Review: Class and Power in American Cities

Author(s): Manuel Castells

Source: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 3 (May, 1984), pp. 270-273
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2067556
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270 REVIEW ESSAYS

Class and Power in American Cities

The Urban Real Estate Game: Playing Monopoly with Real Money, by JOE R. FEAGIN.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1983. 214 pp. $7.95 paper.
Power and Crisis in the City: Corporations, Unions, and Urban Policy, by ROGER FRIEDLAND.
New York: Schocken Books, 1983. 248 pp. $19.95 cloth.
Restructuring the City: The Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment, by SUSAN S. FAIN-
STEIN, NORMAN I. FAINSTEIN, RICHARD CHILD HILL, DENNIS JUDD, and MICHAEL PETER
SMITH. New York: Longman, 1983. 296 pp. NPL cloth.

MANUEL CASTELLS
University of California

At first sight, the readingof the three books
underreview is like the rerunof an old movie.
The questions they address are classic in the
sociological literature. Who holds power in
the city? Whose interests are fulfilled by
urban redevelopment and whose are under-
mined by it? Is business the dominant elite
responsible for urban decay and uneven de-
velopment? Have we not already gone
throughthese questions again and again, with
the only apparentresult a broadeningof the
ranks of those who think cities are shaped by
class interests?
What is common to these three books is
that they signal the striking change in per-
spective that has occurred in urban political
sociology in the last decade: they ask, in fact,
a very different research question from that
posed many years ago by Dahl, Hunter, or
Polsby. The matter is not who has power in
the city, but who controls (and whose inter-
ests are fulfilledby) what happenson the city.
The city is no longer seen as an autonomous
social system whose politics have to be de-
ciphered, but rather as a social product re-
sulting from larger societal forces and pro-
cesses. Instead of studyingthe city's political
outputs, the seven authors of these books
treat the city itself as an output of social pro-
cesses. In so doing, they also explicitly reject
the economisticassumptionsfrequentlyunderly-
ing recent analyses of the urbancrisis. Local
governments do not go bankruptas financial
institutions do; they are far more complex
than accountingsystems; they are sociopoliti-
cal entities, and therefore their crises, their
expansion, and their variationshave to be un-
derstood as a social process of structurally
conditionedconflicts. Between social ecology
and public economics these books, represen-
tative of a growingintellectualtrend, reaffirm
the need for and the specificity of urban
sociology.
So what is the answer to this fundamental
question: how is the city socially produced?
The three books propose different, though
broadly complementary,answers based either
on original research or on secondary sources
in the evolution of Americancities and urban
policies in the period 1960-1980. For Joe
Feagin, "The corporate rich-the employers,
builders, industrial and commercial execu-
tives, and construction companies-greatly
determinethe economic course of U.S. cities
because they control many importantinvest-
ment decisions" (x). For Roger Friedland,the
state (both local and national) is the crucial
agency for directing urban development, but
its policies are shaped by corporateeconomic
power and by the unions' political power. For
the Fainsteins and their co-workers, the key
element is the local political regime, itself the
product of the dynamics of a state subject to
the structuralpresence of capitalist interests
and to the demands and struggles of popular
movements.
To some extent, it is difficult to compare
the relative weight carried by each argument
because the books are so differentin style and
in research methodology. Joe Feagin's The
Urban Real Estate Game is deliberately pro-
vocative, political, and written for a large
audience, with little use of sociological ter-
minology. It takes its place in the great tradi-
tion of advocate sociology exemplified by C.
WrightMills. While relying on a vast amount
of information,gatheredfrom recent urbanlit-
erature as well as from journalistic sources,
the book's purpose, unlike most of Feagin's
past work, is not to provide new empirical
knowledge, but to organize availableinforma-
tion so that we realize how capitalists(and not
just capitalism)are the key actors in the pro-
duction of urban forms.
We read how profit-searchingfor the large
corporations, subsidized and supported by
governments at all levels, is the overarching
logic for industrial shifts, for land develop-
ment and housing financing,for the "manhat-
tanization of America," for the gentrification
 REVIEW ESSAYS
of centralcities, for the empireof the auto and
its highway system of urban transportation,
for the development of peripheral shopping
centers and industrial parks, for suburban
sprawl, and for urbanrenewal. Feagin thinks
that people can also affect the urban process
by mobilizingaroundtheir own interests, and
he cites Santa Monica as an example. Yet,
most of his stories end with the unchallenged
dominationof the powerfulcoalition of bank-
ers, developers, industrialcorporations,pub-
lic officials, and politicians.
Though much of his argument undeniably
corresponds to the reality of cities in the
United States, particularlyin the sunbeltcities
that provide much of his information(he is
currently studying Houston), it is also clear
that to go beyond denunciationtoward expla-
nation, we must refine the analysis, as Feagin
has done in other works. For instance, to
characterize this process as a class struggle
between the growth coalition and "the
people" (sometimes redefined as "the poor
and minorities," or "the working people") is
to extend the notion of class beyond its
theoretical usefulness. We must differentiate
between differentclass positions (and not just
levels in the scale of stratification)between
different actors in the process of urban con-
flict, in order to understand their dynamics
and the potential spectrum of their alliances.
Accepting Feagin's hypothesis of a capitalist
dominanceof the urbanprocess, we still have
to distinguish different capitalist logics and
different capitalist segments to understand
reality. Furthermore, we must be able to
imaginea non-classbased conflict (or series of
conflicts) that could oppose different social
groups to a class actor (the capitalists)in the
urbanrealm. The richness of the urban strug-
gles is precisely that they mobilize againstthe
dominantclass(es) a variety of social groups,
interests, and values, on a much broaderbasis
than their social class-specific interests.
While one can understandFeagin's attemptto
simplify the picture so as to convey his mes-
sage to a large public, we should beware of an
oversimplified image of reality. Between
speculators and people, there is society, as
Feagin himself has reminded us consistently
over the years.
Roger Friedland's Power and Crisis in the
City proposes a more complex causal model to
explain the extent of urban renewal, social
expenditures, public jobs creation, and fiscal
strainin Americancentral cities between 1964
and 1975.Implicitlyrelyingon Jim O'Connor's
theory, Friedlandsees the state (local, state,
and federal governments) as implementing
271
policies to accomplish both economic growth
and social control. Thus, urban and local
policies will be conditioned by the economic
and social trends characterizing each city.
But-unlike the structuralist approach,
Friedland argues-he introduces the com-
plexity of social dynamicsinto the picture and
shows that structural conditions interact (in
the statistical sense) with his two key vari-
ables, corporatepower and labor union power
in the city, to determine policies and policy
outputs.
Friedland classifies the 130 largest central
cities in the United States by means of two
dichotomies (high/low corporate power and
high/lowunion power), using as indicatorsthe
number of national corporate headquarters
and the number of national labor unions in
each city. He then runs, separately for each
groupof cities, a series of regressionsbetween
basic economic and demographic variables
and measures of urban renewal, "war on
poverty" expenditures,fiscal strains, etc., and
he measures the difference in the effect of
each variable between the two sets of cities
resulting from their classification in terms
of union presence and corporate power.
These differences, he considers, representthe
specific effects of corporatepower and union
power on the city's policies. The results tend
to show a strong influence of corporate
power, particularly in areas related to eco-
nomic growth, reinforcingthe hypothesis that
urban redevelopment is motivated not by
urban decay but by the opportunity to en-
hance capitalist profit with public funds and
prerogatives. Union influence seems to be
weak on economic issues but significant on
social policies, such as providing for more
publicjobs and social programsin those cities
with a high black presence and mobilization,
while also correlatingwith higher police ex-
penditure.
Friedlandelaborates these results by argu-
ing that business' source of power lies in its
control of economic investment while unions
rely basically on their capacity to mobilize the
grassroots and to channel pressure through
the Democraticparty's political machine. Yet
it is difficult to argue that corporate business
does not directly intervene in the political
scene, in an age in which the media and the
campaign machines (and therefore financial
resources) have become more importantthan
mass movements in deciding elections. Going
even further, one can see the Republican
party, financed largely by business interests,
engagingin grassroots mobilization,including
the direct political participationof business
272 REVIEW ESSAYS
leaders. So it is incorrectto assume that there
is a distinction in spheres of power that clus-
ters economic power with business and politi-
cal power with labor. Both are economic and
political actors.
In fact, when Friedlanddescribes, in chap-
ter 3, the changingeconomies of centralcities,
or when he providesthe most brilliantanalysis
to date of the sources of central city fiscal
strains, he opens up his model and allows for
a more asymmetricaland diversifiedpatternof
influence. But when he has to commenton the
empiricalresults of his two main variables,he
is driven to make such statementsas "like an
ambivalentlover the unions came down on the
blacks with both concessions and fists" (179).
What does this mean concretely? That in
those central cities with fifty or more national
unions, the percentageof nonwhitepopulation
in 1960 and the index of riot severity in
1967-68 had a higher positive b coefficient
with personnel costs and with police costs
than in the other cities.
The theme of the conflicting relationship
between unions and blacks in urban policy is
both fundamentaland fascinating, and Fried-
land makes his case very forcefully, but it
cannot be treated seriously in terms of regres-
sion equations. Friedland is constantly con-
strained in his thinking and analysis by the
need to go back to his rather austere data
base. This book is typical of the work of some
of the best young sociologists, who do not
blossom at their fullest potentialbecause they
feel the need to sacrifice to the rites of ill-
understood scientism in the profession. Of
course, there is nothingwrong with regression
analysis. It is as legitimate a tool (not a
legitimizingprinciple)as participantobserva-
tion or historical case study. The problem
arises when the tool comes to condition the
thinking, when you have to adapt your
theoretical frameworkto what you can mea-
sure with a regression equation: at this point
sociology has been reducedto social statistics.
Because of his methodology,Friedlandhas to
oversimplify his model and add a number of
ad hoc observations. Fortunately, his sharp
mind cuts throughthe jungle of empiricismto
provide illuminatinghypotheses on the class
basis of power in the United States.
In Restructuring the City, Susan Fainstein,
Norman Fainstein, RichardChild Hill, Dennis
Judd, and Michael P. Smith, adopt a more
cautious, more groundedstyle of research, in
a series of case studies of the politicalprocess
surrounding urban redevelopment in New
Haven, Detroit, New Orleans, Denver, and
San Francisco. Though the authors make an
effort, in a brilliantfinal chapter, to provide a
theoretical synthesis of their empirical find-
ings, the richness of their case studies flows
beyond the boundaries of the tentative ana-
lytical model. What the reader perceives is a
process of structural transformationof the
urban economy, acted, and therefore funda-
mentally modified, by social classes and
political actors, according to the institutional
environment and the specific local culture.
For instance, while San Francisco's business
communitywholeheartedlysupportedgrowth,
a significant segment of New Orleans' local
elite opposed economic change that might
undermine its basis of power. Culture and
politics mediate social interests and structural
tendencies, and these tendencies result from
the actual practice of social actors, in a
dialectical movement.
Does Restructuring the City evoke a world
of pure relativism, where the observer is un-
able to synthesize observationexcept on an ad
hoc basis? No, and yes, and no. No, in the
sense that one needs conceptual tools that
are common to the understandingof different
processes. Yes, because each situation is
unique in its actual historical practice. And,
most importantly, no, because some basic
featuresrecurthroughoutthe analysis, such as
the dominance of business interests in urban
redevelopment schemes and the continuous
blackmail by the private sector of local gov-
ernments, in the absence of the countervailing
power of a national party relatively indepen-
dent of the interests of corporate business.
Precisely because of such specificity in the
United States political system, it is crucial to
understandthe variationsof policies within a
capitalist framework, something that the au-
thors of the book show fully in their analysis
but seem to overlook in their synthesis, when
they equate all stories to fables of capitalist
domination. Instead of idealizing Western
European leftwing local politics, we should
pay more attention to the specific processes
throughwhich policies alternativeto those of
the corporate establishment emerge in the
United States. More attentionmust be paid to
urbansocial movements and to their influence
in governments, and we have to account for
the municipalmini-revolutionsweeping across
the country. I think it is useful to remember
that, by the end of 1983, Chicago, Los
Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington,
and Atlanta, among many other cities, have
black mayors; San Franciscoand Houston are
governed by women, though on the moderate
side of the political spectrum;Denver, Miami,
and San Antonio have Hispanic mayors;
 REVIEW-ESSAYS
Boston elected a populist labor leader sup-
ported by the tenants' movement, in a run-off
against a black neighborhood activist; and
even in the archetypeof the sunbelt, Phoenix,
a liberalmayor was recently elected by neigh-
borhood groups mobilizing against the
traditional probusiness establishment. Such
events do concern sociological researchers,
since we are supposed to provide clues to a
changingreality. And we cannot mix all these
developments in the black box of "capitalist
The Mind of the Moralist
C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian, by IRVING Louis
1983. 341 pp. $24.95 cloth.
CHARLES DERBER
Boston College
This is unquestionablythe most important
biographyof any American sociologist. Biog-
raphy, as Horowitz notes, is a genre
traditionallydistinct from sociology, but this
volume has much that will be appetizing and
instructiveto sociologists: a cornucopiaof in-
sights and implicationsabout sociologists and
their profession, a richly textured intellectual
history, a latent sociology of academia, and
suggestive glimpses of the relation of life his-
tory to intellectual style and substance. The
book indeed points to the potential fruitful-
ness of what the author calls "sociological
biography"as a distinct mode of understand-
ing the social genesis of ideas; in this sense,
the book opens biography as a new special
methodology in a sociology of knowledge.
Mills is an especially felicitous subject for
an inquiryof this kind. He is one of the few
charismatic figures in postwar American
sociology, not only something of a legend
within the discipline but one of the few to
achieve celebrity outside of professional cir-
cles. Moreover Mills, as nobody who reads
this book will forget, is a major intellectual
figure in American sociology who made an
original mark in a formidable range of core
areas including political sociology, stratifica-
tion, social psychology, social theory, and the
sociology of knowledge. There is thus a life
history of unusualsocial fascinationto assess,
in relation to an intellectualcorpus of poten-
tially enduringsignificance. Finally, Mills had
a relation of special intensity and paradox
with his own profession; in the unravelingof
the history of that ambivalentand conflicted
relationthere is much to learn not only about
273
urbanpolicy." Patient, well-grounded,empiri-
cal research is needed to assess both the de-
layed impact of the social movements of the
last decade (women, minorities, and neigh-
borhoods)and the impactof currenteconomic
change, into the local political system. In this
perspective, the three books under review
represent, each in its own style, important
steps in the process of understandingthe spe-
cific shape of class and power in American
cities. $
HOROWITZ. New York: Free Press,
Mills but about the politics and sociology of
sociology.
Those drawn to this book primarilyby the
personal legend are likely to be disappointed
for at least two reasons. On the one hand, this
is a resolutely intellectual biography, con-
cerned far less with intimate revelation than
with the illuminationof ideas. In part, this
reflects the dominance of the mental life in
Mills. Yet Horowitz has also made a choice,
no doubt faithful to his own trainingand dis-
position, to underplay the personal and pri-
vate; revelations emerge, but subtly, in rela-
tion to intellectualevents, such as Mills's ex-
quisitely vulnerableresponse to reviews of his
work.
The glimpses of Mills that Horowitz gives
will cloud, if not tarnish, his extravagantper-
sonal legend. The wildly individualisticTexan,
celebrated for motorcycle and libido, seems,
here, much more the estranged academic
sophisticate than the intellectualcowboy with
seven-league boots. Mills never returned to
Texas after his youth and lived his entire adult
life within elite universities; he never found a
happy home in academe, but it was his only
real hunting ground. The exotic motorcycle
cowboy charisma routinizes to the plain
troubles of an intellectual who suffered en-
forced marginalityin his own department(al-
though he had tenure, Mills was not allowed
to teach in the graduateprogramat Columbia)
and who, in the end, was publicly excom-
municated from his profession (by 1959,
Seymour Lipset had written that Mills had
abandonedthe field and was no longer a rele-
vant figure for American sociology). His pro-