IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cjrecs/v10y2017i3p391-405..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revisiting ‘the city as a growth machine’

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin R Cox

Abstract

Written 40 years ago, Harvey Molotch’s paper ‘City as a Growth Machine’, is a milestone in urban studies. By its focus on land owners and land related interests and their collective promotion of urban growth he radically shifted the centre of gravity of studies of urban politics. This article celebrates his achievement. It then shows, first, how his insights might be deepened by a critique whose point of departure is a recognition of the capitalist nature of that politics and the role played by the accumulation strategies of property developers; and second, how our understanding of urban growth politics in the USA might be deepened by comparison with that in the countries of Western Europe.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin R Cox, 2017. "Revisiting ‘the city as a growth machine’," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 10(3), pages 391-405.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cjrecs:v:10:y:2017:i:3:p:391-405.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cjres/rsx011
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert A. Beauregard, 2005. "The Textures of Property Markets: Downtown Housing and Office Conversions in New York City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(13), pages 2431-2445, December.
    2. Sayoni Bose, 2015. "Universities and the redevelopment politics of the neoliberal city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(14), pages 2616-2632, November.
    3. Kevin R. Cox, 2010. "The Problem of Metropolitan Governance and the Politics of Scale," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 215-227.
    4. A Harding, 1991. "The Rise of Urban Growth Coalitions, UK-Style?," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 9(3), pages 295-317, September.
    5. Andrew Wood, 2004. "The Scalar Transformation of the U.S. Commercial Property-Development Industry: A Cautionary Note on the Limits of Globalization," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 80(2), pages 119-140, April.
    6. Richard A. Walker & Richard A. Walker, 1978. "Two Sources of Uneven Development Under Advanced Capitalism: Spatial Differentiation and Capital Mobility," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 10(3), pages 28-38, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William L. Swann & Shelley McMullen & Dan Graeve & Serena Kim, 2019. "Community Resistance and Discretionary Strategies in Planning Sustainable Development: The Case of Colorado Cities," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(4), pages 98-110.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew M. Wood, 2004. "Domesticating Urban Theory? US Concepts, British Cities and the Limits of Cross-national Applications," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(11), pages 2103-2118, October.
    2. Lasse Gerrits & Peter K Marks & Sofia Pagliarin & Ward Rauws, 2022. "Strategic archetypes of planning processes: Model and evidence," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(9), pages 2516-2530, November.
    3. Paul Lawless, 1994. "Partnership in Urban Regeneration in the UK: The Sheffield Central Area Study," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 31(8), pages 1303-1324, October.
    4. Mark Sandford, 2020. "Conceptualising ‘generative power’: Evidence from the city-regions of England," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(10), pages 2098-2114, August.
    5. Jacob Salder, 2013. "Redeveloping local economic strategy for the post-regionalist era: A contextual benchmarking approach," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 28(7-8), pages 752-769, November.
    6. Antoine Guironnet, 2019. "Cities on the global real estate marketplace: urban development policy and the circulation of financial standards in two French localities," Post-Print halshs-02297204, HAL.
    7. Frances Brill, 2020. "Complexity and coordination in London’s Silvertown Quays: How real estate developers (re)centred themselves in the planning process," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(2), pages 362-382, March.
    8. Robin Boyle, 1993. "Changing Partners: The Experience of Urban Economic Policy in West Central Scotland, 1980-90," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 30(2), pages 309-323, March.
    9. Nicos Souliotis & John Sayas & Thomas Maloutas, 2014. "Megaprojects, Neoliberalization, and State Capacities: Assessing the Medium-Term Impact of the 2004 Olympic Games on Athenian Urban Policies," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 32(4), pages 731-745, August.
    10. Tom Goodfellow, 2017. "Urban Fortunes and Skeleton Cityscapes: Real Estate and Late Urbanization in Kigali and Addis Ababa," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(5), pages 786-803, September.
    11. Donald McNeill, 2007. "Office Buildings and the Signature Architect: Piano and Foster in Sydney," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(2), pages 487-501, February.
    12. G Stoker & K Mossberger, 1994. "Urban Regime Theory in Comparative Perspective," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 12(2), pages 195-212, June.
    13. Thierry Theurillat & Patrick Rérat & Olivier Crevoisier, 2015. "The real estate markets: Players, institutions and territories," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(8), pages 1414-1433, June.
    14. Andrew Wood & David Valler & Peter North, 1998. "Local business representation and the private sector role in local economic policy in Britain," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 13(1), pages 10-27, May.
    15. Natacha Aveline-Dubach, 2017. "Embedment of “Liquid” Capital into the Built Environment:," Post-Print halshs-01563507, HAL.
    16. Dimitris Ballas & Graham P Clarke, 2001. "Modelling the Local Impacts of National Social Policies: A Spatial Microsimulation Approach," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 19(4), pages 587-606, August.
    17. Li Wang & Heng Chao & Guicai Li, 2019. "Diversification and Local Embeddedness: The Rescaling of National New Area Governance in Post-Reform China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-22, November.
    18. Ashish Goel & L.S. Ganesh & Arshinder Kaur, 2020. "Benefits Formulation in Construction Projects: An Exploratory Study through a Social Sustainability Perspective," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 9(2), pages 162-176, July.
    19. Nicholas A Phelps & Andrew M Wood & David C Valler, 2010. "A Postsuburban World? An Outline of a Research Agenda," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(2), pages 366-383, February.
    20. N.A. Phelps & N. Parsons, 2003. "Edge Urban Geographies: Notes from the Margins of Europe's Capital Cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(9), pages 1725-1749, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cjrecs:v:10:y:2017:i:3:p:391-405.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cjres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.