Power and conflict in pro-growth regimes: tensions in economic development in Jersey City and Detroit

Jersey City and Detroit provide contrasting experience of the policy and politics in two US cities. Both can be seen as idealised 'pro-growth' regimes. Jersey City has benefited from the relocation of commercial and residential development out of Manhattan. The city has actively pursued new investment and has instigated various policies designed to spread the benefits of development across different sectoral and spatial communities. Detroit has endured enormous economic collapse, although there are limited signs of enhanced physical development. Policy-making and linkage programmes remain limited and contested. Overall reflections on policy-making in these cities point to the apparent importance of the mayor, a complex institutional environment, weak bureaucracies and interagency and intra-agency conflict. Regime formation remains relatively weak, especially in Detroit. In both areas, coalition-building can be overstressed to the detriment of the realities of, and opportunities created by, economic change in the wider economy.