The questions answered are: how to create a resilient community in the 21st century? And what financial effects do net zero energy communities have on community economic development. Establishing the impact renewable energy technology in homes has on community economic development can have a positive ripple effect on individual homeowners, the community holistically, and the local economic development. The study examines how decreasing utility costs by using renewable energy technology at the individual level decreases a homeowner's housing expenditure and affects the home's equity, all while increasing community economic development. The completed study provides support for an alternative concept of combining physical and financial capital to build and sustain resilient communities with net zero energy homes.


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Inaccessible accessibility: are low‐income families being priced out of accessible neighborhoods?

Arlie Adkins (Portland State University)

Presenter's email address: [email protected]

Accessible neighborhoods that facilitate walking, bicycling and transit are often discussed as a key strategy for addressing problems ranging from climate change to physical inactivity and obesity. Planning scholars have argued that after decades of unmet demand for housing in such neighborhoods, many urban residents are now eager to move to accessible neighborhoods where they can reduce their need to travel by car. Evidence of this can be seen in the growth of urban infill projects in many U.S. cities. At the same time, housing advocates have promoted the concept of housing + transportation (H+T) budgeting as a tool for highlighting how lower transportation costs of accessible neighborhoods can offset higher housing prices. In light of these trends, this paper examines whether low‐income families are being priced out of accessible housing options. Using data from a survey of recent movers in Denver, Minneapolis‐St. Paul, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, this paper examines the extent to which families of different economic means are able to choose housing locations that match their accessibility and transportation preferences. Findings have implications for ongoing planning efforts to more equitably link housing and transportation.


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The Impact of Dhaka's High Density Development on Livability: A Sustainability Perspective

Shammi Akter Satu (University of Hong Kong), Shammi Akter Satu (University of Hong Kong), Rebecca L.H. Chiu (University of Hong Kong)


In recent years there was an emerging debate on dense urban forms as the most proficient ways to reduce energy consumption and pollution and for contributing to sustainability. While high density development remains at the centre of the debate of developing a sustainable city, different countries adopt different density policies and achieve different density patterns. The cities of developing countries already have higher concentration of people than the cities of developed countries owing to rapid population growth. There is very little known about the state of sustainability in relation to urban densities in these countries. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has been ranked as the most densely populated urban area of the world according to Demographia in 2011. Yet densification process is going on in the city, creating extreme pressure on land, incurring congestion, environmental degradation and strain on infrastructures as well as other facilities. As a first step to investigate how Dhaka as a high density city should be managed to realize the advantages and diminish the disadvantages of its density patterns on livability, this paper aims to address the following two questions: What are the characteristics of the density patterns of Dhaka, and Why Dhaka has this distinctive pattern of high density? And, what is the impact of this density pattern on the livability aspects of Dhaka in urban sustainability terms? This study will conduct the analyses at two levels to answer the questions and both qualitative and quantitative analysis will be undertaken.. First, the unique density patterns of Dhaka will be explored through assessing density and identifying building types. Second, the livability aspect will be examined to find out how it has been affected by the density pattern and characteristics. The major indicators to assess livability will include the provision of public transport, accessibility to community facilities and residential space standard. Data regarding population, area, building type, community facilities and public transport will be collected. Semi‐structured interviews with the academics, professionals and concerned officials will be conducted to explore the major factors influencing the density pattern. Case study areas will be selected for the questionnaire survey to know the residents' opinion about the impact of density pattern on livability. This study argues that in a high density city which is featured with contiguous low‐rise development, it does not possess most of the sustainability benefits in livability as postulated in the compact city literature.


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Investigation of TARTA's Service Quality with Respect to Transportation Accessibility to Public High Schools in Toledo, Ohio

Bhuiyan Alam (University of Toledo)


In 1968 John Kain, an economist examining the link between African‐American unemployment, job suburbanization, and center‐city‐oriented mass transit systems, proposed what became known as the spatial mismatch theory. Apart from numerous studies that examine the spatial mismatch between job and housing locations, only few investigate the spatial mismatch between public transit stops and school locations (Buliung et al 2009; Kaplan 1999; Mitra et al 2010). The motive for examining the spatial mismatch between public high school locations and Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority (TARTA) bus stops became important because many students are confined to going to their underperforming community schools that have less than 75% of their students passing the Ohio Achievement Test. The number of students that go to underperforming schools, especially in the city of Toledo, is staggering. Many parents would like to send their kids to chartered schools within the same district or to another district but cannot do so because TARTA bus stops are not, in many instances, within walking distance from homes and/or schools. Therefore, TARTA bus stops, in such cases, are virtually inaccessible to the students. The objectives of this paper are twofold. Using a geographic information system (GIS) and advanced spatial statistics like Moran's I and Geary's C indices, part I maps and analyzes the spatial locations of both public and chartered high schools and TARTA bus stops in Toledo, Ohio. It also maps ¼‐, ½‐, and 1‐mile buffers around each school to see if TARTA bus stops are within such buffers. Based on the maps and databases created in part I, part II estimates transit accessibility index of high schools to bus stops. Because it is not possible to estimate accessibility indices at individual student's household level due to lack of personal‐level data, the paper uses the estimated transit accessibility index of high schools to bus stops as the surrogate variable for transit accessibility index of the students' households, i.e., residential neighborhoods. Based on this analysis and a survey of the high school students who use TARTA buses to commute to schools, the paper formulates alternative sustainable future plans for TARTA to increase the transit accessibility to schools. For formulating future plans, the paper projects the population and number of high school‐going children over the next 20 years by using forecasting techniques like linear, geometric, modified exponential, gompertz, and logistic. This is the first study of its nature that investigates the spatial mismatch between TARTA bus stops and high school locations, and that estimates the transit accessibility of high schools to bus stops in Toledo area. Since the study formulates alternative sustainable future plans for TARTA to improve its contribution to the high school education in Toledo, it has direct practical implications.


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Unpacking Poverty: Stress as a Pathway from Neighborhood Conditions to Social Problems

Jochen Albrecht (Hunter College of the City University of New York), Mimi Abramovitz (Hunter College of the City University of New York)


It is well established that the conditions under which people live can influence their health and well being. It is also widely known that social problems are concentrated in poorer neighborhoods. But much less is known as to "why." Some observers blame the victim; others point to poverty. Lacking satisfactory answers and seeking to avoid blaming individuals and households for conditions over which they lack control, researchers now call for unpacking poverty and for identifying pathways between neighborhood conditions and the spatial concentration of heath/social problems. This paper integrates two distinct narratives: (a) the relationship between neighborhood conditions and social problem behaviors and (b) the relationship between exposure to severe stress and social problem behaviors. The resulting framework suggests that living under highly stressful conditions can set off a biologically‐induced chain reaction that can lead people to engage in troublesome behavior that brings harm to themselves or others. In brief, the exposure to prolonged and sustained stress operates as a pathway between neighborhood conditions and the presence or absence of social problems. The authors have compiled a large set of data for New York City neighborhoods that unpacks poverty by examining accumulated disadvantage/advantage based on multiple neighborhood indicators, each composed of several variables. The indicators cover: health insecurity, education insecurity, housing insecurity, income insecurity, food insecurity as well as community loss, and surveillance among other. There are also measures of efficacy such as self‐advocacy and civic engagement. Keenly aware of the need to separate between explanatory and dependent variables, the authors found very high spatial correlations between social conditions and social problems. Their own surveys of stress, however, showed highest levels of stress not in the areas of severe social conditions and problems but right adjacent to these areas. This then opens a whole row of new questions from representativeness of the survey sample to the question of resilience: what are the characteristics of the people who experience lower levels of stress under adverse conditions? What is the driving spatial force that leads to distinct spatial autocorrelations in the neighborhoods of disadvantaged neighborhoods? The authors suspect that the answers lie in the realm of social processes rather than static conditions. Examples for such processes are gentrification, immigration and attitude changes among the second generation of immigrants, as well as perceptual issues associated with frontier or border communities nurtured by media rather than actual personal experience. At the time of writing this submission, the answers to these questions are


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still speculative but the authors are in the process of increasing the reach of their stress surveys and thereby hope to be closer to an answer by the time this paper will be presented.


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The Social Roles of Immigrant Entrepreneur Spaces

Ryan Allen (University of Minnesota), Erika Busse (University of Wisconsin‐River Falls)


Much of the research on economic outcomes for immigrants in the U.S. focuses on entrepreneurship. In some ways, the focus on entrepreneurship makes sense because immigrants have significantly higher rates of self‐employment compared to the native born. At the same time, most immigrant workers are not entrepreneurs and tend to work in the general economy outside of ethnic enclaves, suggesting that the importance of immigrant entrepreneurship in explaining immigrant incorporation in the U.S. may have been overstated. In this article we argue that understanding the importance of immigrant entrepreneurs requires looking beyond economic issues to the social roles that immigrant entrepreneurs and the spaces where they work play in the immigrant community. We use qualitative data to respond to the following research question: How do immigrant entrepreneurs leverage their spaces to achieve non‐economic goals, such as promoting community cohesiveness, clarifying ethnic identity, and encouraging leadership development? Data used in the analysis include participant observation field notes at three immigrant entrepreneur spaces along a revitalized commercial corridor in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as semi‐structured interviews with immigrant entrepreneurs and representatives from non‐profit organizations that support immigrant entrepreneurs. Research findings indicate that immigrant entrepreneur spaces help to shape the identity of immigrant groups, but that different spaces fill different roles in this identity formation process. Some spaces provide goods and services to help members of the ethnic community stay connected to the culture of their country of origin. Other, frequently more economically successful, immigrant entrepreneur spaces create a sanitized version of ethnic culture that is largely consumed by native born residents. Still other immigrant entrepreneur spaces spawn ethnic leadership and provide a space for community events in the immigrant community (e.g., cultural celebrations) that helps to define the identity of immigrants in the minds of native born residents. Finally, immigrant entrepreneurial activity and the use of spaces that inserts immigrants into public life on their terms (e.g., using gathering spaces for ethnic festivals) helps immigrants to assert their "right to the city" in an era of growing antipathy toward immigrants among native born residents of the U.S.


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Segmented Assimilation and the Mexican American Prototype Revisited

Sandra Alvear (Rice University)


Mexican Americans have been part of the social landscape in the United States for generations, yet long‐standing trends in their educational attainment and economic advancement reveal complex, divergent paths that lead to upward mobility for some and relative stagnation for others. Using Houston—one of the top Latino immigrant destinations in the United States—as an exemplar of Latino immigration to globalizing cities, I explore the paths these immigrants take. Although competing assimilation theories have yet to come to a consensus regarding the Mexican American trajectory, recent studies highlight the need to further nuance assimilation discourse within the context of cities. In this research, multiple years of cross‐sectional data from the Kinder Houston Area Survey are used to examine the association between generational status and indices of cultural, economic, and civic assimilation. This approach produces a nuanced perspective on Mexican American assimilation and adaptation in cities, finding clear evidence both of assimilation processes across the generations, but also adopting to educational, cultural, and civic challenges in new, unique ways.


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Measuring Growth and Change in Metropolitan Form

Reza Amindarbari (Singapore University of Technology and Design), Andres Sevtsuk (Singapore University of Technology and Design)


Though urban expansion is key to explaining rapid economic growth, accelerating resource consumption, and social transformations in numerous emerging regions of the world, confusion persists around an empirical basis for measuring the growth and change of metropolitan areas. Numerous cities in the Global South simply do not know how and how fast they are growing. Policies addressing targets in energy consumption and economic growth are consequently based on partial evidence. Recent advancements in spatial analysis tools and remote‐sensing have made it possible to track changes in a large number of metropolitan areas around the world using consistent methods. Taking advantage of these developments, this paper discusses seven fundamental urban form and land‐use metrics that can be used to track growth and change in cities around the world ‐ Size, Coverage, Polycentricity, Compactness, Discontiguity, Expandability, and Land‐Use Mix. We analyze previous analogous metrics in the literature and propose important improvements made possible by novel GIS routines. A longitudinal analysis of these metrics over time can tell us how the patterns of metropolitan areas are changing ‐ is a city growing more compact or sprawling, are its centers consolidating around particular locations or is employment becoming more scattered? Coupling these changes with social, economic and environmental indicators of corresponding cities allows us to estimate what factors explain the types and speeds of growth we observe in different cities. Having a measurable basis for tracking growth and change in metropolitan form thus not only reveals what the current urban expansion trends are, but also helps illuminate where these trends come from ,where they might be headed, and how informed policy could affect their evolution.


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Analyzing Neighborhood Foreclosure Risk in Mature and Developing Suburbs

Katrin Anacker (George Mason University)


The national foreclosure crisis that began in early 2007 has had a disastrous effect on many individuals and households, most neighborhoods, cities, states, as well as the nation and the global economy (Been, et al. 2011; Bowdler, et al. 2010; Butrica, 2012; Center for Responsible Lending, n.d.; Cohen and Wardrip, 2011; Comey and Grosz, 2010; Heflin, 2010; Isaacs, 2012; Kachura, 2011; Kochhar et al., 2011; The New York Times, 2011; Rosengren, 2010; Stiglitz, 2012, among others). Foreclosure studies have been undertaken at the national (e.g., Immergluck, 2009a, 2009b), regional (e.g., Laderman and Reid, 2008), and select metropolitan levels (e.g., Immergluck and Smith, Anacker and Carr, 2011). Although the non‐academic literature (Leinberger, 2008) and the media have discussed the foreclosure crisis in the suburbs to some degree, the academic literature seems to have discussed this topic to an insufficient degree (Crump et al., 2008; Richter and Seo, 2011). This paper analyzes neighborhood foreclosure risk in mature and developing suburbs. The geography is the United States. The unit of observation is the Census tract level. The data base consists of two merged data bases; first, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) 3 2010 data base, provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; second, the American Community Survey (ACS) 2005‐2009 data base, publicly available on the U.S. Bureau of the Census factfinder2.census.gov website. Both data sets have Census tract boundaries based on the 2000 Census. This study will compare neighborhood foreclosure risk in three groups of Census tracts within the most populous 100 metropolitan area, based on Bulletin 10‐02 issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB): (a) tracts in principal cities; (b) tracts in mature suburbs; and (c) tracts in developing suburbs. Suburban Census tracts are defined as tracts located within the metropolitan areas but outside of principal cities. Mature suburban Census tracts are defined as tracts where the median year a housing unit was built is between 1950 and 1969, whereas developing suburban Census tracts are defined as tracts where the median year a housing unit was built is after 1970. Two research questions are asked, differentiating among tracts in (a) principal cities, (b) mature suburbs, and (c) developing suburbs: first, what factors determine neighborhood foreclosure risk? Second, what are the differences among the factors that determine neighborhood foreclosure risk? Very preliminary results indicate differences among these groups of tracts as well as among Census regions. Policy suggestions will be offered in this paper, based on final results.


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A Review of the Concept of Creative Cities in Europe: Brussels Capital Region, Towards a Creative City?

Priscilla Ananian (Université du Québec à Montréal)


As the concept of a Creative City has been deployed in European urban policies, the impacts on urban planning have been subject to closer review and discussion. The concept of a Creative City emerges from the context of knowledge based‐economy on the one hand; and from Europe's aim to reposition European cities in the Megalopolitan Archipelago World on the other hand. From the European Capital of Culture (1985) to the Bologna process (1999), the emphasis on Creative Cities has been changing European metropolises on several scales. This paper presents results from ongoing research on the construction of the concept of a Creative City in Europe and examines the impact of this concept on urban planning and policies in the Brussels Capital Region. Brussels is an international city and Capital of Europe with more than 1.150.000 inhabitants (Inner city) and more than 2.600.000 inhabitants (Metropolitan Region).The unanswered question is: how is Brussels regionalizing a European concept such as the Creative City and should it be changing paradigms of urban planning? Four plans are discussed in this paper to show evidence of the regionalization of the Creative City concept: Plan of International Development (2008); ongoing Regional Plans for Innovation and Sustainable Development; and the plan to create a metropolitan community of governance. This last plan should be an opportunity to restructure Higher Education centralities in the Brussels Metropolitan Region (Brussels, Leuven and Louvain‐la‐Neuve). The key findings are: 1. the concept of a Creative City in the Capital of Europe is recent and under construction if compared to the two other Belgian Regions (Wallonia and Vlaanderen) and to cities such as Lille in France or the Ruhr Valley cities in Germany. 2. The project of a Creative City has little spatialization on the regional territory even if the Brussels Metropolitan Region has more than 200.000 higher education students and the main Belgian concentration of jobs in innovative sectors. 3. The complexity and the innovative strategies that have been developed in the Brussels's case in order to connect the aims of these different plans to the urban and metropolitan scales, should change the paradigms of the Creative City as understood in Europe today.


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We Got More Educated, We Are Better Off? Right?

Stuart Andreason (University of Pennsylvania)


In the twenty‐first century, human capital and a highly educated workforce are the key factor to urban, municipal, and metropolitan competitiveness. America's increasing wage inequality can largely be attributed to the preference for high technological literacy and educational attainment (Goldin and Katz 2008). Cities and metropolitan areas benefit greatly from high concentrations of well educated, high skilled residents (Gottlieb and Fogarty 2003). Highly skilled cities are more innovative and able to shake off negative shocks and recessions faster than less educated cities (Glaeser and Saiz 2003). While the benefits of a highly skilled workforce are well documented, there is little recent research on what characteristics of localities or regions drive human capital accumulation. Well educated young adults state that they prefer to live in built up vibrant urban areas, but their actions show that wages and opportunity for continuing education are stronger attractors for these individuals (Cortright 2005; Hansen, Ban, and Huggins 2003). Local and regional economic development policy would benefit from a better understanding of how to attract or build human capital. There is even less research on what effect human capital accumulation has on the labor market as a whole. Analysis of the 78 metropolitan statistical areas that increased their educated workforce between 1990 and 2010 shows uneven labor market outcomes. Many regions that increased human capital did not improve their labor market. This suggests that improvement in the educational attainment of the regional workforce does not always trickle down to lower skilled workers. Urban and metropolitan leaders should find ways to ensure that the entire workforce benefits from programs to improve educational attainment. The first step in this is explaining why some regions have convert these gains and others do not. Using linear and multivariate logistic models I test the role of several economic and labor market dynamics in contributing to the conversion of growth in educational attainment into a stronger labor market. The dynamics that I hypothesize to be important include the role of in migration of young workers, the regional industrial mix, the presence and ranking of institutions of higher learning, the presence of a dominant industry or institution, and the level of residential segregation of educated workers from low‐skilled workers.


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Olympic Impact: Whose City is It?

Greg Andranovich (California State University), Matthew J. Burbank (University of Utah)


This paper is concerned with urban development’s consequences, particularly when cities bid for and then host the Olympic games. After discussing the politics of mega events, we examine the three US cities with recent experience of hosting mega events: Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City. Our examination of these cities assesses the original reasons for to host the Olympic games as expressed in the bid process, the development “model” used to put on the games, and the legacies in these cities in the post‐Olympics period. In these three cities, although the host city models varied the local impacts were similar in terms of the beneficiaries, calling into question the criteria and politics used to make these urban development decisions.


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From Toxics as LULUs to Green Goods as LULUs? Backfiring Advocacy and the Evolution of Community Organizing for Environmental Justice

Isabelle Anguelovski (University Autonoma de Barcelona)


Much of the extensive literature on environmental justice has examined inequities in exposure to contamination and health risks. Historically, minorities and low‐income populations have suffered from greater environmental harm from waste sites, incinerators, refineries, transportation, and small‐area sources than white and well‐off communities. Those toxic sources have traditionally been called LULUs (Locally Unwanted Land Uses). In cities, inequalities are also manifested in the territorial allocation of environmental goods and services. Indeed, deprived urban neighborhoods tend to get poor environmental services such as street cleaning and waste collection while wealthier and white communities enjoy environmental privileges ‐ parks, coasts, open space, or sports centers. In many cities, deprived neighborhoods are also often known as food deserts or fast food jungles. Residents of distressed communities have not remained passive and silent vis‐à‐vis environmental inequalities. Numerous environmental justice struggles have emerged around the globe since the 1980s. Furthermore, the EJ agenda has recently expanded to include the right to well‐connected, affordable, and clean transit systems; to healthy, fresh, local, and affordable food for community food security; to a green housing; and to increased opportunities in the green economy. From LA to Barcelona and from Durban to Lima, activists have organized to enhance the environmental quality and livability of their neighborhood and rebuild degraded spaces in a holistic manner. However, their demands are like a double‐edge sword: As the neighborhood becomes revitalized and greener, the lands often turns from being de‐valued to valued again. Residents start fearing that processes of encroachment and gentrification might push them away and that they might not be able to remain in a neighborhood they helped rebuild. The fear is to see a parallel process of greening and whitening for communities that have traditionally been mostly inhabited by residents of color. In the end, parks or healthy food options have come to be seen as LULUs. To date, little is known about the impact of these processes of (re)development and (re)valuation on community organizing and social movements. How do community groups and neighborhood organizations adapt their engagement and mobilization to this new reality? How do they engage planners and decision‐makers so that their neighborhood's environmental quality is enhanced but their neighborhood remains affordable? What discourses and strategies do they deploy? Through a study of community organizing in historically marginalized neighborhoods of Boston and Barcelona, I analyze resistance processes to the greater provision of environmental goods. I also consider the new discourses, alliances, and allegiances of activists, and examine how they grapple with a new complex scenario for their neighborhood.


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City Attraction Hypothesis and Global Intercity Competition

Ari‐Veikko Anttiroiko (University of Tampere)


Globalisation is dramatically changing the context of urban communities and the premises for urban development policy. In the context of global intercity competition, cities' major goal is to increase their competitiveness, in which the positioning and attractiveness of a city have a critical function. Attraction‐oriented strategy aims at effective absorption of external resources from the global space of flows. At the core of attraction strategy are business promotion activities with appealing incentives offered to businesses, but it is assumed that such a competition is risky and may lead to a race to the bottom. Therefore the emphasis is increasingly on less costly and more synergistic city marketing, which utilises city branding and 'city profiling' that aim at attracting value within some special high‐value adding service or high‐tech sector. This paper proposes a city attraction hypothesis that states that global intercity competition is essentially about a city's ability to attract the highest possible value from global flows of values in order to promote urban development. The result of such a global intercity competition determines cities' functions and positions in the global division of labour and thus in the global urban hierarchy, and ultimately determines their ability to increase prosperity and welfare in urban communities.


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Effects of Public Service Motivation on Citizen Participation

Nana Appiah (University of Texas at Dallas)


Citizens involvement in government administrative decisions, commonly referred to as "citizen participation," has been discussed extensively in the public administration literature. Most of such focus on the importance of genuine public deliberation as well as explore various ways of actively involving citizens in government decisions. However, discussions of the role of the public administrator in this process, and how their attitude influences public participation have only received scant attention. Much of this research shows that people with high public service motivation (PSM) are more inclined to embrace public discourse involved in their work with public service. Thus, employees with high PSM are more likely to be whistle blowers when democratic participatory measures are overlooked by their organizations. They are also more likely to make personal sacrifices toward citizen participation. This study continues this line of analysis by examining citizen participation (CP) and its effect on public service employees with specific emphasis on city planners and administrators. Specifically, we use results from a survey of city planners and administrators from California, Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and Texas, to explore the relationship between PSM and public servants' attitudes toward embracing citizen participation. The results suggest that while PSM influences planners' and administrators' attitude toward CP, other factors, such as institutional and public boards' support are also enormously important. Conversely, tenure and ability of employees to utilize discretionary time off when CP functions require them to work additional hours, do not significantly influence bureaucrat's attitude toward CP. We argue that knowing the attitudes of public service personnel toward citizen participation is essential because it informs administrators of the level of personnel management needed and strategies to adopt that foster PSM, while abiding with legislative and social requirements of public discourse in governmental decision making.


Book of Abstracts

Affordable Housing in National Register Districts: Mapping the Advantages of Historic Urban Neighborhoods

Douglas Appler (University of Kentucky)


The intersection of modern housing policy with the policies protecting the historic building stock found in many older cities creates opportunities that have never been fully recognized by the housing advocacy or historic preservation communities. While community services and facilities play a role in shaping the quality of life enjoyed by all income levels, ready access to those services is particularly important for low income households. At the same time, many of the historic neighborhoods found in older cities were built to facilitate urban life in the pre‐automobile era, resulting in a relatively tight concentration of community services and facilities. Many of those neighborhoods, particularly those that escaped Urban Renewal, are also now listed or are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This makes building rehabilitation projects in these neighborhoods likely candidates for a major source of gap financing in the form of federal, state and sometimes local historic preservation tax credits. This research explores the implications of this intersection for a policy goal that is too rarely associated with historic preservation: raising the quality of low income housing. Covington, KY and Louisville, KY, both historic cities located along the Ohio River, will serve as the primary case studies for this research. Using GIS, this paper will compare some of the locational characteristics of low income housing units built using two different forms of gap financing. One group was built using a combination of both Low Income Housing Tax Credits and the Historic Preservation Tax Credit, while the other group was built using Low Income Housing Tax Credits alone. It will map and measure the proximity of these two different types of housing to several basic community services, including: public transit stops, public schools, seniors' centers, hospitals, public parks, grocery stores and libraries. The findings indicate that when low income housing units are guided by the requirements of both Low Income Housing Tax Credits and Historic Preservation Tax Credits, the units produced are likely to be closer to basic community services than housing units developed using Low Income Housing Tax Credits alone. Bearing in mind that these are functionally new units, developed to meet the same standard of quality, the improved service access and additional sources of financing available for housing development within historic districts should make the creation of low income housing units in historic districts a much higher priority for housing advocates and historic preservationists than it is at present.


Book of Abstracts

Rethinking the Urban and Global Assemblage through Burning Cars and Concrete

Helen Arfvidsson (The Open University)


This paper starts in a particular moment of youth burning cars in the urban peripheries of Gothenburg, Sweden, in the late summer of 2009 and uses this event to rethink notions of the urban and global assemblage. A burning car generates spectacular flames, bold headlines, and government interventions, but it also sets in motion things that are less visible, connections that are left unconnected and quiet. Inspired by Annemarie Mol (2002) and John Law (2004), many worlds are enacted through this event; worlds connecting the global and the urban through, for instance, the car itself, or through the concrete characterizing these urban peripheries. By “doing multiplicity” this paper aims to move away from a singular, linear and bounded reading of global urban politics. It moves from multiple interpretations of a single reality to thinking about multiple realities and politics. Literature on the global assemblage (Ong and Collier 2005) and the urban assemblage (Farias and Bender 2009) is already engaged in this endeavour. However, this paper will suggest that a focus on multiplicity and enactment will better allow for a reading of the world as one and many, as enacted simultaneously and separately. It hangs together, but not quite as a whole; it clashes and coheres and the boundaries leak. Rather than attempting to unveil and discover a single, objective reality that contextualizes and explains the burning cars in Gothenburg, I open up the uncertain and ambiguous multiple realities of the burning cars and explore how they fit into the politics of the “global urban”. The paper will show how analyses of the burning of cars have relied on framings of Gothenburg as a single entity or a spatially and socially constructed whole, which lead to a dichotomous reading of the city. When these framings are questioned, multiple realities emerge and the dichotomous framing is blurred. Through a focus on the mundane detail of concrete in the areas where the burning of cars took place, this paper suggests that if the burning cars are not as spectacular as often framed, and if the dichotomous reading is challenged, then other realities emerge that can open up alternative understandings of the global, the urban, and the political.


Book of Abstracts

Sale of the Century: Infrastructure Privatization & the Financialization of the Local State

Philip Ashton (University of Illinois at Chicago), Rachel Weber (University of Illinois at Chicago), Marc Doussard (University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign)


In the last decade, a number of marquee infrastructure privatization deals have drawn increasing attention to the transfer of local and state infrastructure assets into private hands through sales or long‐term leases. Previous evaluations of infrastructure leases have focused on the privatization process and the terms of the arrangements negotiated by the public sector and the private concessionaires. In this research, we argue that these approaches fall short by failing to investigate the significant repositioning of the local state relative to financial markets produced by the rise of high‐priced asset lease deals. We develop his argument through a case study of the institutional transformation of the City of Chicago, the U.S.’s most aggressive instigator of infrastructure asset sales, with analysis identifying several dimensions along which the remapping of the local state has progressed. Even as the privatization agreements seemingly protect the City from the claims of investors, creditors and counterparties, they enmesh the City in a set of financial relationships best viewed through the lens of potential default – an event made more likely by the turn to financialization as a means of extracting value from urban infrastructure assets. Taken together, we argue that these developments create an institutional bias towards future privatization – a bias that becomes more entrenched with every sale.


Book of Abstracts

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Community Land Trusts and Fair Property Taxation: Evaluation of Policies at the State and Local Levels

Serge Atherwood (Pennsylvania State University), Rebecca Walter (Florida Atlantic University), Yanmei Li (Florida Atlantic University)


Shared‐equity homeownership is an alternative option for homebuyers who would otherwise not qualify for conventional mortgages or afford market‐rate homes. One type of shared‐equity homeownership is the community land trust (CLT) model. In CLTs, a homebuyer enters into a ground lease to purchase the home and all structural improvements attached to the land. The land is owned separately from the home by a nonprofit organization, which removes the cost of the land and makes the purchase more affordable. Although the homeowner has the opportunity to build equity under this model, the full capital gain is foregone through resale restrictions, which keep the home affordable for future buyers. Since homes are sold for less than market rate, property taxes assessed at the unrestricted market value challenge the intent of the model for sustaining affordability. Shared‐equity properties should not be assessed at market value since homeowners are not entitled to the full value of their home upon sale. However, there is no consensus on this fact between states or within states; even in those states where legislation outlines a fair tax approach for shared‐equity properties, county property appraisers and tax assessors often do not apply the law consistently. This augurs poorly for the equitable tax treatment of this alternate homeownership model. In this paper, two questions are addressed. First, in all 50 states and District of Columbia, what are the current policies, if any, in assessing shared‐equity properties of CLTs? Second, how consistently are the policies interpreted and applied by county property appraisers and tax assessors in states with existing legislation, and in states with the absence of fair property tax policy, what, if any, policies have been adopted at the local level? Building on research by Robinson (2008), we use data from each state’s enabling legislation, administrative decisions, case law, and/or appurtenant organizations to categorize laws and regulations that hinder or promote fair property taxation for CLTs. To address the first research question, we conduct a qualitative analysis that describes how shared‐equity property is valued and taxed in each state, what the eligibility requirements are for special taxation, and the justification for the development of special taxation legislation. To answer the second research question, we use two sets of case studies. The first will look at how consistently the policies are interpreted and applied by county property appraisers and tax assessors in those states with such policies. The second will explore the ways that CLTs negotiate property taxes in states with no fair property tax policy. The goal of this paper is to identify fair property taxation policies that best meet the intent of the shared‐equity model. These policies can serve as recommendations for the design of legislation that promotes the CLT model.


Book of Abstracts


Analysis of Urban Growth and Management, Case Study of Tripoli City, Libya

Almokhtar Attwairi (University of Kansas)


This research analyzes the growth of Tripoli city, Libya. It focuses on the role of politics and decentralization of urban authorities in last two decades on the urban growth and its impacts on the environment. Despite the fact that Libya is a small country in terms of population and a huge geographical area, urbanization rate is very high. In fact, it is one of the highest rates in the region and the African continent. According to the Urban Planning Authority, the urban growth has expanded over the former agricultural lands. which were been observed by the Agricultural Protection Authority. The inconsistent political changes and planning policies that took place from mid 1990s and until the recent years, have increased the demand on the land and the weakened the management processes. This paper seeks to explain the contemporary picture of urban growth in view of administrative processes and the urban and regional planning policy. It explains the gap between the central governmental institutions and the regional authorities. This policy indeed has resulted in an explosive urban sprawl driven by parallel property transactions that have been acting outside the formal governmental system.


Book of Abstracts


Evaluating Socially‐mixed Public Housing Redevelopment in Toronto's Regent Park

Martine August (University of Toronto)


Modeled after the HOPE VI program, socially‐mixed public housing redevelopment in Regent Park, Canada's first and largest public housing community, is now entering its second phase. Once the 15‐year redevelopment is complete, 2,087 units of public housing in the 70‐acre community will be rebuilt (a portion will be replaced off‐site), and over 5400 new market‐rate condominiums will be added to the newly‐designed, New‐Urbanist‐style community. While celebrated by mainstream media, critical analysts suggest that "revitalization" amounts to gentrification, removing a large barrier to private investment that has kept the downtown site affordable for decades. This paper explores resident experiences with relocation and redevelopment, examines tenants' thoughts on their new and old homes, and evaluates the extent to which redevelopment‐related goals for the improvement of tenant circumstances are being achieved. The paper is based on semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews with 50 tenants who have returned to newly‐built housing in the partially‐redeveloped Regent Park, and also draws on participant observation at meetings and community events, and 15 key informant interviews. Key Findings: While residents are more satisfied, on average, with their new apartments (compared to their former homes in Regent Park), the improvement was surprisingly marginal. Tenants appreciate fresh, new, pest‐free apartments (compared to their old, poorly maintained, and neglected former homes), but are sad at the loss of indoor and outdoor space in their new homes, and at the loss of community and friendships in their former buildings. Many residents who were forced to move into off‐site "replacement" housing (elsewhere in downtown Toronto) are upset to be displaced from their former community and not benefiting from the many facilities and services being put into the redeveloped area. Most residents have positive attitudes towards the idea of "social mix" and welcomed the idea of having new neighbors in condos. At the same time, many questioned the extent to which redevelopment was being done in the interests of Regent Parkers, and whether their needs would be prioritized as the neighborhood's social composition becomes increasingly dominated by wealthier residents of private market housing. The paper questions the extent to which market‐driven revitalization addresses the problems that existed in the neighborhood beforehand, and whether these issues could have been addressed in the absence of socially‐mixed redevelopment and gentrification.


Book of Abstracts


Where Poor Children Live: Household Structure and Change in Composition through the Eyes of Children

Nola du Toit (University of Chicago), Catherine Haggerty (University of Chicago), Kate Bachtell (University of Chicago)

Presenter’s email address: Dalton‐[email protected]

Most research looking at the effect of change in household composition on the lives of children focuses on the relationships of parents ‐ their marriages, divorces, cohabiting relationships, and so on. However, previous work has shown that there is a great deal of change in household composition in the lives of children when we examine all adults living in the home (du Toit, Bachtell, and Haggerty 2011). When including the presence of other adults, such as grandparents or extended family members in our household typology, 45% of households with children include other adults in the home who are not the child's parents, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, extended family members, and non‐related adults. Moreover, 10% live in homes where a parent is not present (du Toit et al. 2011, 2012). Importantly, these households vary greatly from two parent only homes in both economic (income ratio, public assistance usage, economic hardship, and home ownership) and non‐economic (knowing child's friends, school readiness, and reading to child) measures of child wellbeing. In addition, when considering these other adults in the home, half of households with children experience some kind of shift in composition, where at least one of the adults leaves the home or someone else moves in between two waves of data. We extend upon this research by looking at the diversity in household composition brought about by these other adults in the home at three points in time spanning eight years. Using longitudinal data from the Making Connections dataset, we examine the various types of households within which low income children live and the amount of change in household composition they experience across this longer time frame. Finally, we examine the consequences of these changes in terms of economic and non economic factors.


Book of Abstracts


Dark Tourism: The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Syndrome

Taika Baillargeon (Université du Québec à Montréal), Sylvain Lefebvre (Université du Québec à Montréal)


For about a decade, scholars and tourism experts have been talking about a growing phenomenon they called "Dark Tourism," described by Philip Stone (2009) as "the act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which has real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as a main theme." Although this practice is not novel, scholars have observed a growing interest, since the mid‐twentieth century, for places of 'recent' disasters and deaths. Today, although governments and municipalities rarely officially promote such tourism, many cities are confronted with the simultaneous marketing of their traumatic sites and grieving process of their citizens. Cities like New Orleans, Sarajevo, Berlin, Hiroshima and even New York are perfect examples of this inner conflict. After an extensive survey of the literature, we can observe three different areas of interest in dark tourism studies: 1) Research looking at the marketing of dark sites, often including reflections and criticism about the authenticity of the offered product; 2) Research looking at the tourists' experience and what drives them to dark tourism; 3) Research looking at the benefits and disadvantages of this trend, often including reflections about its impacts on the local communities. What is questioned is not necessarily the act of traveling to dark places in itself, but the moral implications behind it, as well as the legitimacy of these places' conversion into spectacles. Most thinkers point out that when history becomes a spectacle, the witness (foreigner or local) runs the risk of being transformed into a passive spectator. These justifiable criticisms are mainly based on the fact that dark sites are often marketed from the 'bottom up' for the tourists who merely consume a product, while local communities are still mourning. But does it always have to be that way? Is dark tourism only about the spectacles/spectators dyad? In this supply‐and‐demand scheme, where is the actual place of the local communities? In order to fill a gap in the literature and give room to civic appropriation and mobilization in the field of dark tourism, this paper will present instances where locals participated to this trend as actors in the management of their own past. While questioning this growing type of tourism, the present research aims to go beyond the sinister side of dark tourism, highlighting its positive side. As an increasing number of cities are compelled to manage such tourism, this research wishes to underline how it can be handled in a constructive way, producing positive gains for both the tourists and the local communities.


Book of Abstracts


Urban plans, global imaginations: ‘worlding’ Sydney via metropolitan planning

Thomas Baker (University of Newcastle), Kristian Ruming (Macquarie University)


Interdisciplinary debate within urban studies has emphasised the need to move beyond the study of ‘the city’ in bounded territorial terms to consider cities as assemblages of global and local, relational and territorial. This has been activated through critical approaches attending to the practices, processes and performances of assembly that produce contemporary global urbanisms. While such debate has occurred to a large degree within the urban geography canon, planning scholars have been advancing a similar agenda. Their work points out the need to unpack how extra‐territorial, global elements are involved in urban planning processes, acknowledging that the planning endeavour is one important means through which (global) urbanism is constituted and formalised. In this paper we investigate further the question of how planning operates to constitute global urbanism. To do this we look at Sydney and its metropolitan planning. We argue that Sydney’s metropolitan planning exhibits an authoritative, though particular, global imaginative geography, one that does the job of ‘worlding’ Sydney (Roy & Ong 2011). This argument is illustrated by discussing three elements that underlie Sydney’s global imaginative geography, namely: global conditions, policy models and inter‐urban comparisons. Following Gregory’s (2004) notion that imaginative geographies are ‘doubled spaces of articulation’ which create various kinds of visibilities and invisibilities, we reflect on the role of planning in the production of particular varieties of global urbanism. As a speculative‐strategic exercise, Sydney’s metropolitan planning offers the opportunity to analyse the politics of who speaks for the city’s future and what type of global imagination is deemed to count.


Book of Abstracts


“Oaklandish!”: Hipster Arts and Urban Development in Oakland, California

Robin Balliger (San Francisco Art Institute)


The urban redevelopment plan for Oakland initiated by former mayor Jerry Brown in the 1990s has been cited as one of the most ambitious urban restorations in California history. These plans included a proposal to bring 10,000 new residents to downtown Oakland through new construction of loft spaces and middle‐income apartments, and by creating an arts district funded by millions of redevelopment dollars to restore the Fox Theater and to create an adjacent charter school, Oakland School of the Arts. Sometimes identified as an urban hipster himself, Brown famously lived in a loft in the old Sears Roebuck building in downtown Oakland, when that area was still partially blighted. In recent years, Brown’s vision appears to be realized as there has been tremendous growth in trendy retail stores, restaurants, clubs, and arts spaces in downtown. The “Art Murmur” is Oakland’s first Friday gallery crawl, and while it used to be relatively unknown (hence the ‘murmur’ reference), in 2012 the Art Murmur hosts thousands of visitors, with streets blocked to accommodate music performances and gourmet food trucks, and art spaces in the area have more than doubled. In many ways the Art Murmur has successfully maintained the broad ethnic diversity of Oakland’s population, but the city as a whole has lost much of the African American population that historically defined the city, and downtown is bordered by neighborhoods that struggle with poverty and crime. Through an ethnographic approach, this paper examines the arts emphasis in the radical transformation of downtown, in relation to broader social and economic change in Oakland, including the demography of uneven development, and the cultural continuities and disjunctures that produce both opportunities and challenges for residents.


Book of Abstracts


Social Capital and Community Power over Urban Casino Development

John Balzarini (Temple University)


In The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida (2002) argues that social capital exhibited as dense associational ties is a negative attribute for cities and communities. Florida argues that cities should encourage the creation of places where "weak ties" of diverse social networks are the norm in order to attract highly mobile creative professionals. According to Florida, attracting these types of professionals is the key to economic success and development for struggling cities. Cities and communities with high levels of social capital exhibited as dense community ties create barriers to entrance for creative professionals. Because places with dense social capital ties prevent access to the creative class these cities and communities are in danger of having little power over urban development and are typical of places in decline. Thus dense social capital is associated with powerlessness and isolation for communities who have an abundance of this resource. This article critically analyzes Florida's argument against dense social capital ties as a source for community power over urban development. Using a case study of Fishtown, Philadelphia, this article examines a four year dispute between long‐time residents and newer residents of Fishtown over the construction of a casino in the community. Long‐time residents who supported the casino project utilized their dense social capital ties with other long‐time residents as a resource to challenge anti‐casino positions of newcomers, organize other members of their social networks in support of the casino and as leverage to negotiate with the casino for a community benefits agreement. This research shows that dense community ties were an important resource for long‐time residents of Fishtown. This resource was used by long‐time residents to have power over casino development and to influence the outcomes awarded to the community by the casino. Contrary to Florida's argument, I suggest that dense social capital ties based on shared place‐based experiences, interactions and appraisal of community needs can be a source of power for communities to shape urban development as well as benefit from the outcomes.


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