“P3s”, Urban Growth Machines, and the Glass City by Curtis Alan Deeter
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A Master’s Thesis entitled “P3s”, Urban Growth Machines, and the Glass City by Curtis Alan Deeter Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Geography ________________________________________ Dr. Sujata Shetty, Committee Chair ________________________________________ Dr. Bhuiyan Alam, Committee Member ________________________________________ Dr. Neil Reid, Committee Member ________________________________________ Dr. Amanda Bryant-Friedrich, Dean, College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo May 2018 Copyright 2018, Curtis Alan Deeter This document is copyrighted material. Under copyright law, no parts of this document may be reproduced without the expressed permission of the author. An Abstract of “P3’s”, Urban Growth Machines, and the Glass City by Curtis Alan Deeter Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Geography The University of Toledo May 2018 As the landscape of 21st Century Rustbelt cities continues to change, city leaders are faced with important decisions on how to manage these changes. For some, growth is the most viable option. For others, especially those with a declining population and diminishing infrastructure, growth is out of the question. This paper will attempt to analyze the growth politics of Toledo, Ohio, utilizing the Urban Growth Machine theory and public-private partnerships as the framework. One such partnership, the Toledo 22nd Century Committee, will be the focus for the analysis. Census data, real estate data provided by a local real estate development agency, newspaper articles, and qualitative analysis using MaxQDA will work in tangent with key-member interviews to answer the underlying research question: do the public-private partnerships in the city of Toledo fit the model of an emerging growth machine? If so, what sort of impact might this have on future revitalization efforts? iii This is dedicated to all those who have wandered but have never felt lost. It is for those who are cursed with that most wonderful affliction: a desire to understand the world and the way it works. Sometimes, one must begin locally. Other times, one must traverse great lengths to find that which they seek. iv Acknowledgments First, I’d like to thank Dr. Sujata Shetty, my thesis advisor, for offering me assistance and advice when I needed it, as well as being patient with me throughout the process. I’d also like to acknowledge Dr. Bhuiyan Alam, Dr. Neil Reid, and Dr. Peter Lindquist for providing me with access to the information and experience I needed to complete this study. Without them, this study would never have even gotten its roots. Lastly, a special thank you to Dr. Mary Beth Schlemper and Dr. Daniel Hammel for providing me with the roadmap I needed to discover my place in the world. v Table of Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Table of Contents vi List of Tables viii List of Figures ix List of Abbreviations x Preface xi I. Introduction: Rustbelt Cities, Legacy Dreams 1 II. Problem Statement and Thesis Objectives 4 III. Methodology 7 IV. Literature Review 10 A. Urban Growth Machine 10 B. Public-Private Partnerships 17 C. Successes in Midwest/Rust Belt Redevelopment 26 V. Case Study 32 A. Rust Belt Cities Overview 32 B. Toledo, Ohio Census Data – A Closer Look 33 C. Report Study Area 35 D. Toledo 22nd Century Committee 36 VI. Data Analysis – Results and Discussion 41 A. Real Estate Conditions 41 B. Code Definitions 51 vi C. Coding Results 53 D. Qualitative Coding Discussion 58 VII. Conclusion 65 References 68 Appendices A. Interview Forms 73 vii List of Tables Table 1 Population Change in Rust Belt Cities ............................................................32 Table 2 Toledo, Ohio Statistics ....................................................................................33 Table 3 Toledo 22nd Century Committee .....................................................................37 Table 4 CBD Market Area Statistics ............................................................................43 Table 5 Real Estate Vacancies and Values ..................................................................44 Table 6 Downtown Toledo Median Sales ....................................................................45 Table 7 Downtown Redevelopment Projects; A Snapshot ..........................................46 Table 8 Toledo Residential Building Occupancy ........................................................49 Table 9 Coding Frequencies ........................................................................................54 Table 10 Codes per Document .......................................................................................55 Table 11 Code Frequency by Document ........................................................................56 Table 12 Code to Code Relationships pt. 1 ....................................................................57 Table 13 Code to Code Relationships pt. 2 .....................................................................58 viii List of Figures Figure 1 PPP Arrangements/Types of Public-Private Partnership Agreements ............22 Figure 2 Downtown Toledo Map ..................................................................................36 Figure 3 Downtown Toledo Residential Buildings .......................................................50 ix List of Abbreviations CBD ...........................Central Business District CEO............................Chief Executive Officers HCR ...........................Health Care (a Toledo company) HH ..............................Household HKS............................International Architecture Group LLP ............................Limited Liability Partnership MKSK ........................National Planning Firm NCPPP .......................National Council of Public-Private Partnerships PDP ............................Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership PPP .............................Public-Private Partnership SSOE ..........................Local Architecture Group TBA............................To Be Announced UAW ..........................United Auto Workers VP ..............................Vice President x Preface What started as a Research Assistant position for the Jack Ford Urbans Affairs Center, an applied research unit of The University of Toledo, quickly became a much more in-depth review of the Toledo area. The research compiled throughout the two-and- a-half-year process fueled two academic presentations, one at the 46th Urban Affairs conference in San Diego, California, and the other at a regional American Association of Geographers conference in Marquette, Michigan, and put me in front of prominent civic and private leaders of the city of Toledo. As I began to see the sort of things happening behind the urban redevelopment curtain, my desire to understand the work being done grew. The natural extension of that was to complete my master’s degree with a paper that brought it all together—that examined the ways in which modern Rust Belt cities like Toledo could possibly recover after devastating job loss, financial turmoil, and a steadily shrinking population base. xi Chapter One Introduction: Rust Belt Cities, Legacy Dreams The landscape of human settlement, whether in the form of sprawling metropolises, medium-sized industrial cities, or quaint rural villages, is as fluid as the waterways that originally brought them together. Innovative technologies and new means of communication between locales, regionally, nationally, and globally, render old resources and economies obsolete. Community leaders who adjust to these changes, those willing to give up the past for new and unconventional means of production, tend to usher in growth and prosperity for their communities. But is unrestricted growth the only desirable outcome for drastically different places? For a lot of cities in the Rust Belt, such as Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, and many more, the loss of industry drastically changed their landscape. The increased automation of industry and manufacturing in these areas, rapid changes in both freight and passenger transportation, the loss of manufacturing employment, structural changes in the economy, suburbanization and sprawl among other factors, streaked cities with unemployment, poverty, population loss and uncertainty. Skylines once filled with skyscrapers, billowing smoke stacks, and boundless opportunity darkened almost overnight. City leaders eventually began to seek creative solutions for recovery. With decaying housing stock, vacant industrial brown fields, and faltering economies, a hundred different cities tried a hundred different things. A survey of revitalization methods in the many different Rust Belt cities is well beyond the scope of this paper, but one much debated and widely utilized process provides fruitful information in 1 studying the urban growth politics of Toledo, Ohio: public-private partnerships (PPPs). While cities are faced with the aftermath of deindustrialization, the same local governments also have to navigate their new landscapes with emptying coffers. Federal and state funds for transportation, environmental protection, education, technology, and other forms of community development are sparse and spread out over a number of communities. To compensate for the loss of public funding, city leaders in the public sector engage in contractual agreements with private corporations. By doing so, leaders