Search

As local governments respond to fiscal stress after the global financial crisis, some scholars warn about an austerity urbanism response wherein local governments cut and privatize services, while others see a pragmatic municipalism response that seeks to protect public services by sharing services, applying for more grants, or charging user fees. Existing empirical works lack detail about the types of local government responses and their drivers. Using a structural equation model with 2017 survey data of 919 counties and municipalities in New York State, we explore the drivers of perceived fiscal stress and two responses: cuts and pragmatic municipalism. We find economy, demography, and state policy drive perceptions of fiscal stress and differentiate responses. The dominant response is pragmatic municipalism, and cuts are only dominant in counties and places with more tax-exempt property. Pragmatic municipalism is found not only in places with larger college-educated populations, left-leaning governing boards, and stronger support for maintaining and providing services, but also in places with greater anti-tax sentiments, poverty, and lack of resources for innovation. These results show that local governments use pragmatic approaches to hold back the tide of austerity pressures and respond to local needs within constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-industrial cities throughout the world abandoned railroads, demolished freeways, disused canals, and other derelict industrial ruins are being transformed into ecologically inspired and aesthetically designed leisure, consumption, and tourist spaces based upon the principles of Landscape Urbanism and ideas about sustainable park design. New York City’s High Line is one example of this growing trend. Sustainable parks like the High Line claim to provide economic, ecological, and equity benefits associated with the 3 Es of sustainability. Our research on the development of New York City’s High Line suggests that while the High Line meets the economic piece of the sustainability triad with its promise of generating growth, its success in terms of the ecological dimension of sustainability is unclear. More troubling is the High Line’s neglect of the social equity component of the discourse of sustainability. Our work brings together several key arguments in the critical literature on urban sustainability to examine how structural constraints associated with creating post-industrial ecological spaces in a climate of neoliberal urbanization play out in the paradigmatic case of the High Line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]