During the 1990s, local and federal urban policymakers, neoliberal politicians, and advocates for the poor came to a broad consensus: the geographic concentration of low-income, minority residents in public housing projects located in the inner city constitutes the fundamental problem facing US cities. Accordingly, to solve the problems allegedly associated with the spatial concentration of poverty, public housing, which concentrates low-income people in the inner city, must be demolished and the residents relocated. In this paper I argue that such federal public housing policies are based on a conceptually inadequate understanding of the role of space and of spatial influences on poverty and on the behavior of poor people. The use of spatial metaphors such as the ‘concentration of poverty’ or the ‘deconcentration of the poor’ disguises the social and political processes behind poverty and helps to provide the justification for simplistic spatial solutions to complex social, economic, and political problems.

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This paper examines economic restructuring in the U.S. Midwest, focusing on three locations in west-central Illinois: Quad Cities, Peoria and Canton. We use a modified version of regulation theory, which we extend by incorporating an explicit theory of scale that acknowledges that scale is socially produced and constantly remade, especially during periods of rapid economic change. Historically, west-central Illinois has been the location of pitched battles between corporate actors, such as Deere and Company, International Harvester, and Caterpillar Corporation, and unions such as the Farm Equipment Workers (FEW) and the United Auto Workers (UAW). When the locally vibrant and radical FEW was subdued, a period of relatively peaceful labor relations ensued as the large corporations and the UAW agreed that the national level was the appropriate scale at which labor regulation should occur. By the early 1980s, the economic prosperity of the region was shattered as the large farm-implement firms were forced to restructure in the face of the Farm Crisis and a general climate of intense global competition. Central to the restructuring strategy of John Deere and Caterpillar was the reconfiguration of the scale of labor relations, as the companies were able to break the national system of pattern bargaining and to force unions to engage in concessionary bargaining at the local level. The economic crisis that struck west-central Illinois has been accompanied by mass layoffs, increased poverty, and the loss of union influence in the major industries.

In this article I argue that the US public housing policy, as codified by the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 (QHWRA), is helping to reconfigure the racial and class structure of many inner cities. By promoting the demolition of public housing projects and replacement with mixed-income housing developments, public housing policy is producing a gentrified inner-city landscape designed to attract middle and upper-class people back to the inner city. The goals of public housing policy are also broadly consonant with those of welfare reform wherein the 'workfare' system helps to bolster and produce the emergence of contingent low-wage urban labor markets. In a similar manner, I argue that public housing demonstration programs, such as the 'Welfare-to-Work' initiative, encourage public housing residents to join the lowwage labor market. Although the rhetoric surrounding the demolition of public housing emphasizes the economic opportunities made available by residential mobility, I argue that former public housing residents are simply being relocated into private housing within urban ghettos. Such a spatial fix to the problems of unemployment and poverty will not solve the problems of inner-city poverty. Will it take another round of urban riots before we seriously address the legacy of racism and discrimination that has shaped the US city? Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.

The landscape of downtown Moline, Illinois, has been completely remade in the last 20 years. Once the preeminent location of the farm implement industry, the deindustrialization of the 1980s left the city with over 30 acres of abandoned factories along the Mississippi River. Led by the dominant corporate actor, Deere & Company, the area has been reconstructed and now features sites for cultural consumption, service-based employment, heritage tourism and a revitalized manufacturing base. Just outside the new landscape of Moline lies its counterpart: a food bank, substandard housing for immigrant workers, a new prison and abandoned factories. This article argues that economic crisis, in this case deindustrialization, undermined the local power of the working class and allowed business elites, led by John Deere, to have a free hand in remaking the landscape of downtown Moline. The new ‘post-industrial’ landscape serves many purposes: to revive capital accumulation, to serve as an image maker for Deere & Company, and to function as an economic development strategy based on tourism.