City Life-Cycles and American Urban Policy

City Life-Cycles and American Urban Policy is an interdisciplinary study of differential urban development in the United States since 1945 that aims to place urban policy choices in historical perspective. The book discusses the issues and establishes a framework within which relevant quantitative measurements can be interpreted. The text also describes systematic empirical tests, which typically take the form of regression equations, and traces city population changes into two proximate causes: annexation and urban growth. The reasons for annexation contrasts among the nation’s largest cities; the second-city growth determinant; and the institutional explanation for fiscal differential among large cities are also considered. The book further tackles the issue of federal fiscal assistance to declining cities. Economists will find the book invaluable.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Cities in Evolution

Cities, Innovation, and Economic Development

The Social and Political Uses of Older Cities

Do We Want a Permanent Urban Underclass?

Appendix: Postindustrialism—False Promises?

2. Measuring Urban Legacies

Defining City Age

The Regional Dimension

Jobs to people for People to Jobs?

Appendix: The Potential Bias in the City Age Classification

3. Why City growth Rates Differ

Accounting for Contrasts in City Population Growth

The Demographic Transformation of the Old City

Life-Cycle Tendencies in the 1970s

Appendix : Cleveland's Historical Life-Cycle

4. City Borders and the Timing of Urban Development

The Role of State Policy Guidelines

Housing Endowments and City-Suburban

Income Disparities

The Territorial Histories of Young and Old Cities

The Rules o f the Game

The Social Uses of the Industrial Cities

Territorial Legacies and City Economic Positions

5. Cities within the Industrial System

The Determinations of Central-City Job Changes: 1948-1972

Manufacturing and Metropolitan Job Growth

The Fall of the Heartland

6. The Product Cycle and the Rejuvenation Question

Cores, Cycles, and the Decentralization of Production

The Core and the Periphery in Retrospect

The Product Cycle and the Seedbed Function

T h e Dispersion of the Seedbed Function

7. Urban Political Legacies and City Expenditure Contrasts

City-Sub Conflict and Local Fiscal Organization

Sociospatial Systems (Revisited)

The Structure of Expenditure Variations in Fiscal 1970

Local Fiscal Institutions as the "Determinants" of City Expenditures

The Revenue Constraint and the 1976 Rankings

The Logic of Federal Fiscal Relief to Declining Cities

8. Urban Differences and Federal Grant Formulas

Measuring Central-City Differences

The 1977 Community Development Block Grants

Formula as an Index of City Age

The 1980 Allocations under the New Formula

9. The Case for Dispersal

Name Index

Subject Index