Carolyn Teich Adams

Philadelphia : neighborhoods, division, and conflict in a postindustrial city

List of Tables and Figures Preface Series Preface 1. The Legacy of the Industrial City Population and Settlement Patterns Machine Politics in the Industrial Era The Transition to Postindustrialism Declining Economic Opportunity and Racial Conflict The Central Argument of the Book 2. Economic Erosion and the Growth of Inequality The National Context Philadelphias Special Vulnerability to National Trends The Changing Distribution of Jobs in the Postindustrial Economy The Changing Earnings Profile Who Gains? Who Loses? Workforce Participation Family Wage Earners Conclusion 3. Housing and Neighborhoods Housing in Philadelphia: An Overview Housing Conditions at the End of World War II Postwar Reorganization The Decline of the City: Despair and Exodus, 1955-1975 The Paradox of Revitalization and Decay, 1975-1985 Race and the Regional Housing Market Housing the City Conclusion and Prospects 4. Philadelphias Redevelopment Process Continuous Redevelopment Why Redevelop? Trends in Redevelopment Two Case Studies The Political Economy of Redevelopment The Outcomes: Who Pays? Who Benefits? Conclusions 5. Race, Class, and Philadelphia Politics The Dissolution of the Ruling Postwar Coalition Why the Fragmentation? The Business Community and Philadelphia Politics Populism and Minority Politics Conclusion 6. The Prospects for City-Suburban Accommodation Barriers to Political Cooperation Opportunities for Regional Cooperation Transportation Port Facilities Solid Waste How Realistic Are the Prospects for Regionalism? 7. Alternative Scenarios for Philadelphias Future Appendix A: The Index of Dissimilarity Appendix B: Economic Transition: Further Data Appendix C: Income Differentials by Race Notes Index

Commercial Venturing and the Transformation of America's Voluntary Social Welfare Agencies

This article examines venturing, or the commercial sale of services and products, as a strategy employed by voluntary social agencies to bolster their faltering budgets. It reports the findings of a descriptive study of a population of 101 such agencies in greater Philadelphia. The authors suggest that the increase in commercial ventures by nonprofits is to some extent a by-product of the expansion of government contracting in the social welfare field. They conclude that even when successful, commercial ventures pose significant risks to nonprofit agencies.

The Meds and Eds in Urban Economic Development

ABSTRACT: Medical and higher education institutions have become centerpieces of urban economies, employing large numbers, purchasing goods and services, and anchoring neighborhoods by their land investments. Perhaps even more important in the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century, these knowledge-generating institutions help cities compete for growth. Yet the literature on urban economic development neglects them. Using Philadelphia as a case study, this article asks whether local and state policymakers have enacted policies to promote the meds and eds. It finds that, far from supporting these institutions, public officials have withdrawn support from them during the 1990s. State government has been shifting subsidies away from the institutions in favor of subsidizing their customers (i.e., patients, students). And municipal officials have challenged the tax-exempt status of major nonprofit institutions. The article concludes that if policy makers recognized these as leading export sectors of the urban economy, they would be more supportive.

Homelessness in the Postindustrial City: Views from London and Philadelphia

While the twin problems of homelessness and squatting are usually associated with the cities of the Third World, this article examines them in the context of Western postindustrial metropolises. It argues that the growing numbers of homeless and squatters in the United States and Europe reflect not simply the current economic situation, but rather the longer-term changes in economic and demographic structure that have accompanied the transition of such cities from industrial to postindustrial centers. A critical factor contributing to the problem has been shrinkage in the private rental sector, which must be given priority by housing policymakers.

Leadership in Hard Times: Are Nonprofits Well-Served?

Resource shortages have stimulated a change in focus among leaders of social service agencies, moving them away from a mission and toward a professional orientation more concerned with self-preservation. This is manifested both in a greater concern about resource mobilization than mission and professional issues and in an inward orientation among administrators rather than an orientation to the environment. This represents a dramatic change since the 1970s, when organizational theory first came to recognize the environment us an important factor in organizational behavior, and when successful organizational strategy was understood to require moving beyond organizational boundaries. This article reports on a national survey of executive directors and board presidents of family service agencies in major cities. It shows substantial consensus between these two groups that resource issues are more important than mission and professional issues, and that solving resource problems involves strategies that emphasize organizational autonomy.

The Philadelphia Experience

While Philadelphia has developed many links to the global economy, this city region does not qualify as a world city on a par with New York or Los Angeles. Ironically, in an era of increasing globalization, Philadelphias regional economy is arguably more locally oriented than during the heyday of manufacturing because services are not as exportable as manufactured goods. This article identifies some of the advantages and problems associated with Philadelphias status as a regional city rather than a world city. It examines the prospects for city-suburban cooperation to enhance the regions competitive economic position. The politics of regional cooperation are illustrated by three examples of physical infrastructure: the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the ports of Philadelphia and Camden, and the Naval Shipyard. The author concludes that even to promote infrastructure that supports business, the political and business leaders have difficulty cooperating.

Urban Governance and the Control of Infrastructure

Many cities have used special-purpose authorities, commissions, and quasi-public corporations to build and manage infrastructure projects. This article uses the Philadelphia region to illustrate an important reason why government officials resort to quasi-independent bodies to manage infrastructure investments—namely, because powerful economic and political interests outside the city increasingly seek to control the development of urban centers. As metropolitan regions become the economic units competing at the global scale, interest groups beyond the city’s boundaries act to ensure that the city’s future development serves regional interests. One important way to do this is to exert influence over the infrastructure investments that make capital productive. This case study shows how quasi-governmental forms of organization have served as the vehicles for outsiders to influence the development of greater Philadelphia’s core city.

Family Service Executives in a Hostile Environment

Dramatic changes in human services funding in the 1980s prompted a redefinition of leadership in family service agencies. In this study of family service executives, attention is focused on changes in the roles executives play within their agencies, the skills they need, and the problems they face in the current environment. Their involvement in advocacy activity is discussed. The authors conclude that the future viability of the voluntary social service sector is tied to the type of leadership provided by agency executives.

Once the American Dream: Inner-Ring Suburbs of the Metropolitan United States

Michel Agier’s Managing the Undesirables is one of several texts that addresses the complex and proliferating humanitarian infrastructure that is increasingly prevalent in regions of the world besieged by violence and displacement, but his work stands out as particularly important and innovative. Agier addresses some of the central questions facing our world today: belonging, personhood, and the ability of those most cut off from political power to speak for themselves and shape their own lives, and he does so in a way that combines passion and keen observation. In doing so, his work should be of interest to a broad range of sociologists who study social inequality and the structures (even those built from the best of intentions) that perpetuate it. In this volume, Agier explores the concept of humanitarian government, the political apparatus set up during emergency situations that takes responsibility for the life and death of individuals no longer protected adequately by a state. For as Agier shows, a refugee camp is far more than a place of shelters and emergency food aid. They are places in which someone decides who gets plastic sheeting and who does not, who receives food rations and for how long, what social programs should be put into place and who should be in charge of them, and what barriers need to be constructed (barbed wired, armed guards, cinderblock walls) to ostensibly protect those inside but also to protect the local population from incursions of these displaced ‘‘undesirables.’’ Further, these ‘‘camps’’ are hardly temporary shelters; many have existed for decades, taking on the appearance of towns and cities with entrepreneurs setting up small businesses and political elites emerging from the post-flight chaos. And yet, the camp is a hybrid social form, taking the shape of something entirely new from what existed before in the lives of its inhabitants, and as Agier convincingly argues, it exists in a state of exception, outside the bounds of the political and social life that humanitarian law and human rights ostensibly guarantee. Agier uses his ethnologist’s eye for culture to analyze observations he made during fieldwork in refugee camps in Kenya, Zambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea between 2000-2007, accessing the camps through Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; in English, Doctors Without Borders). His affiliation with MSF gave him a level of flexibility and independence (particularly from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees) that allowed him sufficient time in the camps to not only observe humanitarian government at work but also the response of the refugees under its purview. He combines his observations with detailed histories of different migrations, explaining the historical and geographic paths that led different groups of refugees to the camps that he studied. Agier demonstrates the discursive power that humanitarian organizations have over defining and categorizing the displaced individuals in the camps; defining a person’s status as a refugee leads to acceptance into the camp and the security that brings, but the denial of such status leads to rejection and often deportation back to life-threatening circumstances. Once determined as a refugee, a person’s suffering and vulnerability come to define their place in the camp and the world, with moral hierarchies created around different definitions of vulnerability with different access to resources provided by the humanitarian organization. This process, Agier argues, de-socializes refugees; they lose their individual personhood and either become ahistorical, pitiable masses that the charitable-at-heart seek to keep alive, or potential threats to order and the safety of the non-displaced that must be managed or