Growth Machine

The term growth machine refers to the political and economic leadership of urban areas. Growth machine theorists claim that urban development is engineered to maximize profits of various local and nonlocal elite. Inherent in this thesis is that growth itself as an objective is never questioned and rarely debated among urban elites. Debates do not occur over whether growth is good or not; instead, they may occur over, for example, how to maximize growth and, in turn, profit. As such, the growth machine ascribes to value-free development and the ostensibly universal benefits of growth.

The thesis borrows from classical Marxism by making distinctions between use value and exchange value with regard to property. Whereas many urban residents attach some use value to their property, to the elites the value of a property is based solely on its exchange value via either rent or sale to the highest bidder.

The growth machine is composed of, and sustained by, both primary and auxiliary actors, all of whom benefit from urban growth. The primary actors are politicians, the media, and utility companies. The success of politicians often is linked to their ability to generate and sustain economic growth. Both the media (e.g., newspapers, television, radio) and utility companies have a vested interest in growth because they are tied to the local market and increase their revenues through a greater number of subscribers or customers.

The auxiliary actors are those that play a role in promoting and maintaining growth but generally are not as intimately connected to the growth process as the primary actors. Among these are cultural institutions (e.g., [Page 202]museums, theaters, universities, symphonies, professional sports teams) that often are dependent on the local growth machine to generate revenues. Organized labor is a proponent of growth because of the jobs that are generated despite labor's frequent confrontations with the capitalist class about the distribution of surplus value generated by this growth. Self-employed professionals and small retailers also have an interest in growth, although not so much for the increase in aggregate rents and potential displacement of their customer base as for the increase in customers and revenues.

Although the growth machine thesis is a useful starting point to understand the politics and economics of cities, it has limitations. It has been criticized as being weak methodologically, making it difficult to draw comparisons between cities. It also assumes that clear distinctions can be made between the rentier and nonrentier classes when in reality there are far fewer rentiers than is assumed in urban areas (rentiers are people who live off of returns from fixed assets). In addition, capital is not as footloose as was originally stipulated, and many other (noneconomic) factors go into locational decision making. As a result, the growth machine has largely been superseded by the more theoretically robust urban regime theory.