Urban Affairs Review

Since World War II, San Francisco has been transformed by the high-rise postindustrial restructuring of central cities and by corresponding gentrification pressures. In one low-income inner-city district, the Tenderloin, residents organized and fought successful battles against the gentrifying growth regime through the 1980s. Moving beyond being a reactionary antigrowth movement, Tenderloin activists have advanced a proactive, neighborhood-sensitive regime, with a social-production capacity of its own, represented by the neighborhood's nonprofit housing movement. Their example teaches about the neighborhood-responsive progressive forces that characterize San Francisco and about the potential of grassroots mobilization as a response to international economic restructuring.

The legitimacy of citizen participation in local government affairs has come to be widely accepted, if not enthusiastically embraced, even while it is hindered by official resistance, the complexity of modem government, or both. The nature and institutionalization of citizen participation in development policy in Boston is the result of current and historical economic conditions and political mobilization. The structure of participatory mechanisms is constantly being challenged and reshaped by developers, community members, and public officials. The current controversy over one such mechanism in Boston shows the dynamic forces that are at work.

Public housing, if located proximate to the central business district or other valued development sites, is often seen as a threat to urban regeneration activities. Growth coalitions may develop strategies to remove the threat to increase the value of the land and probability of reinvestment. In cities with an African-American majority electorate, like New Orleans, the electoral coalition of the governing regime is inherently unstable and has to pursue its development strategies carefully. Public housing poses a more intractable political barrier to regeneration strategies than do privately owned slum neighborhoods. In New Orleans, the governing coalition has been forced to retreat to its previously faltering spatial-containment policy.

The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), the agency in charge of the thrift bailout, is directed to expand the supply of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households by reserving less valuable residential real estate for sale through the Affordable Housing Disposition Plan (AHDP). The author examines the evolution of the AHDP and the disappointing performance of both the single-family and multifamily portions of the program. Two principal explanations for the RTC's poor performance are assessed: The agency is subject to competing mandates that undermine a focus on housing, and the AHDP has not resolved the institutional and credit constraints that undermine affordable-housing efforts in general.

The author analyzes one urban region's ability to attract foreign direct investment and the role its economic development officials played. Numerous scholars have identified a variety of determinants in foreign corporate deliberations regarding site location but have failed to address the role of local governments. Management innovation, such as public-private partnership to promote economic development and economic development officials using their skills as entrepreneurs, strategists, and ambassadors might attract more foreign investment and soften competition with adjacent localities. Particular attention is focused on factors that would tempt a foreign company to locate in an urban region such as Hampton Roads.

The author uses an interrupted time series analysis to evaluate the housing market effects of moderate rent control in San Francisco. Using data on multifamily-housing construction and rent levels from 1960 to 1991, the analysis shows that rent control did not inhibit the development of new multifamily housing. In fact, the rate of multifamily-housing production has increased more rapidly after the program's initiation. Additionally, the analysis shows that rents for advertised units in San Francisco have significantly risen after the implementation of rent control.