Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

Resiliency and the green growth machine According to the growth machine thesis, the city is beholden to the interests of city elites, particularly lo- cal financial and real estate interests seeking to profit from urban development of commercial and residen- tial real estate. e result is higher land rents, partic- ularly higher rents from increasingly upper class city residents and businesses who pay higher taxes and rents that fill both public and private coffers. For the municipality, this funding has become more important as federal and state retrenchment in local infrastruc- ture funding—from mundane infrastructure like roads and bridges to novel needs like green infrastructure— is increasingly borne by the municipality. As a result, municipalities have turned to funding these projects through complex financial arrangements that include public-private partnerships, infrastructure bonding, and tax-based financing. According to the Urban Land Institute, the private capital for resilience projects is in fact easier to acquire than for standard infrastruc- ture projects—as the "business case" for resiliency is apparent to a broader base of lenders, investors, and developers (ULI 2015). is leads to semi-privatized forms of infrastructure tied to market-rate housing development, extending what scholars now refer to as a "green growth machine" (Jocoy 2018; Gould and Lewis 2016; Dilworth and Stokes 2012) or, more spe- cifically, a "resilience growth machine" (Gould and Lewis 2016). By financing resilient infrastructure through market-rate housing, real estate in newly re- silient neighborhoods becomes more costly, creating "environmental gentrification" (Checker 2011). Mean- while, these complex and non-transparent financial arrangements limit the potential for the priorities of local residents to be included in new development, particularly inhibiting the voices of low-income resi- dents, many of whom already pay close to half their income on housing. is characterization of urban sustainability projects as a growth machine builds on the work of political sociologists Harvey Molotch and John Logan. Logan and Molotch argued that the politics of the city is controlled by locally based real estate and financial interests who hold politicians hostage to their agendas. Projects that do not profit elite groups are doomed to failure, even if there is broad political support by the larger urban polity (Logan and Molotch 1987, 2007). is perspective echoes broader theories of urban po- litical economy and the environment. Such theories posit that the capitalist system has an intrinsic logic that leads to both economic and environmental cri- ses that increase inequality (Harvey 2011; Klein 2007; Schnaiberg et al. 2002; Schnaiberg and Gould 2000; O'Connor 1998). Issues of disaster response and rebuilding add another layer to the growth machine story. As several studies of Betsy, Katrina, and 9/11 have shown, disas- ter recovery is particularly susceptible to growth ma- chine forces, which through their tendency to focus on well-off areas and high end developments, leave poorer communities more vulnerable to subsequent storms. Lower-income people are thus oen hit twice: first by losing what little they have in the storm itself, and second by recovery and rebuilding plans that leave them out (Greenberg 2014; Gotham and Greenberg 2014; Janos 2012; Pastor et al. 2009; Tierney 2006; Bolin and Stanford 1991). Instead, recovery monies oen go to elite projects that "renew" affected areas with upper-income developments that the original residents cannot afford. ese processes of uneven re- development that follow disaster exacerbate the long growth machine legacies of uneven development that rendered low-income communities more vulnerable in the first place (Gotham and Greenberg 2014; Janos 2012). ese dynamics may be seen as contributing to the role broader of crises in social change (Klein 2010; Hay 1996; O'Connor 1973). In other words, elites use disasters to strength- en their hand. A 2006 report on Katrina to the Russell Sage Foundation called the rebuilding phase of Katrina the "second disaster" for the low-income residents of the Ninth Ward (Pastor et al. 2009). In Crisis Cit- ies, Kevin Gotham and Miriam Greenberg (2014:15) compare New Orleans and New York rebuilding ef- forts aer 9/11 and Katrina, showing how unequal redevelopment built upon an "uneven landscape of risk and resiliency" to widen already existing divides. In this process, "the worst and most long-term effects of disasters are suffered by populations least equipped to protect themselves – poor and working-class com- munities – while public-private partnerships ensure the resiliency and growth of wealthy, well-connected neighborhoods." In other words, low-income neigh- borhoods hit by disaster are vulnerable to resilience based growth machines that leave them more vulner- able to displacement than before. In response, resi- dents "are convinced that federal, state and local offi- cials will not prioritize their communities for clean-up and re-building." In particular, "ey worry that their neighborhoods are slated for redevelopment that does not include them" (Bullard and Wright 2010: xxii). 46

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