Charles E. Ellison

Research report: Rehabilitation versus regulation in US cities

Abstract A central concern of planners and policy makers in older US cities undergoing economic restructuring is the formulation and implementation of development strategies for central business districts. 1 However, including older and often underutilized commercial and industrial buildings in such strategies often requires changes in regulations, such as building codes, that govern the use of urban space. 2 Developers and architects claim that full compliance with building codes is often impossible or cost prohibitive, while planners identity such codes as a major obstacle to the full incorporation of rehabilitation in development planning for central business districts. 3

Norman I. Fainstein and Susan S. Fainstein, eds. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, 1982. 303pp.

This collection of essays is an important contribution to a neo-Marxist approach to the political economy of urban policy. The contnbutors share a belief that a comparative perspective which combines the theoretical tradition of Marxist structuralism with empirical work can best illuminate the contours of urban policy under capitalism. They begin from some basic premises: that urban policy is (1) shaped by broad social and economic forces in national and global political economies which are (2) expressed through group and class conflicts and (3) mediated by local and national cultures and governmental and political institutions which both stimulate and channel those conflicts.