Abstract
This paper synthesises two models: Savitch and Kantor’s bargaining and the amenity led growth model. Using evidence from Oklahoma City’s recent revitalisation, the argument concludes that leadership serves as a pivotal link between the bargaining table and the construction of new amenities to attract productive labour and improve their bargaining position. The proposed unified model reprises the role for leadership to include providing amenities prerequisite for economic development.
Oklahoma City should have careened into obscurity. Oil speculation fuelled mid-century growth, yielding an economic windfall during the 1970s oil crises. Oil extraction and construction rose as basic industrial sectors. However, in 1982 the oil bubble burst, leading to a collapse in several industrial sectors. Over the next decade, one-half of the jobs in the regional staple industry disintegrated. The construction boom collapsed. Nearly one-fifth of financial sector employment evaporated (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2015a, 2015b). Using a snapshot of mid-1980s Oklahoma City, economic development models present dire forecasts for revitalisation. According to both bargaining and amenity led growth models, the oil bust economic strife leads to disadvantageous positions: market-based policies which do little to improve the local economy and a low quality of life which repels skilled labour. Taken together, economic revitalisation models predict a dismal future.
Oklahoma City regenerated into a more diversified, more influential market over the next 20 years. In 1991, leaders coordinated nearly US$250 million in subsidy to attract a United Airlines maintenance facility. United Airlines declined, citing the untenable quality of life. Oklahoma City had hit rock bottom. After the embarrassing setback, skilled political leaders snatched the reins and corrected Oklahoma City’s disastrous course. Leadership redefined the city’s strategy to lure business. Instead of relying on tax abatements to lure temporary business deals, Oklahoma City focused on building a great city to market. Over two decades, three mayors convinced Oklahoma City to approve over US$2 billion in capital investment projects. (City of Oklahoma City, 2015) These campaigns provided dual narratives: economic growth and quality of life. Regardless of global trends, it appears that local leadership can unite to solve local problems. Today, the local economy flourishes with growing industries ranging from leisure to financial services to business services. Oklahoma City turned from complete catastrophe to contemporary renaissance by implementing quality of life programmes – working under the assumption that building a space where increasingly mobile firms want to do business is better than a place where firms receive subsidy to transact business.
Postindustrial Oklahoma City provides a clear route for reconciliation between revitalisation models. Savitch and Kantor theorise that cities bargain for capital and urban development. This bargaining model suggests that economic position and intergovernmental support drive a city’s bargaining position, while local culture and leadership steer how projects develop. Oklahoma City’s weak position led to market-centred policies which aimed at luring businesses with economic incentives through the 1980s. However, Oklahoma City’s leadership pursued the amenity led growth model to augment their position at the bargaining table after United Airlines rejected a high profile bid because of a low quality of life. Throughout the late 1990s, Oklahoma City engaged a socially centred strategy, even though the economic situation marginally improved. This development calls for reconsidering leadership as merely a steering mechanic; leadership can drive revitalisation by attracting key economic resources through amenities. Using evidence from Oklahoma City this paper synthesises the bargaining and amenity models to include a key relationship among leadership, quality of life and economic revitalisation in the global era.
Economic revitalisation in the global era
Contemporary cities face a fundamentally different economic outlook than they did in 1970. Cities face a mercurial global market rather than a slower paced, more stationary regional economy because firms operate with easier communication, stronger coordination and increased liquidity. Contemporary cities compete under a global context, recruiting resources and protecting against economic raids from the far corners of the Earth. Instead of one-time games for sunken investment, cities continually seek to capture and contain liquid capital. Finally, cities can implement new strategies to attract different types of resources than in the industrial era. Today, cities can choose to construct global market resources rather than simply chasing smokestacks.
Restructuring the global economy directly affected the context under which cities operate. Sassen observes the change from local and regional economies into a ‘global network of factories, service operations and markets; these are all processes only partly encompassed by the activities of transnational corporations and banks’ (Sassen, 2006: 6). The future-jobs assurance that local plants provided diminished as firms expanded their production across the globe. The ensuing deindustrialisation changed the type of jobs found in urban areas. Major cities shifted from manufacturing production centres to service and information centres. These changes in local business increased competition among cities seeking to carve niches in the global era.
Cities prioritise economic development in an evolving market. Peterson (1981) argues that cities strive to improve their relative position to other communities economically, socially and politically, highlighting the importance of economic development. Eisinger (1988) chronicles the trend where cities function as economic boosters through various policies. Eisinger’s entrepreneurial cities compete through supply- and demand-side policies. Supply-side growth occurs through market-based approaches, such as subsidies and low taxes; demand-side growth focuses on developing new markets. Clarke and Gaile (1998) note that the work of cities – economic development – changed rapidly upon the onset of globalisation. Economic changes replaced the familiar competition of luring large plants with high fixed costs with an iterated bargaining game with capital. The new rules to the development game force cities to reevaluate their entrepreneurial strategies. These rapid changes may change the context, but the primary strategy remains the same: develop the local economy. In a sense, one of the key public goods for local governments to provide is a healthy marketplace.
The bargaining model
Savitch and Kantor (2004) develop a bargaining model to understand urban development in a global context, where cities negotiate with mobile businesses to invest capital in their region. Savitch and Kantor weave the narrative that the current economic situation and access to intergovernmental support drive economic development. In short, as a city’s current access to economic resources improves, its bargaining position strengthens. Economic position can be described in both short- and long-run terms. In the short run, unemployment, fiscal health and service provision dominate the economic perceptions. In the long run, the ability to obtain and retain key economic resources sustain prosperity. Global era resources range from high value-added human capital to infrastructure enabling high speed access to the world wide web. (Clarke and Gaile, 1998) Thriving cities can request concessions from incoming businesses, while beggars may not afford to be choosers.
Local leadership and local culture steer the development process, placing limits on the selection and execution of certain choices. Savitch and Kantor highlight the capacity for citizens and the state to establish and pursue an agenda. In a similar vein, Judd and Parkinson (1990) describe leadership as a dominant elite group with control over the formal governmental authority. This version of leadership functions as the same guiding force behind the policy-making process. More importantly, Judd and Parkinson recognise coherent leadership as a group which can a represent a city and her interests. Coherent leadership implies a reconciled group of elites working toward the same policy programme. Cities without leadership effectively lack a voice at the bargaining table, squandering any advantage enabled by economic resources. Local cultural preferences serve in a similar function. Populations with post-materialist values may be more stringent in their demands than their materialist peers. In other words, community-centric societies will demand more public good concessions from businesses than their individualist, free-market counterparts. Taken together, local culture and leadership interpret the community’s will and ability to conduct business at the bargaining table.
Bargaining positions influence policy outcomes. Cities arrive at a bargaining position based on economic position, state support, leadership and culture. Savitch and Kantor argue that the policies cities adopt correlate with their relative bargaining position. Weaker bargaining positions strengthen the advantage held by mobile capital, often resulting in ‘market based’ policies. These entrepreneurial policies range from local subsidy to in-kind infrastructure investments. On the other hand, social policies often extract concessions from businesses, ranging from public green spaces on private property to contributions to public projects. Figure 1 illustrates Savitch and Kantor’s model, which suggests that cities in a stronger bargaining position are able to more easily implement social policies than their peers in weaker bargaining positions. Although structure does not necessarily prevent cities in weakened positions from implementing these types of policies, relative bargaining strength does influence (and perhaps constrain) local decision-making in Savitch and Kantor’s selected cases.
Savitch and Kantor bargaining model.
The bargaining model narrative limits a key element in both politics and economics: human agency. Although the bargaining model leaves cities with some autonomy in the global market, the constraints are cumbersome. Following Savitch and Kantor’s own metaphor, even an expert driver has no method to move their vehicle without an engine. Under this logic, even a collective of expert brokers would be unable dislodge economic malaise from a weakened bargaining position. Luckily for some, Savitch and Kantor acknowledge that prospering cities can leverage their resources through social policies to improve their position. On the other hand, cities with weakened economies face a limited menu of options, most often market incentives to lure business.
Savitch and Kantor’s case selection includes several cities, but the study does not include a community with weak driving and strong steering variables. This omission begs the question, what happens when skilled drivers get behind the wheel of rusted out jalopies?
Amenity led growth
An alternative model focuses on attracting key economic resources by erecting amenities. Strom outlines a strategy shift where ‘city promoters have moved from a model of selling, where one tries to persuade the buyer to purchase what one has, to marketing, where one tries to have what the buyer wants … Cultural institutions associated with beauty, good taste, and higher purpose, become singularly important symbolic assets for image-conscious marketers’ (Strom, 2002: 7). In a world of mobile capital, repeated bargaining for a local plant provides only temporary jobs. Market-based tactics sell the city to firms and yield only temporary access to global capital. Local labour enjoy access the attracted jobs until another city provides a more lucrative opportunity for the mobile firm. To lure business in the long run, cities must attempt to both develop physical capital and attract human capital.
Postindustrial firms seek different resources than industrial era firms. Location determined comparative advantages for industrial era staples: manufacturing and extraction. Geography creates natural advantages for certain locations over others for industrial firms. Access to certain natural resources creates locational advantage for firms extracting those resources. Access to combinations of resources can empower manufacturing firms in certain areas and inhibit their growth in others. As the American economy deindustrialised, more mobile sectors rose to prominence. Service, leisure and health firms receive advantages from constructed, human geography rather than natural topography (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2015a, 2015b; Judd, 2002; Judd and Fainstein, 1999; Sassen, 2006). These increasingly mobile industries exploit constructed advantages – from business service agglomerations sprouting near their primary market or airlines flying routes through mega-airports on a spoke-and-hub system. This change leads to potential decline for cities with natural industrial-era advantages. Instead of relying on natural geographic advantages, cities must now manufacture their own place luck.
Beyond seeking constructed physical capital, firms also seek high value-added human capital. As firms relocate manufacturing to the periphery, urban employment demand shifts from large numbers of low-skilled workers to high-value-added workers (Clarke and Gaile, 1998; Glaeser and Kohlhase, 2003). In the contemporary era, firms are not the only mobile factor. Clarke and Gaile argue that entrepreneurial cities seek human capital to link their basic economies to the proliferating global network. Clark et al. (2002) suggest that amenities lead urban growth – likely owing to a labour forces’ demand for a better quality of life. Albouy (2015) and Roback (1982) indicate that many amenities are linked to natural geography, such as scenic vistas and a temperate climate. Several examples suggest that nature does not determine quality of life; if this were the case, then Chicago’s winter, Phoenix’s heat and Miami’s hurricane threat would chase inhabitants elsewhere. Although physical characteristics are vital, manmade and cultural amenities – such as culinary diversity and museums – also contribute to the local quality of life. Florida (2002) argues that high-value-added ‘creative class’ labourers seek culture and tolerance. Figure 2 adapts Clark’s diagram, relating migrating productive labours to a community’s economic situation. Theoretically, highly skilled labour may be more mobile than their less skilled counterparts. Florida concludes that cities which attract mobile creative human capital will prosper. Florida suggests that high value-added workers may be willing to move to new metropolitan areas in order to experience better amenities. If amenities can improve a city’s economic resources – especially work force productivity – then what enables cities to undertake quality of life programmes emerges as a critical factor in a larger revitalisation model.
Clark’s amenity led growth model.
Studies applying the amenity led growth model have not always produced affirmative evidence. Storper (2013) provides city-level evidence that amenities and growth present a ‘chicken and egg’ problem for researchers, because that economic prosperity attracts both productive labour and enables cities to develop amenities. This quantitative analysis raises critical questions about relationships within model, which are likely best answered by a qualitative case study.
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City’s recent revitalisation provides evidence that leadership enables cities to turn their fortunes through developing amenities. Oklahoma City’s leadership revised its entrepreneurial strategy to lure business investment. Instead of trying to sell the city to business with short-term bargains, leaders worked to build an urban market which would sell itself to business. Leaders developed referenda which would levy new taxes earmarked to build large slates of amenities ranging from entertainment districts to arenas to central parks. Oklahoma City voters have approved tax hikes to fund several slates of amenities since the United Airlines-quality of life rejection. The effects on the local workforce are remarkable. Unlike many secondary cities, Oklahoma City has stymied the leaky bucket, improving the ratio of college graduates and the number of Fortune 500 companies between 1990 and 2010. (Bureau of the Census, 2015a, 2015b; CNN, 2015) Taken together, it appears that leadership sparked Oklahoma City’s renaissance with amenities.
The oil boom and bust
Petroleum extraction developed a staple economy during the industrial era. Crude oil extraction played a crucial role in the local economy’s recovery from the Great Depression. 1 Oklahoma City produced some of the loosest drilling regulations in the region, much less for urban areas. Anecdotally, a Conoco-Phillips oil derrick extracted oil on the state capitol’s front lawn, expressing the dominance of the oil industry overrode state and local power. Successful oilmen soon rose to prominence in the region, often moving on to state and national politics. 2
Overreliance on the extraction sector led to economic catastrophe. During the 1970s OPEC crises, local oil revenues fuelled construction from industrial rigs to residences. Local financiers developed several risky investment practices regarding oil extraction. Many local banks underwrote loans to build ‘wildcat’ wells, which plumb blindly in places without expensive geological studies to confirm oil is underground. When the oil bubble burst in 1982, the local construction and financial sectors fell as well. When oil prices finally declined, several 1970s loans proved problematic, leading to a liquidity crisis. Ensuing industry and bank failures led to a sharp decline in the local economy. With the economic base pulverised, Oklahoma City’s economic future grew grim. Making matters worse, many local peak corporations declined or merged into larger firms. On the city’s centennial in 1989, the beleaguered economy sputtered.
Changes to the global economy directly dampened the local economy and indirectly eroded the local leadership. Several peak businesses either evacuated Oklahoma City or merged into larger conglomerates. Brownfields created by previous attempts to revitalise downtown led businesses to flee the central business district (Lackmeyer and Money, 2010). Oklahoma City’s failed efforts contributed to the problems posed by increased global competition. The potential leadership roster attached to outbound businesses declined, producing a third-tier sports journalist and a local bookstore owner as prominent leaders instead of established oil families. Changes in the leadership cadre reflect a larger economic restructuring. By the end of her first century, Oklahoma City bore a weakened economy, weakened leadership and maintained no vision for the future.
Building a field of dreams
Distressed economically, Oklahoma City sought investment through market-based policies. In 1991, United Airlines solicited bids for placing a major maintenance facility in several cities. Oklahoma City, county and state government combined to offer the largest subsidy package to the airline (Lackmeyer and Money, 2010). When United declined, citing quality of life issues, Oklahoma City hit rock bottom. Political leaders offered practically the entire farm to a foreign firm and failed. Leadership scuttled the market-based entrepreneurial strategy, realising that even the most fruitful market-based incentives would not land business. While the local economy still stagnated, leadership knew that they needed a new strategy. Motivated and somewhat open to new ideas, Oklahoma City’s leadership consulted with experts and followed several other US cities’ plan: amenity led growth.
Instead of selling Oklahoma City through business incentives, leadership focused on building a city to market. With local peak business leaders considering moving their operations to Houston, Mayor Ron Norick bought time, offering tax abatements to local businesses. Norick literally called on all local leaders – from state and county officials to chief librarians to public school superintendents to locally based CEOs – to meet about fixing Oklahoma City’s problems. Norick naviagated the project through difficult political waters and successfully mobilised the remaining local leadership resources after the United Airlines rejection. Calling together the remaining corporate leaders – including those scouring real estate in Houston – Norick called for ideas to improve the local quality of life and rebrand the city as a reasonable destination for business investment.
Norick’s coalition proposed combining nine projects into a single slate: the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPs). 3 Within two years of the United Airlines rejection, MAPs faced a referendum vote by the public. Norick took MAPs to the electorate, relying on a coalition including middle-class whites, business and political elites. 4 The plan for raising revenue was surprisingly straightforward: impose a temporary sales tax, place revenue into a fund and spend this money on infrastructure projects as approved by voters. Oklahoma City’s only viable revenue stream involves the sales tax, because state law places municipalities in a fiscal straitjacket (Pagano and Hoene, 2010). Leaders feared that complex fiscal schemes or public–private relationships would turn voters against the programme, so they kept the project as simple as possible. Instead of rerouting existing funds, Oklahoma City taxed and spent.
More important than the civic improvements, MAPs redefined the city’s strategy to lure business. Norick focused on building a great city to market, instead of selling tax abatements to lure temporary business deals. Future leadership followed similar strategies, with subsequent mayors pushing quality of life initiatives. These coalitions followed a similar ad hoc nature, with executives applying coherent enough leadership to raise resources for revitalisation projects. 5 In 2001, MAPs 4 Kids passed with support from working class neighbourhoods, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on education facilities. In 2009, MAPs 3 passed with support from upper-class whites, allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to build cultural amenities from green spaces to public senior health centres. This process installed amenity led growth as the local paradigm when approaching economic growth and revitalisation. The programmes continue to receive large support from the public, polling an 80% approval among voters (Shepard Research, 2009).
Although the city’s development strategy is widely accepted, leaders still face a difficult puzzle when constructing coalitions to pass revitalisation programmes. These dynamic, short-lived coalitions suggest that the quality-of-life paradigm reaches support across cleavages, while passing a specific programme requires organising support from certain groups. In some cases, organised labour championed the cause, while in others local natural gas magnates led the charge. During the most recent programme’s election cycle, the dissenting campaign did not attack the need for the programme. Rather, the opposition demanded different programmes for the slate. The battle is no longer whether Oklahoma City should erect amenities, rather the argument focuses on which quality of life programmes should Oklahoma City pursue.
Despite the negative effects associated with globalisation, the decline of its key industries and a fundamental change in local governing alliances, Oklahoma City produced a series of competent political entrepreneurs who leveraged leadership resources to engage large-scale revitalisation projects. The resources rallied behind these programmes indicate coherent enough leadership. Instead of accepting decline further into obscurity, leaders bet the farm on a postindustrial programme to develop a local leisure industry, attract high value-added labour, and build infrastructure to spark and sustain growth. Despite the housing bubble, real estate developers built residential condos near Oklahoma City’s central business district and adjacent entertainment zone. Although several of the city’s largest employers focus on extracting natural gas, the local economy has diversified with aeronautical manufacturing, computer technical support and medical research firms relocating work to Oklahoma City. Multiple destructive tornadoes in nearby suburbs could not slow the economic renaissance in the city. Prosperity is unevenly distributed throughout the metropolitan area, however the areas receiving funds from the several MAPs programmes continue to prosper. The local economy has become a more competitive, more stable market. In other words, the revitalisation programme worked.
Reprising the role of leadership
Oklahoma City’s disjointed process reflects a larger, post-regime era of leadership. For nearly a decade, scholars called for a redevelopment of local governance theory (Judd and Laslo, 2012; Mossberger and Stoker, 2001). Even the patriarch of regime theory has joined the chorus, indicating the need to move beyond the old paradigm (Stone, 1989, 2013). This change in economic structure has changed the agents of local politics. In an era of mobile capital and the decline of local champions, cities have been forced to produce coherent enough leadership.
Instead of building a sustained regime to implement a long-term agenda as did postwar Dallas and Atlanta, Oklahoma City created ad hoc coalitions for each slate of programmes. Each referendum enjoyed support from unique voting blocs and different groups. 1993’s MAPs relied on the mayor’s connection to the Chamber of Commerce and civic organisations, which is strikingly similar to the pattern Strom (2008) identifies in the wake of declining downtown champions. 2001’s MAPs 4 Kids united real estate interests, organised labour, minority groups. In 2008, middle-class voters supported the mayor’s, media and professional sports team ownership’s Big League City referendum. In 2009, MAPs 3’s coalition lost key parts of the MAPs 4 Kids coalition; labour dissented while the working class voters on the southwest and south central side voted ‘no’. At first glance, this style of politics appears too chaotic to be effective. However, Oklahoma City produced coherent enough leadership to implement programmes without a long-term coalition.
Coherent enough leadership wields the resources required to implement an agenda, such as building public amenities. Cities must create a public good – quality of life – in order to attract firms and labour. Therefore, providing amenities can be a collective action problem. Leadership can fill this void through various programmes. Historically, this process may have occurred in the private or public sector, when elites erected water works, public subsidised railways or entertainment districts anchored by sports facilities (Rosentraub, 2009; Sbragia, 1996; Spirou and Bennett, 2003; Warner, 1987). Globalisation and increasingly mobile creative labour has highlighted the impact of these programmes. Amenity development has the potential to pay great dividends, helping communities such as Oklahoma City turn from the brink of failure to major league city within two decades. Local leaders have consistently relied on experts to guide their investments, from local city planners crafting large-scale plants to specialty firms such as Convention Sports & Leisure advising the specific size of convention halls and number of luxury suites for indoor arenas. With this advice readily available, leaders are no longer required to develop and implement revitalisation agendas; instead, leaders simply have to exert the power to select items for the agenda.
Oklahoma City’s experience indicates that leaders can improve its economic condition despite globalisation placing more structural constraints on cities.
Increasingly mobile capital has transformed amenity provision into a public good for cities in the global era. Amenities allow a community to lure creative, high value-added labourers to their workforce, boosting productivity and attracting businesses to the region. Florida suggests that diverse cultures lure creative members of society; this argument suggests that fostering a tolerant, multifaceted culture functions as an amenity that attracts high value-added human labour. Clark (2011) argues that a diversity of scenes – combinations of activity and place – contribute and define a region’s culture. Silver et al. (2010) maintains that entertainment districts function as hubs for local amenities, while Rosentraub argues that major sports facilities can anchor these districts. The size, shape and cost of these programmes are variable, including their funding source. Both the private and public sector can provide amenities, but cities without amenities face a potential market failure. Contemporary business models focus on high value-added processes (Clarke and Gaile, 1998; Florida, 2002) in turn relying on skilled labour. If skilled labour seeks a higher quality of life, then they will congregate in cities which produce a more amenities and vacate areas with fewer amenities. Healthy cadres of skilled labour provide the strongest buoy in the global market, as they provide a dynamic, value-added resource to the production process. As a result, cities seeking capital must develop and maintain amenities to attract critical human capital (and therefore business) in the global era.
Oklahoma City’s revitalisation is remarkable, especially in light of globalisation’s effects on local leadership. Hanson et al. (2006) observe a decline in traditional local leadership in several American cities. Traditional staples of the local business elite declined as businesses consolidated from local firms to multinational conglomerates. Consolidation of many regional firms into a few national firms replaced the secondary city CEO with a regional manager. Mid-level management replaced the traditional city boosters, local business executives. The new business executives often focus on advancing their own careers instead of a focus on improving their local community; after all, mid-level business leaders will likely relocate to other cities during their corporate ladder ascension. These transient regional managers replaced local CEOs, eroding the relationship between business elite and municipal government (Strom, 2008). As a result, established cadres of political leadership in American cities changed. Entrepreneurs find fewer business elites willing to commit resources to local governing coalitions. Social leaders often fill the vacancies left behind by business elites. The departure from business-dominant leadership potentially leads to a less coherent, less powerful leadership, because social leaders may not be able to raise the resources necessary to solve problems.
Leadership links the amenity led growth model and the bargaining model. Cities may exist either with or without a coherent leadership – either caused by conflicting or uncoordinated elites. Communities with strong leadership are more capable of mobilising and allocating local resources toward developing public amenities; cities without coherent leadership do not enjoy this advantage. Local leaders are able to serve as a patron behind infrastructure that can spark amenity led growth – luring human resources to the region and improving the community’s bargaining position.
Unifying the models
Amenity led growth and the bargaining model dovetail nicely together. Simple amendments to the Savitch and Kantor bargaining model compensate for amenity led arguments. Primarily, amenities can affect the city’s economic position. In this framework, low quality of life works against a city’s bargaining position by soiling its economy. If a city were to improve its amenity offerings, then it should see an improvement in its economic resources and bargaining position.
Leadership plays a pivotal role in economic development, because local amenities are a public good. Owing to the collective action problem, private actors are unlikely to foot the bill for amenities without external assistance. Only coherent leadership has the ability to erect public goods (amenities), leading to a multifaceted role in the consolidated model. This market failure creates a key relationship in Figure 3. While leadership remains as a steering variable in the bargaining model, it can also indirectly affect its bargaining position through amenity programs.
A consolidated model.
Other portions of the model remain constant. Economics, politics and context continue to factor into the bargaining position. Bargaining positions continue to heavily influence policy outcomes. Reprising Savitch and Kantor’s automobile metaphor, amenities serve as keys in the ignition – they simply need a leader to act to get the motor running. Notably, the unified model provides evidence for both sides of Storper’s chicken and egg argument. On one hand, amenities can serve as a catalyst for economic growth by attracting key labour resources into a marketplace; on the other hand, the economic conditions within a region influence what policies are available for local leaders. This updated model refurbishes the late 20th century model for the global era to account for mobile labour, mobile firms and human agency.
Oklahoma City timeline.
Implications
Cities face new choices in the global era. Cities with coherent leadership can make decisions to develop internal resources. This autonomy is lacking in the bargaining model and absent from the amenity led growth model. Instead of descending into a capital-chasing competition to provide firms with lucrative subsidies, communities with weak bargaining positions have the power to coordinate resources and improve the local quality of life. Oklahoma City’s quality of life programmes and subsequent revitalisation suggests that Judd and Parkinson are correct: ‘cities are not the helpless pawns of international finance, industry and commerce. They are in a position to mediate and direct their own destinies’ (Judd and Parkinson, 1990: 14). While globalisation may have changed the dynamics of local power coalitions, the value of quality leadership has greatly increased. Leadership may be more difficult to organise in the global world, but its existence can have potent effects on a city’s destiny.
Evidence from Oklahoma City suggests that globalisation is not necessarily bad for cities. Instead of falling into a dysfunctional market-based approach to temporarily lure capital, Oklahoma City invested in its future with amenities. The 2008 recession barely phased the local economy, as sale tax receipts recovered within 18 months. 6 The local economy continued to steadily grow despite lagging natural gas prices, and construction continues on downtown housing along the central business district’s borders. Oklahoma City followed Strom’s logic that it is better to develop and market what firms want than compensate for deficits with sales tactics. With the global market’s focus on skilled labour, quality of life rises in importance. Globalisation should receive some credit for public amenity improvements, because it presents an impetus to abandon the business subsidy race to the bottom and engage the quality of life race to the top.
In a cruel irony, globalisation has simultaneously equipped local leadership with a route to prosperity while undercutting the cadre of elites that would normally lead a city. Economic restructuring and corporate consolidation have pulverised the foundation of traditional local political alliances. Until recently, governing coalitions usually included peak business leaders, including local CEOs and other business elites. Economic restructuring replaced CEOs with regional managers, leaving many leadership rosters rather shallow. While globalisation directly affects local economies, it indirectly erodes the traditional base of local leadership. Although non-profit and social leaders fill the seats left behind by corporate CEOs, they are often unable to muster the resources needed to pass meaningful action. This atrophy in action potentially undercuts the urban revitalisation. Coordination between political entrepreneurs and resource holders may be more difficult in a global world, especially when a community senses decline.
More research is necessary to assure generalisability of this unified model. Oklahoma City may simply be an outlier. Similar cases may be rare, such as Chicago’s amenity-laden lakefront revival under Daley, but they tell similar stories: weakened economies with little public support paired with strong leadership. Under Richard M Daley’s lead, Chicago rebuilt its downtown waterfront into a cultural campus – despite a remarkable decline in critical staple industrial sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture (Bennett, 2011; Spirou and Judd, forthcoming) Chicago’s bargaining position in the late 1980s and early 1990s was relatively weak. Chicago deviated from the predicted market-based policies by investing in amenities; by the late 2000s, Chicago’s bargaining position had improved. Economic position appears to not be an exogenous occurrence – cities can improve themselves when leadership produces keen policies. As more cities invest heavily in amenities, more opportunities will arise for applying the applying bargaining model.
This analysis fills a gap in the literature by examining a case with relatively weak driving variables and relatively strong steering actors. The case does not undermine the analysis presented in Savitch and Kantor’s Cities in the International Marketplace, instead, it presents additional information from one of the volume’s few blindspots. Savitch and Kantor do not present a case with weak driving variables and strong steering variables. The evidence collected fills in the gap in the bargaining model literature to the amenity led growth model, which highlights the role of agency and local leadership.
Coherent enough leadership saved Oklahoma City from economic disaster not by steering, but by building infrastructure. Leaders pursued amenities after hearing point blank that the local quality of life was too low during a bargaining session. The resulting policy programme outfitted the city born in a day for the global era. Leadership-induced quality of life drives economic growth in Oklahoma City, improving the local bargaining position. This evidence enables the combination of two schools of economic development thought. As a result, economic revitalisation can be better understood by combining amenity led growth and bargaining models into a single portrayal of urban development. Perhaps more importantly, however, is the role that individuals play in this story. Despite sweeping systemic changes in the global marketplace and profound impacts on the local political economy, local leaders still have the agency to improve their community’s destiny.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.