The Infrastructural Limits to Growth: Rethinking the Urban Growth Machine in Times of Fiscal Crisis

Abstract

Since the 1970s, centralized interventions into the infrastructural affairs of US cities have been in decline. As a result, local entities have been compelled to shoulder a greater share of the burden for developing the urban infrastructure networks and public works needed to support growth. Under conditions of neoliberalism, local officials and growth-machine participants have pursued this local infrastructural imperative by means of increasingly speculative and risky financing strategies deployed through the 'back door' of traditional democratic channels. The following analysis is empirically focused on three Californian cities -Emeryville, Oxnard and Vallejo -which achieved impressive levels of growth around the turn of the twenty-first century. However, these cities subsequently suffered precipitous economic contraction. As such, they demonstrate the unprecedented challenges now facing the urban growth machine in the wake of the current global economic crisis. Two emergent challenges, in particular, appear poised to challenge the historical resiliency of the growth machine: the 'reverse infrastructural trap' and nascent conflicts between municipal bondholders and municipal employees. The cases presented here thus raise important questions about the continued viability of the pro-growth agenda in the context of structural fiscal deficits, chronic infrastructural decline and extreme capital-market volatility.

Pushing austerity: state failure, municipal bankruptcy and the crises of fiscal federalism in the USA

“…Even if it has never been the dominant narrative in any explicit way, localized austerity has deep roots in the American model of fiscal federalism, which has been incubating budgetary crises at the state and local government levels for decades (see Kirkpatrick and Smith, 2011;Lobao and Adua, 2011;Levitin, 2012). The Great Recession that began in 2007 brought this to a head as never before, triggering unprecedented budget crises across all scales of the government system in the USA (see Pew Charitable Trusts, 2012;SBCTF, 2012).…”

Accounting for groundwater in future city visions

“…Kirkpatrick and Smith (2011) show, for aging cities in the US, that public water infrastructure works are funded independently of city budgets such that key infrastructure decisions are often far removed from community sentiment. Under both a strategic and aspirational futures, the greatest water gains can be delivered through the introduction of water-saving technologies in smart homes-noting that this also has a positive effect on groundwater systems.…”

The global trope and urban redevelopment: the American experience

“…Globalization, it is documented, facilitates the rise of the "entrepreneurial city" with its "new urban politics", a relationship that powerfully directs these cities into the future (Kirkpatrick and Smith, 2011;Hackworth, 2012). Harvey (1989Harvey ( , 2012) echoes a dominant belief in noting that globalization shapes these terrains via an accelerated time-space compression that "hyper-mobilizes" businesses, industries, and speculative investors.…”