Urban Affairs Review

Contrary to theoretical predictions, blacks have been more successful at acquiring municipal jobs in New York City than in Chicago. Moreover, the reverse was true earlier in the century: Blacks were once better represented in city jobs in Chicago. Using longitudinal data and historical accounts, the author argues that this reversal of fortunes happened because blacks were able to mobilize and exploit a critical juncture in political development—the decline of the political machine—earlier in New York City than in Chicago.

The author applies a social constructionist approach to the issue of urban ethnic relations, arguing that analyzing the political processes that construct urban images, issues, and identities will illuminate arenas of power and conflict obscured by other approaches. Toronto, known for harmonious ethnic relations, is ideal for a case study of how urban images are constructed and maintained and how certain conditions, issues, and grievances are not defined as problems. The author draws on theoretical literature, elite interviews, and textual analysis of the periodical literature on Toronto to demonstrate the important role of elites in framing issues that define the "objective conditions" of urban ethnic relations.

The authors suggest how regime politics is influenced in systematic ways by particular kinds of bargaining environments. They describe a theoretical framework designed to examine the interplay of local democratic development, market environments, and intergovernmental networks on regime dynamics in eight cities in Western Europe and the United States since the 1970s. The authors explain how structural forces influence critical aspects of local regimes, particularly their governing coalitions, means of public-private coordination, and prevailing policy agendas on economic development.

The authors seek to explain why the inner city has remained on the agenda of British governments since the 1960s. Several factors suggest that government attention to the issue should wane over time: the absence of a strong constituency, limited salience to the state's core interests, and the relative failure of past policy. In fact, top government ministers and senior officials have played an active role in maintaining the issue on the agenda. To explain the continued visibility of this issue, one must consider the moral dimension of policy making along with theories of agenda setting.

The authors analyze the census tract location of over 11,000 certificate and voucher households in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs, and compare those to the distribution of public housing and various other project-based subsidized housing developments such as Section 236. They find evidence that household mobility programs may be succeeding in the goal of dispersing affordable housing opportunities beyond the central-city boundary, but they also find evidence that market forces and personal choices may lead toward reconcentration of suburban voucher and certificate holders in neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status and higher proportions of minorities.