Economic Restructuring and Political Response

In Economic Restructuring and Political Response, Beauregard brings together distinguished contributors from diverse disciplines to examine the nature of postwar economic restructuring in the United States and the political response to these transformations. This innovative volume incorporates a temporal as well as spatial perspective, taking a broad look across and within neighborhoods, communities, and regions. The first set of essays is devoted to contemporary economic restructuring, addressing such issues as economic restructuring as either a continuation of long-term trends or a disjuncture in capitalism, and economic restructuring's impact on the Pittsburgh and New York City areas. The second section focuses on the political response to economic restructuring, particularly how local regional upheaval contributes to a region's political temperament and action. Specific cases studied include Philadelphia and Chicago. Finally, Robert A. Beauregard concludes this volume with a theoretical analysis of economic restructuring and the means by which it has shaped political response. "On the whole, the individual contributions are quite good, perhaps stronger than in many other similar volumes, especially as a source for raising issues for future research. Urbanists will find this a useful book to read carefully." --Contemporary Sociology "Overall, this easily read book gives valuable conceptual insights and interesting case studies of the restructuring process. The book has a remarkably spatial focus considering the authors' backgrounds. This is a book with which all students of contemporary urban America should be familiar." --Environment and Planning A "An excellent attempt to piece together the specifics of the restructuring process and to examine how this was played out in the complex politics of the USA in the 1980s. . .provides us with an accessible collection of work on the restructuring process and its economic, social and political results. The book's focus on adding colour to the bare bones of economic change often depicted elsewhere must be welcomed and for that reason it is highly recommended. Furthermore, the issues tackled here are not only comprehensive in their own right but offer a number of pointers as to the likely direction of economic restructuring elsewhere. . . ." --Progress in Human Geography "This edited volume, the combined effort of eight contributors, is the latest in the well-respected urban affairs annual reviews series published by Sage. All contributors are urban planners with an overriding spatial perspective on the postwar economic restructuring of U.S. cities. The volume should be of interest to the urban professional. . . .Beauregard ably summarized the main points of the contributors' arguments in his spritely written preface and placed practically all the disparate material within the same political economy framework in his well-crafted concluding chapter. . . .Gordon Clark's essay on changes in the Pittsburgh economy offers a much-needed regional perspective on the restructuring process. . . .Susan and Norman Fainstein have written an excellent rebuff to those Marxist Cassandras who speak only in terms of disjuncture, crises, and catastrophic change during the period of late (post-industrial) capitalism. They argue effectively for a more evolutionary interpretation. . . .[Ann Markusen] ties the difference in the regional political response to restructuring in the Northeast-Midwest rustbelt, the Southern sunbelt, and the burgeoning West to a product-cycle model. This chapter would make provocative supplemental reading for undergraduate courses in economic geography. . . .Because of the high levels of specificity and pitch of the present volume, I can generally recommend it only for advanced students and professionals." --Journal of Geography