The Transformation of Urban Politics in France the Roots of Growth Politics and Urban Regimes

Abstract

French urban planning and politics has moved away from traditional spatial and social policy goals toward a new politics of local economic development. The roots of this transformation are found in such factors as local economic distress, European unification, enhanced global and intercity competition, political decentralization, and a change in Socialist party ideology away from its previous anticapitalist stance to a pragmatic, probusiness point of view. Growth coalitions in France and the United States are compared in an effort to identify the roots and structures of growth regimes.