Review Article: North Urban Political Economy, Urban Theory and British Research

In 1976, when European debates within urban theory were dominated by neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian approaches to cities as sites for the provision of social and welfare services, the very different notion of ‘the city as growth machine’ slipped into the US urban studies lexicon with the publication of Harvey Molotch's article of the same name. In 1983, the year in which Castells brought the radical phase of European urban studies to a halt with a famous warning against ‘the useless construction of abstract grand theory’, the concept of an urban regime had a similarly unobtrusive birth when the phrase was used by Fainstein and Fainstein to describe ‘the circle of powerful elected officials and top administrators’ in US city government. Had the story ended there it is unlikely that the world – especially outside North America – would have heard much more of urban regimes and growth machines. As it has turned out, though, from the late 1980s onwards urban scholars have hardly seemed able to hear enough about these two approaches within US urban political economy.