The City as a Fiscal Derivative: Financialization, Quantification, and Growth Politics

• In Event: 107 - ASA-NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Research Session. Issues in Economic Sociology: Perspectives on the United States

Abstract

Financialization exposes cities to boom and bust cycles, but also impacts urban processes in more subtle ways, which I argue can be analyzed by focusing on the ways that aspects of urban life are quantified when incorporated into circuits of financial accumulation. I illustrate this by showing how use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) impacts growth coalitions in two Rust-Belt cities. Urban actors use TIF to fund development by reclassifying property tax receipts as growth and converting them into discretionary revenue streams or backing for exotic municipal bonds. However, the way that TIF quantifies growth gives urban actors incentives to pursue particular development practices: invest in already-thriving or completely under-developed areas, acquire commercial and industrial land and improve it with municipal labor, and incentivize businesses to move around within the city.

Author

• Josh Pacewicz, Brown University