Views from the Field: Economic Development Practitioners’ Perceptions About Public-Private Real Estate Partnerships

Abstract

Survey data and a series of ordinal logistic regression models are used in this study to determine if individuals employed in different economic development capacities exhibit perceptual congruence or perceptual dissonance about public-private real estate partnerships in ways that are consistent with growth machine theory. The results offer some evidence that this is the case by showing that economic development practitioners employed by local governments view the potential advantages and disadvantages of these partnerships in much the same way as hypothesized members of pro-growth coalitions, while having significantly different views than their peers employed by higher levels of government. At the same time, the perceptual congruence observed between economic development practitioners employed by local governments and representatives of socially oriented nonprofit organizations raises interesting questions about the role members of the latter group play in growth machine politics in an era where federal support for community development and affordable housing programming continues to dwindle.