Read the following sections of Ronald Oakerson, “The Study of Metropolitan Governance” (excerpts), in Richard Feiock, ed., Metropolitan Governance: Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2004)

• Tocqueville’s Model of Local Governance, pp. 22-24 [Alexis de Tocqueville was a French writer who visited the United States in the 1800s and commented on its local political institutions]
• Governance structures, pp. 28-30
• Characteristics of metropolitan governance, pp. 30-38

In this reading, Ronald Oakerson is describing what he believes to be the advantages of “polycentric” forms of governance.  A “polycentric” governance structure has many different centers of authority, as found in typical suburban areas, where there are many small towns, school districts, water and sewer districts, fire districts, library districts, etc., in addition to higher levels of government (counties and states) and civic organizations, such as neighborhood associations.

Key terms

“Self-interest rightly understood”

Civil society

Intergovernmental associations

Citizen participation

Less adversarial (consensual) politics

Strong representation

Public entrepreneurship

Community differentiation

Self-sorting

Accountability

Comprehension questions

1. What is “self-interest rightly understood” in the context of politics? How should you act politically if you “rightly” understand your self-interest?

2. What is the relationship between civil society and local government? How do they “interpenetrate” each other in a metropolitan area with a large number of small governments?

3. What research does Oakerson cite to back up his claim that smaller governments have more citizen participation?

4. Why does Oakerson believe that making every government pay its own way is the key to a less adversarial, more consensual politics?

5. Why does Oakerson think that having a large number of elected officials (“strong representation”) would be beneficial to governance?

Due April 18

Reading:

TMR Chapter 6, “Beyond the Black–White City” (entire chapter)

Key terms:

Hart-Celler Act of 1965

anti-Communist refugees

unauthorized immigrants (undocumented or “illegal” immigrants)

Important suburbs of LA:

• East Los Angeles

• Monterey Park

• San Marino

• Compton

“gorgeous mosaic”

Comprehension questions:

1. What are the three types of immigration in the late 20th century that Teaford identifies early in the chapter, and what is distinctive about them?

2. What ethnic and social groups were able to buy their way into rich suburbs like San Marino, Calif., and Coral Gables, Fla., and why were they able to do so?

3. How and why did Monterey Park, Calif., become heavily Taiwanese/Chinese? What conflicts with whites were engendered, and how were they resolved?

4. Why were immigrant-owned businesses singled out by some African-Americans for boycotts and/or violence in the 1980s and 1990s?

Due April 11

Reading

Jon Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution, Chapter 5, “The New Metropolitan World” (selection, pp. 165-198; stop reading at the end of the last full paragraph on page 198).

Key terms

Gentrification

Gentry

Bohemian phase

Festival marketplaces (for example, Faneuil Hall (Boston, MA))

James Rouse

“Gay ghettos”

West Hollywood

Edge cities (for example, Perimeter Center (north of Atlanta, GA))

Self-created cities (this term does not appear in the text but the concept is described on p. 198)

Comprehension questions

1. How does Teaford define “gentrification”? Who were the “gentry” and why did they seek to move into older inner-city neighborhoods?

1. What changes did the process of gentrification bring to neighborhoods? To the region?

1. What were festival marketplaces intended to do by their creators, such as the real-estate developer James Rouse and the architect Benjamin Thompson? What role did the successful ones end up serving?

1. What purposes did “gay ghettos” serve for LGBTQ people? Who was excluded from these so-called “ghettos”?

1. What is an “edge city”? How are edge cities different from traditional downtowns?

Due April 8

Reading

Jon Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution, Ch. 4, “The Debacle,” pp. 124-156 (top). Read the beginning and the sections titled “Central-City Decline” and “Race and Rebellion.” Stop reading at top of p. 156 in the print version of the book; you don’t need to read the final section titled “Creating a New Alternative.”

Key terms

“The Bronx is Burning”

Fiscal crisis

National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders

Community action programs

War on Poverty

Busing

Milliken v. Bradley Supreme Court decision

Comprehension questions

1. What does Teaford mean by the “triumph of decentralization”? What evidence does he cite for this triumph?
2. What physical and social problems were increasingly prevalent in cities in the 1960s and 1970s?
3. What were the causes of the unrest in African-American communities in the 1960s (for example, the Los Angeles and Detroit riots of 1965 and 1967)? In what ways was this unrest different from race riots in earlier decades?
4. What political and economic gains did African-Americans make in cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and why?
5. How did the federal government and federal judges try to rectify racial inequities, segregation, and power imbalances in the 1960s? What was the final word of the Supreme Court in its Milliken v. Bradley decision in 1974?

Due April 4

Reading

Jon Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution, Chapter 3, “Coming Apart”

Key terms

Southdale Center

Victor Gruen

Stanford Industrial Park

Ray Kroc

Kemmons Wilson

Sun City

Del Webb

Controlled environments

West End, Boston

Relocation

Jane Jacobs

Comprehension questions

1. What was the significance of suburban shopping centers for residents of the suburbs?
2. What new forms of businesses emerged in the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s? What innovations did they pioneer?
3. What was the attraction for retirees of the so-called Golden Years Ghettos, such as Sun City, Arizona?
4. Why did urban expressways and renewal provoke a negative response in inner-city communities?
5. What was Jane Jacobs’s analysis of the problems of large cities? What solutions did she propose?

Due March 28

Reading

Jon Teaford, The Metropolitan Revolution, Chapter 2, “Reinforcing the Status Quo”

Key terms

Allegheny Conference on Community Development (Pittsburgh)

Title I of the Housing Act of 1949

Color line

Shelley v. Kraemer

West Side Mutual Development Committee (Atlanta)

Brown v. Board of Education

Levittown

Auto dependence

Political fragmentation

Comprehension questions

1. What attempts were made in the decade after WWII to rebuild the central cities? What segments of the community thought this was necessary, and why?

2. Why was maintaining the “color line” so important to white homeowners in the postwar period? What methods did they use to try to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods? When their attempts failed, what happened?

3. What were the attractions of new suburbs consisting of simple single-family homes, such as the Levittowns in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania? What were the consequences for metropolitan areas of the increasing movement of residents to these suburbs?

Due March 25

Readings

Ch. 7, “The Federally Supported City, 1950” (read only from p. 103 to p. 110), in American Urban Form 

Ch. 11, “Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream” (excerpt, bottom of p. 195 to middle of p. 209) in Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford UP, 1985)

Key terms

1944 Federal-Aid Highway Act

Home Owners Loan Corporation

Federal Housing Administration

Wagner-Steagall Act of 1937

long-term self-amortizing mortgage

Residential Security Maps (sometimes called “redlining maps”)

“unbiased professional estimate”

Shelley vs. Kramer Supreme Court decision

Comprehension questions

1. What were the economic drivers of growth and prosperity for metropolitan areas during World War II and the subsequent years?

2. What federal investments were made in cities as a result of (a) the New Deal, (b) the Wagner-Steagall Act of 1937, and (c) the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944?

3. Why did the Home Owners Loan Corporation develop Residential Security Maps, what did the maps show, and how were they used by financial institutions that engaged in so-called “redlining”?

4. What standards did the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) adopt as the basis of its so-called “unbiased professional estimate” of the value of homes? What impacts did its standards have on cities?

The midterm will be held Thursday 3/21 during regularly scheduled class time. It will consist of multiple choice questions and short answers.

To prepare for the multiple choice questions, review the posts on this website with key words and comprehension questions. Also go to the iclicker website and review the daily quizzes.

For details on how to prepare for the short answer section, see the review sheet PDF below.

Extra credit may be awarded on the test if you make a posting to the class forum as described in the review sheet by Wednesday, March 20.

You may also review the class lecture slides, below.

Due March 11

Key terms

1. short-term and amortizing mortgages for homeowners

2. African-American “Renaissance”

3. Black–white city

4. Racial restrictive covenants

5. Neighborhood associations

6. Consensual rule

7. Decentralization

8. Blight

Comprehension questions

1. What was the position of urban African-Americans from the 1920s to the 1940s? What kinds of new communities did they form?  What barriers and conflicts did they face?

2. Suburbs were increasingly politically separate in the inter-war years. How were they organized socially and economically? Why did they favor independence from the city?

3. What happened to the old downtowns in the 1930s and 1940s? Why did local leaders feel that rebuilding was going to be necessary after World War II?