Recapturing suburbia: Urban secession and the politics of growth in Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle - Page 375 |
Save page Remove page | Previous | 375 of 407 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
Large (1000x1000 max)
Extra Large
large ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
All (PDF)
|
This page
All
|
Chapter 10
Recapturing Suburbia
Urban politics is, above all, the politics o f land use — Paul Peterson
The dissertation’s central contention is that urban secession movements are best understood within the
context o f a city’s growth politics. Comparative case study o f secession movements in Los Angeles,
Boston, and Seattle reveals that existing theories inadequately explain the driving forces behind
secessionist impulses at the urban level. It has been argued that explaining urban secession from a
political economy perspective (e.g. as attempts to create public choice-style competition) are
unsatisfying (Tiebout, 1956; Ostrom and Bish, 1973; Ostrom, 1972; Schneider, 1985). Without
challenging the perspective’s underlying assumptions, I find that none o f the efforts studied would
facilitate the kind of competitive marketplace that political economy enthusiasts envision.
Scholarship from the politics o f exclusion perspective, while also informative, also fails to
fully explain social movements to secede at the urban level. One strand o f this tradition holds that
incorporation movements are primarily concerned with assuring local consumption o f the local tax
base. Miller (1981) and Bums (1994) are the most well known articulations o f this perspective.
M iller’s examination o f municipal incorporation on the Los Angeles periphery during the 1950s and
1960s finds that communities used incorporation as a Proposition 13-style strategy to protect their tax
bases from annexation by tax-starved central cities. Rather than building municipal infrastructures of
their own. Miller chronicles the use o f the “Lakewood Plan” to contract services cheaply with the
County o f Los Angeles. In what Miller describes as “essentially white political movements” (135),
the formation o f Lakewood Plan cities sparked a mass exodus of middle and upper class whites to
these new low-tax communities. The end result. Miller says, “benefited middle and upper income
groups at the expense o f those low income individuals who were increasingly concentrated in low
resource cities”(196).
364
Object Description
Description
| Title | Recapturing suburbia: Urban secession and the politics of growth in Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle - Page 375 |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | Chapter 10 Recapturing Suburbia Urban politics is, above all, the politics o f land use — Paul Peterson The dissertation’s central contention is that urban secession movements are best understood within the context o f a city’s growth politics. Comparative case study o f secession movements in Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle reveals that existing theories inadequately explain the driving forces behind secessionist impulses at the urban level. It has been argued that explaining urban secession from a political economy perspective (e.g. as attempts to create public choice-style competition) are unsatisfying (Tiebout, 1956; Ostrom and Bish, 1973; Ostrom, 1972; Schneider, 1985). Without challenging the perspective’s underlying assumptions, I find that none o f the efforts studied would facilitate the kind of competitive marketplace that political economy enthusiasts envision. Scholarship from the politics o f exclusion perspective, while also informative, also fails to fully explain social movements to secede at the urban level. One strand o f this tradition holds that incorporation movements are primarily concerned with assuring local consumption o f the local tax base. Miller (1981) and Bums (1994) are the most well known articulations o f this perspective. M iller’s examination o f municipal incorporation on the Los Angeles periphery during the 1950s and 1960s finds that communities used incorporation as a Proposition 13-style strategy to protect their tax bases from annexation by tax-starved central cities. Rather than building municipal infrastructures of their own. Miller chronicles the use o f the “Lakewood Plan” to contract services cheaply with the County o f Los Angeles. In what Miller describes as “essentially white political movements” (135), the formation o f Lakewood Plan cities sparked a mass exodus of middle and upper class whites to these new low-tax communities. The end result. Miller says, “benefited middle and upper income groups at the expense o f those low income individuals who were increasingly concentrated in low resource cities”(196). 364 |
