The current symbiosis between American cities and American commerce, namely, the idea of a city as a “growth machine”, is severely disturbed. In his 1976 essay, sociologist, Harvey Molotch wrote, “The political and economic essence of virtually any given locality, in the present American context is growth. A common interest in growth is the overriding commonality among important people in a given locale.” In other words, this growth is the very essence as to why cities promote corporate relocations, sports teams, and hopefully, attracts people to move in.
The problem with the growth machine ideology, however, is that there exists a conundrum when it’s implemented and observed within s city. In New York for Sale by Tom Angotti, he states, “One contradiction of the growth machine is that its blind infatuation with growth undermines the residents’ quality of life, which in turn suppresses growth.” Angotti emphasizes the various layers of self-interest and greed that is evidently present yet so unrecognized by the general public.
At the core of this are the real estate developers and the landowners who abuse and take advantage of their power to land use augmentation (e.g. Robert Moses wanting to create an expressway in lower Manhattan to fit his image of what a “perfect city” should look like and/or have). As a result of the increase in population and traffic flow, then, mass-production businesses like department stores would flourish, which would require laborers, and thus, creating unions. The growth machine, when viewed in an optimistic light, seems to benefit the majority with the production of more job opportunities, more disposable income, more tax revenue for public services for residents to enjoy. Most people believe this progressive city mindset.
On the contrary, the extremes of how much this mindset has influenced the actual way society functions actually caused a regression: “the city’s slow rate of new construction over the last half-century [20th century] is still considered to be an aberration to be overcome and not the natural result of the high cost of land in a city that is grossly overdeveloped, its limited population growth, a declining quality of life, and opposition from neighborhoods.” (40 Angotti) What the growth machine fails to consider, at least on the micro level, are the potential external factors, the side effects, that may arise and, as a result, cause the imbalance of city life.
The reason as to why this issue exists boils down to understanding who has the position, the money, and thus, the power, in society to control what happens to where and when. In this case, it’s a small handful of real estate investors, in collaboration with various insurance companies, banks, and brokerage firms – nationally and internationally – create these monopolistic typhoons that have absolute control over what they want and continue to get what they want. Without jobs with substantial wages, and the increase in rent rates and tax rates to better society by giving such opportunities for the majority, the troubled American economy has exploded, in which any signs of peaks in the stock market is meaningless to an underclass without stakes (no jobs = no disposable income = no money in the stock market).
Questions to consider:
- Is there a long-term systemic problem with housing in America right now, or is it more a short-term thing as we continue to get our bearings after the Great Recession?
- Some politicians say we’d like people to own homes: It’s good for communities, there are all these spillovers, people still want to own homes, and we should try to get that number back up. Economically, is it good if a lot more people own homes?
- To what extent is this [real estate/housing crisis] a federal issue versus a local issue?
