Urban Affairs Review

Recent research shows that inequality between racial groups is a critical determinant of redistributive policy in the United States. Using various measures of local and state spending and examining multiple levels of geographical and political jurisdictions, we extend this research to government spending on local public goods. Specifically, we examine (1) whether the extent to which income inequality falls along racial lines dampens local and state government spending on public goods, (2) which types of public goods are most affected by the racial structure of inequality, and (3) whether political variables such as local leaders’ racial identities and party affiliation mediate the relationship between racial inequality and spending on public goods. The findings reaffirm the need to consider racial diversity and inequality jointly as influences on policy.

The United States is experiencing a profound increase in racial and ethnic diversity, although its communities are experiencing the trend differently depending on their size and location. Using census data from 1980 to 2010, we focus on a subset of highly diverse local jurisdictions in which no ethnoracial group makes up more than half of the population. We track the prevalence, emergence, and characteristics of these no-majority places, finding that they are rapidly increasing in number and are home to substantial and growing shares of the Black, Latino, and Asian populations. Transitions in no-majority places varied considerably over time. Older cohorts of places that became no-majority decades ago moved toward Latino or Black majorities, whereas those in recent cohorts tended to persist as no-majority places. Most of these communities continued to diversify in the decades after first becoming no-majority and remain quite diverse today. However, the shift toward no-majority status was often accompanied by large White population declines.

This article presents an empirical analysis of the postindustrial policing hypothesis, which argues that as cities pursue growth strategies designed to appeal to members of the so-called “creative classes,” they increasingly adopt punitive policing strategies, such as order maintenance policing. While several studies offer some evidence for the hypothesis, no study has yet tested the most direct spatial implication of this hypothesis within cities: that areas of a city undergoing gentrification or revitalization will evince higher levels of postindustrial policing. In a series of spatial Durbin models that utilize newly available data sets from New York City, this article demonstrates a strong positive association between gentrification and postindustrial policing. The article also finds that citizen demand for postindustrial policing is only weakly associated with its spatial distribution. These results and their potential implications are discussed in the conclusion.

Canada’s cities operate within restrictive legislative frameworks, yet incremental changes have resulted in some large Canadian cities accepting more policy responsibility. In this article, we ask if some big cities have a greater degree of local autonomy than others? We use existing Canadian and international literature to build a made-for-Canada index to quantitatively measure and compare levels of local autonomy by measuring vertical relations between 10 large cities and their respective provinces across three dimensions: legal-administrative autonomy, fiscal autonomy, and political autonomy. Overall, we find low levels of local autonomy, but differences along various dimensions of autonomy, notably political. Few countries in the world have senior levels of government that have been so resistant to loosen restraint and regulation as has been in the case in Canada; our results from this unique and important case shed new light on the reactions of subnational government to evolving demands for increased decentralization and local autonomy.

Whereas traditionally hosting the Olympics was viewed as a top-down decision with little public input, public opinion is becoming more important in assessing and evaluating the merits of hosting the Games. Using bid documents from 2010 to 2020, the formal role that public opinion officially plays in the bid phase following the International Olympic Committee (IOC) procedures is examined. Public opinion in the preparation stage is reviewed, which demonstrates the problem of seeking simple declarations of support (Yes/No) that obfuscate important local issues (cost, traffic, urban priorities). Shifts in public opinion during the Games themselves, as well as one and four years after the Games, provide a new perspective on resident attitudes. Using retrospective data from Vancouver 2010 and London 2012, multivariate analysis demonstrates that participation in Olympic-related events (sporting and nonsporting) was the most important predictor of attitudes toward the Games and that concerns over costs were the only concerns that were justified.

Gentrification is an oft-sought solution to urban blight, and it has been proposed, for various reasons, that the presence of gays and lesbians is associated with an increased probability that an area will gentrify. Using census tract-level data from the 30 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) in the United States, we find that areas with more same-sex coupled households do, indeed, have a higher predicted probability of gentrifying from 2000 to 2010. A 1 percentage point increase in the number of same-sex coupled households is associated with an almost 2% to 3% increase in the probability of gentrification. We define gentrification as a change in the relative standing of a census tract with respect to average income and/or housing prices, and this finding is robust to various definitions of gentrification within these categories. This influence is persistent after controlling for family size, household income, the presence of different-sex, unmarried couples, and access to amenities.