Pro-growth urban politics and the inner workings of public-private partnerships

Urban politics in North American and, to some extent, Western European cities continues to be defined by tenacious efforts to capture footloose and highly competitive private investment to stimulate local economic development. In older cities especially, public investment in property-led urban redevelopment, in the shape of mega-sports stadiums, entertainment venues, mixed-used residential-hotel-retail projects and educational-medical research complexes, is now rendered valid and reasonable by the much-promised increase in commerce, tax revenues, employment and other forms of economic growth (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003; Orueta and Fainstein 2008). Economic growth is now so fully normalized as the priority for urban development that competing models, such as sustainable community development, are considered exceptional and, frequently, idealistic. Pro-growth urban politics is equated with an entrepreneurialism and efficiency with local governments expected to work with the private sector (Erie et al. 2010; Sagalyn 2007; Stadtler 2014). A pro-growth politics of economic development relocates actual governance of urban development - building of stadiums, revitalized waterfronts, and so on - from traditional (and publicly accountable) government (i.e. city councils, planning departments and housing authorities) to collaborative organizational arrangements between public and private sectors. The central mechanism of pro-growth governance of urban development is the public-private partnership (Dewulf et al. 2011; Erie et al. 2010; Grimsey and Lewis 2004; Osborne 2000).