Community Politics and Urban Redevelopment

Abstract

Faced with the imminent loss of its industrial base, Detroit undertook the Central Industrial Park Project to prepare a site for a proposed General Motors assembly plant. By recalculating the benefits and costs involved in that project, this article raises questions concerning the appropriateness of using benefit cost analysis as the sole determinant of local redevelopment policy, and offers a framework for understanding community power in the light of the experiences of Detroit. Rejecting pluralist and reformist notions of community power that focus on who directly benefits, this article suggests that the locus of community power rests with those factions in the community that succeed in maximizing their potential for future gain. Furthermore, any examination of community power at any given moment must also include an analysis of past outcomes. The range of possible outcomes in the present is constrained by the nature of past confrontations between factions within the community.