“The City as a Growth Machine: Towards a Political Economy of Place”

Abstract

Harvey Molotch, a New York University emeritus professor of social and cultural analysis and sociology, developed an influential model of the city as a growth machine in this 1976 article from the American Journal of Sociology . Borrowing the term from the ethnic machine politics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Molotch calls the economic growth-oriented coalitions that dominate local decision-making “growth machines.” Unlike ethnic city political machines, growth machine constituents are business leaders, civic boosters, property owners, investors in local-oriented financial institutions and their allies, not low-income immigrants. Their agenda is not helping a specific ethnic group, but to promote economic growth in the city. Members of growth machines see the main objective of spending public funds, regulating land use, and other government action as promoting economic of growth. Members of growth machines believe that growth that benefits them will be good for everyone in the community. Growth will provide good jobs and income for city residents and generate increased property tax revenue that can be used to improve local schools, libraries, health clinics, and parks. Economic multiplier effects will help small businesses employ more people and provide more goods and services. Lower unemployment will make it possible for the city to spend less on social welfare. Property tax rates may decline. Molotch questions each of these assumptions. Anti-growth coalitions consider growth coalitions self-serving and instead favor protecting the environment, promoting social justice, and reducing inequality draw on the city as a growth machine concept.

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