David Imbroscio
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 456859 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | David Imbroscio |
| NOMBRES | David |
| APELLIDO | Imbroscio |
| FIRMA | IMBROSCIO D |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Louisville |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9660-0718 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 41 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 356 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 41 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1993 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
No direction home
This commentary offers a response to Robert Lake's ‘On resisting the seduction of theory’. Professor Lake is correct that theory seduces, distracts, and is, at times, perhaps even most often, misused and misguided – and much too detached from practice. I argue that theorization is nonetheless essential. It and it alone provides the necessary understanding of our unjust world that allows us the possibility of making it less so
Toward the democratic reconstruction of the urban
This commentary offers a critical assessment of Ross Beveridge and Phillippe Koch's article “Seeing democracy like a city.” While there is much we can learn from their analysis and perspective, in the end, it offers only marginal resistance against the colossal structural forces quashing the democratic emancipation of the urban, leaving us with little hope for systemic and comprehensive democratic reconstruction. Only through a mass politics desi…
Beyond Opportunity Hoarding
To account for the extensive inequalities manifest within urban (or metropolitan) areas in the United States, the idea of “opportunity hoarding” has garnered increasing salience. When applied to explain urban inequalities, the focus of opportunity hoarding is on places—especially how residents of affluent, predominantly White residential neighborhoods or political jurisdictions are able to secure a plethora of opportunities for themselves and esp…
Toward a New Project for Equality and Justice—In Housing, and Beyond
I offer a rejoinder to the five responses to my article, “Beyond Opportunity Hoarding,” generously provided by Professors Bates, Dawkins, Ellen, Greenlee, and Lens. I argue it is imperative we face soberly three central problematics looming over the current debate: a) the enormity and profoundness of America's urban problems; b) the failure of the Opportunity Project to address these problems; and c) the reasons for this failure. I conclude by re…
Race matters (even more than you already think)
As any good American urbanist knows: race matters. But precisely how does it matter? How have the pervasive and enduring modalities of racism (especially anti-Blackness) shaped the American metropolis over the last decades? Several influential attempts to answer these questions have focused heavily on racism’s momentous impacts on housing and related spatial practices. Such accounts have garnered intensified attention with the appearance of Richa…
Rethinking Exclusionary Zoning or
Everybody, in the academic/activist world at least, seems to hate exclusionary zoning (EZ). In this intervention, I question this prevalent sentiment, especially as held by urban/housing scholars dedicated to the pursuit of social (or housing) justice. I find that the effort to curtail EZ—the Anti-Exclusionary Zoning (Anti-EZ) Project—embraces a set of pernicious normative values giving rise to sociopolitical outcomes far more detrimental to soci…
Stop Worrying (So Much) about Exclusionary Zoning and Fight Our Real Enemies
In this short reply, I attempt to address my critics in the limited space allotted. I show, inter alia, how the Anti–Exclusionary Zoning (Anti-EZ) Project: (1) brutally reproduces White supremacy, rather than subverting it; (2) employs pernicious neoliberal and antidemocratic means to achieve its—at best—inherently modest ends; (3) emanates from and reflects the elitist politics of the liberal professional-managerial class that locks in the neoli…
The Perils of Rationalism in American Urban Policy
A strong and enduring commitment to liberalism marks much of urban policy discourse in the United States. Although this Liberal Urban Policy compares favorably with its neoliberal and neoconservative rivals, it is nevertheless deeply flawed. One particularly serious problem is its strong commitment to rationalism. I offer a critique of this Rationalist Paradigm at the core of Liberal Urban Policy, which is extensively developed along both normati…
The One-Way Street of Integration
The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities, by Edward G. Goetz, Cornell." Urban Geography, 40(1), pp. 158–163
Blaming the poor
Adolph Reed on Race, Class, Black Urban Regimes, the So-Called “Underclass” and the Labor Movement
Urban America Reconsidered
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina laid bare the tragedy of American cities. What the storm revealed about the social conditions in New Orleans shocked many Americans. Even more shocking is how widespread these conditions are throughout much of urban America. Plagued by ineffectual and inegalitarian governance, acute social problems such as extreme poverty, and social and economic injustice, many American cities suffer a fate similar to that of N…
Urban Policy as Meritocracy
Much of American urban policy focuses—appropriately—on the tragic conundrum of why the disadvantaged in cities remain so. Scholars and researchers writing from a politically liberal perspective heavily focus policy prescriptions on the urban poor’s lack of opportunity for social mobility, appealing to the morally powerful principle of meritocracy. The central goal of this Meritocratic Paradigm is to lessen the barriers in the social environment o…
Meritocracy, Still Without Merit
I greatly appreciate Professor Silverman’s () and Dr. Popkin’s () response to my article. Unfortunately, as I shall detail below, both largely fail to grasp its central claims. More troubling, but
Critical Urban Theory versus Critical Urban Studies
Critical urban theory and critical urban studies form the subject of two recent edited collections on approaches to the analysis and transformation of the contemporary capitalist city. In an exchange of commentaries by the respective editors and contributors, the introduction explains the genesis of each book and previews some of the key observations. Peter Marcuse then offers his assessment of Critical Urban Studies: New Directions , which is re…
New Deal Ruins
From Redistribution to Ownership
Equity is a crucial goal of American urban policy. The means by which it is pursued via the liberal approach to urban policy—augmented redistribution—is problematic, however. What is needed, therefore, is an alternative means to advance equity. Broadening ownership (of productive assets) can be the basis of such an alternative. I discuss how the liberal approach to American urban policy can be transcended by supplanting its Redistributive Paradig…
American Cities and American Political Science—a Look at Thick Injustice
The back cover of Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom's Justice and the American Metropolis concisely lays out a central challenge of contemporary politics: “Today's American cities and suburbs are the sites of ‘thick injustice’—unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change.” The fact that the topic of “u…
The End of (Urban) Liberalism
Beyond Mobility
Liberalism remains the dominant philosophical perspective underlying the development of urban public policy in the United States. At the heart of Liberal Urban Policy lies a Mobility Paradigm, which is marked by a strong emphasis on facilitating population movement as a means of addressing urban social problems. In this paper, I explicate the nature of this Mobility Paradigm across four key urban policy goals and then develop a critique of it. In…
Urban Politics
Urban politics is a multidisciplinary field, in other words a number of bits — so to speak — of different disciplines work on it. While those in political science might claim to produce the bulk of the work in this field, others in anthropology, economics, human geography, planning, social policy and sociology can also claim to be making a contribution. The introduction situates the six sections comprising this essay, in which contributors discus…
Theories of Urban Politics
[U]Nited and Actuated by Some Common Impulse of Passion”
A large and influential group of American scholars studying urban and low-income housing policy have coalesced around the central idea that the best way to ameliorate the plague of urban poverty in the United States is to disperse (or deconcentrate) the urban poor into wealthier (usually outlying suburban) neighborhoods. This article refers to this group of scholars as the Dispersal Consensus (or DC for short). It finds that the DC's zeal to prom…
Rebutting Nonrebuttals
My challenge to the Dispersal Consensus (DC) stimulating this forum (Imbroscio, 2008) is, admittedly, provocative, confrontational, and hard-edged. This stylistic approach in tone and content was n
Shaming the Inside Game
Liberal expansionism is the dominant approach to addressing the problems of American cities. This approach combines liberal political philosophy with the idea that these problems can be solved only by creating linkages between cities and resources beyond their boundaries. The case for liberal expansionism derives from the shaming of the inside game—a critique of community development and the progressive capacities of cities themselves. I develop …
[U]Nited and Actuated by Some Common Impulse of Passion”
A large and influential group of American scholars studying urban and low-income housing policy have coalesced around the central idea that the best way to ameliorate the plague of urban poverty in the United States is to disperse (or deconcentrate) the urban poor into wealthier (usually outlying suburban) neighborhoods. This article refers to this group of scholars as the Dispersal Consensus (or DC for short). It finds that the DC's zeal to prom…
Shaming the Inside Game
Liberal expansionism is the dominant approach to addressing the problems of American cities. This approach combines liberal political philosophy with the idea that these problems can be solved only by creating linkages between cities and resources beyond their boundaries. The case for liberal expansionism derives from the shaming of the inside game—a critique of community development and the progressive capacities of cities themselves. I develop …
Beyond Mobility
Liberalism remains the dominant philosophical perspective underlying the development of urban public policy in the United States. At the heart of Liberal Urban Policy lies a Mobility Paradigm, which is marked by a strong emphasis on facilitating population movement as a means of addressing urban social problems. In this paper, I explicate the nature of this Mobility Paradigm across four key urban policy goals and then develop a critique of it. In…
Reformulating Urban Regime Theory
Urban regime theory has emerged as the dominant paradigm for the study of local politics. The ascendancy of regime theory has made it the subject of intense critical scrutiny. While urban scholars generally find it to be a valuable theoretical advance, many have uncovered conceptual limitations. This article develops yet another critique of urban regime theory. It argues regime theory suffers from an overly rigid and largely static conceptualizat…
From Redistribution to Ownership
Equity is a crucial goal of American urban policy. The means by which it is pursued via the liberal approach to urban policy—augmented redistribution—is problematic, however. What is needed, therefore, is an alternative means to advance equity. Broadening ownership (of productive assets) can be the basis of such an alternative. I discuss how the liberal approach to American urban policy can be transcended by supplanting its Redistributive Paradig…
"The Myth of the North American City" Reconsidered
Urban political economists observe that growth seeking dominates Canadian and U.S. local governance. Others believe Canada's collectivist culture exempts cities from the privatistic policies common in the United States. The authors argue that local constitutional regimes (the legal definition of cities, rules about private property, and federalism) best explain patterns of governance. Inducements shape urban development policy in both countries, …
Can We Grant a Right to Place
The author considers the plausibility of granting a 'right to place' (RTP) as an entitlement of citizenship in a nation such as the United States. Such a right would afford people the capacity to live in the places (or place communities) they choose. To explore whether granting such a right is plausible, the author identifies and examines the salient barriers now preventing Americans from choosing their place communities. The final section sugges…
Rethinking Exclusionary Zoning or
Everybody, in the academic/activist world at least, seems to hate exclusionary zoning (EZ). In this intervention, I question this prevalent sentiment, especially as held by urban/housing scholars dedicated to the pursuit of social (or housing) justice. I find that the effort to curtail EZ—the Anti-Exclusionary Zoning (Anti-EZ) Project—embraces a set of pernicious normative values giving rise to sociopolitical outcomes far more detrimental to soci…
Overcoming the Neglect of Economics in Urban Regime Theory
Urban regime theory rightfully reigns as the dominant paradigm in the analysis of local governance. Nevertheless, regime theory has been hampered by its failure to engage economic questions in a sustained and systematic way, leaving it limited in both empirical and prescriptive terms. This article presents an agenda for research that allows for the engagement of economic questions in a way that enhances the strength of urban regime theory vis-à-v…
Reconstructing City Politics
Urban America Reconsidered
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina laid bare the tragedy of American cities. What the storm revealed about the social conditions in New Orleans shocked many Americans. Even more shocking is how widespread these conditions are throughout much of urban America. Plagued by ineffectual and inegalitarian governance, acute social problems such as extreme poverty, and social and economic injustice, many American cities suffer a fate similar to that of N…
Urban Policy as Meritocracy
Much of American urban policy focuses—appropriately—on the tragic conundrum of why the disadvantaged in cities remain so. Scholars and researchers writing from a politically liberal perspective heavily focus policy prescriptions on the urban poor’s lack of opportunity for social mobility, appealing to the morally powerful principle of meritocracy. The central goal of this Meritocratic Paradigm is to lessen the barriers in the social environment o…
Urban Politics
Urban politics is a multidisciplinary field, in other words a number of bits — so to speak — of different disciplines work on it. While those in political science might claim to produce the bulk of the work in this field, others in anthropology, economics, human geography, planning, social policy and sociology can also claim to be making a contribution. The introduction situates the six sections comprising this essay, in which contributors discus…
Local Policy Responses to Globalization
The destabilizing forces wrought by economic globalization increasingly buffet local communities throughout America. This article explores a local policy strategy for coping with the effects of these forces and restoring some degree of stability to local economies. This strategy entails the creation of place‐based ownership models of economic enterprise. With ownership and control held in a more collective or community‐oriented fashion, such ente…
Structure, Agency, and Democratic Theory
Conceptions of the relationship between social structure and human agency have important implications for democratic theory and practice. A structuralist view of the structure-agency relationship promotes a weak standard of leader responsiveness that permits leaders to fail to satisfy citizen preferences if failures are traceable to the existence of structural constraints. A dualistic view of the structure-agency relationship promotes a strong st…
The Perils of Rationalism in American Urban Policy
A strong and enduring commitment to liberalism marks much of urban policy discourse in the United States. Although this Liberal Urban Policy compares favorably with its neoliberal and neoconservative rivals, it is nevertheless deeply flawed. One particularly serious problem is its strong commitment to rationalism. I offer a critique of this Rationalist Paradigm at the core of Liberal Urban Policy, which is extensively developed along both normati…
The End of (Urban) Liberalism
The Imperative of Economics in Urban Political Analysis
I welcome and greatly appreciate the opportunity to reply to Professor Stone’s insightful and provocative article. The section of Professor Stone’s article that bears most directly on my original a
Meritocracy, Still Without Merit
I greatly appreciate Professor Silverman’s () and Dr. Popkin’s () response to my article. Unfortunately, as I shall detail below, both largely fail to grasp its central claims. More troubling, but
Rebutting Nonrebuttals
My challenge to the Dispersal Consensus (DC) stimulating this forum (Imbroscio, 2008) is, admittedly, provocative, confrontational, and hard-edged. This stylistic approach in tone and content was n
Nontraditional Public Enterprise as Local Economic Development Policy
Recently, many local governments have explored or implemented economic development policies involving “local public enterprise,” i.e., local‐level public ownership of economic enterprises and other profitmaking productive assets. This policy activity tends to involve enterprises and productive assets not traditionally owned by the local public sector, such as hotels, retail establishments, manufacturing facilities, and sports teams. This emerging…
Stop Worrying (So Much) about Exclusionary Zoning and Fight Our Real Enemies
In this short reply, I attempt to address my critics in the limited space allotted. I show, inter alia, how the Anti–Exclusionary Zoning (Anti-EZ) Project: (1) brutally reproduces White supremacy, rather than subverting it; (2) employs pernicious neoliberal and antidemocratic means to achieve its—at best—inherently modest ends; (3) emanates from and reflects the elitist politics of the liberal professional-managerial class that locks in the neoli…
Adolph Reed on Race, Class, Black Urban Regimes, the So-Called “Underclass” and the Labor Movement
New Deal Ruins
The Necessity of Urban Regime Change
(1998). The Necessity of Urban Regime Change: A Reply to Clarence N. Stone. Journal of Urban Affairs: Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 261-268
Overcoming the Economic Dependence of Urban America
From apolitical economy perspective, US cities are compelled to attract and retain economic resources, especially capital. Most scholars agree that urban economic dependence works to bias local politics. This paper reviews strategies to mitigate urban economic dependence
An Alternative Approach to Urban Economic Development
Urban political economy scholarship demonstrates the economic dependence of cities. Cities have responded by pursuing urban economic development strategies. Such strategies often do not successfully address this dependency problem, however. In contrast, an alternative strategy for decreasing a city's economic dependence by increasing its economic self-reliance is offered. A model of this alternative approach—a self-reliance strategy for urban eco…
Nontraditional Public Enterprise as Local Economic Development Policy
Recently, many local governments have explored or implemented economic development policies involving “local public enterprise,” i.e., local‐level public ownership of economic enterprises and other profitmaking productive assets. This policy activity tends to involve enterprises and productive assets not traditionally owned by the local public sector, such as hotels, retail establishments, manufacturing facilities, and sports teams. This emerging…
United States
Cityscapes and Capital
"The Myth of the North American City" Reconsidered
Urban political economists observe that growth seeking dominates Canadian and U.S. local governance. Others believe Canada's collectivist culture exempts cities from the privatistic policies common in the United States. The authors argue that local constitutional regimes (the legal definition of cities, rules about private property, and federalism) best explain patterns of governance. Inducements shape urban development policy in both countries, …
Reconstructing City Politics
The Necessity of Urban Regime Change
(1998). The Necessity of Urban Regime Change: A Reply to Clarence N. Stone. Journal of Urban Affairs: Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 261-268
Reformulating Urban Regime Theory
Urban regime theory has emerged as the dominant paradigm for the study of local politics. The ascendancy of regime theory has made it the subject of intense critical scrutiny. While urban scholars generally find it to be a valuable theoretical advance, many have uncovered conceptual limitations. This article develops yet another critique of urban regime theory. It argues regime theory suffers from an overly rigid and largely static conceptualizat…
Structure, Agency, and Democratic Theory
Conceptions of the relationship between social structure and human agency have important implications for democratic theory and practice. A structuralist view of the structure-agency relationship promotes a weak standard of leader responsiveness that permits leaders to fail to satisfy citizen preferences if failures are traceable to the existence of structural constraints. A dualistic view of the structure-agency relationship promotes a strong st…
Making a Place for Community
Forword: Benjamin Barber Preface: Toward the Reconstruction of American Community and Democracy Part I: The Triple Threat to Community and Democracy Introduction: The Case for Community Economic Stability: Economics and Political Economics 1. Globalization and Free Trade 2. The Chase for Jobs 3. The Challenge of Sprawl Part II: Place-based Policy Alternatives Note to Part II 4. Federal Job Stabilizing Policies 5. Conventional Strategies 6. State …
Overcoming the Neglect of Economics in Urban Regime Theory
Urban regime theory rightfully reigns as the dominant paradigm in the analysis of local governance. Nevertheless, regime theory has been hampered by its failure to engage economic questions in a sustained and systematic way, leaving it limited in both empirical and prescriptive terms. This article presents an agenda for research that allows for the engagement of economic questions in a way that enhances the strength of urban regime theory vis-à-v…
Local Policy Responses to Globalization
The destabilizing forces wrought by economic globalization increasingly buffet local communities throughout America. This article explores a local policy strategy for coping with the effects of these forces and restoring some degree of stability to local economies. This strategy entails the creation of place‐based ownership models of economic enterprise. With ownership and control held in a more collective or community‐oriented fashion, such ente…
Fighting Poverty with Mobility
Concentrated urban poverty is America's deepest social problem. Eliminating it stands as our nation's greatest challenge. In this article I analyze from a normative perspective antipoverty policies that attempt to address this problem via “mobility,” that is, policies that attempt to disperse the urban poor to suburban locations. I find these policies to be normatively problematic on two grounds: the level coercion experienced by (and the corresp…
The Imperative of Economics in Urban Political Analysis
I welcome and greatly appreciate the opportunity to reply to Professor Stone’s insightful and provocative article. The section of Professor Stone’s article that bears most directly on my original a
Can We Grant a Right to Place
The author considers the plausibility of granting a 'right to place' (RTP) as an entitlement of citizenship in a nation such as the United States. Such a right would afford people the capacity to live in the places (or place communities) they choose. To explore whether granting such a right is plausible, the author identifies and examines the salient barriers now preventing Americans from choosing their place communities. The final section sugges…
Shaming the Inside Game
Liberal expansionism is the dominant approach to addressing the problems of American cities. This approach combines liberal political philosophy with the idea that these problems can be solved only by creating linkages between cities and resources beyond their boundaries. The case for liberal expansionism derives from the shaming of the inside game—a critique of community development and the progressive capacities of cities themselves. I develop …
[U]Nited and Actuated by Some Common Impulse of Passion”
A large and influential group of American scholars studying urban and low-income housing policy have coalesced around the central idea that the best way to ameliorate the plague of urban poverty in the United States is to disperse (or deconcentrate) the urban poor into wealthier (usually outlying suburban) neighborhoods. This article refers to this group of scholars as the Dispersal Consensus (or DC for short). It finds that the DC's zeal to prom…
Rebutting Nonrebuttals
My challenge to the Dispersal Consensus (DC) stimulating this forum (Imbroscio, 2008) is, admittedly, provocative, confrontational, and hard-edged. This stylistic approach in tone and content was n
Theories of Urban Politics
Beyond Mobility
Liberalism remains the dominant philosophical perspective underlying the development of urban public policy in the United States. At the heart of Liberal Urban Policy lies a Mobility Paradigm, which is marked by a strong emphasis on facilitating population movement as a means of addressing urban social problems. In this paper, I explicate the nature of this Mobility Paradigm across four key urban policy goals and then develop a critique of it. In…
Urban Politics
Urban politics is a multidisciplinary field, in other words a number of bits — so to speak — of different disciplines work on it. While those in political science might claim to produce the bulk of the work in this field, others in anthropology, economics, human geography, planning, social policy and sociology can also claim to be making a contribution. The introduction situates the six sections comprising this essay, in which contributors discus…
American Cities and American Political Science—a Look at Thick Injustice
The back cover of Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom's Justice and the American Metropolis concisely lays out a central challenge of contemporary politics: “Today's American cities and suburbs are the sites of ‘thick injustice’—unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change.” The fact that the topic of “u…
The End of (Urban) Liberalism
New Deal Ruins
Political science (34 obras) · Sociology (29 obras) · Law (28 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Politics (21 obras) · Economics (20 obras) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (18 obras) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (14 obras) · Political economy (11 obras) · Law and economics (9 obras)