Cross-disciplinary reading workshop Governing the city under constraints & review and capitalisation of workshops for the following year (2022-2023): Paul Peterson and City Limits

Session coordination and moderation: Claire Bénit-Gbaffou and Cesare Mattina
For this session: texts selected and presented by Gilles Pinson (IEP Bordeaux)

When Paul E. Peterson published City Limits in 1981, the book was a resounding success.
thunder. The author blows the whistle on community power studies.
For Peterson, the question of power in the city is secondary. The real question
is to know what can be done in the interests of the city as a whole. And to
For him, the choice is limited. Cities aren't closed spaces in terms of the way they function.
economic and political. They are criss-crossed by flows of people and goods.
capital over which they have little control. They are also involved in
in highly competitive relationships, competition between major cities,
competition in metropolitan areas between municipalities to attract
solvent social groups.
More than the distribution of power in the city, what needs to be studied, according to Peterson, is the
the way in which municipalities behave as rational actors in an environment where
competitive game. This premise is accompanied by some chilling observations
back, but it has to be said that they are not devoid of a certain realism.
Municipalities have an ontological interest in attracting the most affluent social classes.
and this reality which constitutes the grammar of the conduct of the councillors
and local government relations in the United States. For
Peterson, the most rational behaviour for municipalities is to conduct
above all development policies, those that attract the social classes
and high value-added companies. Conversely, it makes little sense for
to embark on redistributive policies.
The subject matter is crude, sometimes shocking, but it has the advantage of lifting the veil on
These are realities that are not unique to the American political and territorial system. In France, too, the tendency of local authorities has often been to indulge in a kind of "self-interest".
to intense competition between them. What's more, Peterson's subject matter is sometimes more
subtle than it seems. For him, redistributive policies have their place, but it is
more realistic and effective to entrust them to higher levels: the States and the power
federal.

In this chapter, P. E. Peterson begins by challenging the tendency of urban studies to consider the city as a miniature state, and takes a position on the debates that have agitated urban studies: on 'community power', on the opposition between reform and machines, on 'comparative urban policy', and on studies of US federalism. These approaches focus on rivalries between social groups and the political organisations that represent them, in the belief that the resources that groups and organisations can mobilise are the same as at national level, which Peterson believes to be false.

In this chapter, Peterson proposes a point of view that structures the whole book, according to which it is possible to identify the objective interest of a city. This interest is not the product of the sum of the individual interests that make up the city, as utilitarians suggest; nor is it the product of the work of political institutions, as pluralists believe. It is the objective result of the city's positioning in a competitive territorial and institutional context. "Policies and programs can be said to be in the interest of cities whenever the policies maintains or enhances the economic position, social prestige, or political power of the city taken as a whole" (20). For Peterson, the city has an interest of its own as "a set of social interactions structured by their location in a particular territorial space" (20). Policies that improve the desirability or attractiveness of an area are in its interest because they benefit all its residents. In fact, for Peterson, cities have no choice but to behave like firms. They must be concerned above all with their economic prosperity, which generates resources to fund public services.

In this chapter, Peterson looks at the theories of federalism. For him, federalism based on the co-presence of 2 levels of sovereign powers died with the Civil War and the gradual expansion of federal powers. There can be no return to dual sovereignty; on the contrary, it is necessary to focus on what he considers to be an optimal distribution of powers and competences between levels. Local governments are part of an open system that forces them to focus primarily on their economic performance. This leaves little room for egalitarian concerns (69). National governments also have policies

but which are accompanied by redistributive policies. What enables them to combine the two? The ability of national governments to limit the impact of external economic flows on their territory.

Using schools as an example, the chapter illustrates the fundamentally competitive nature of the American territorial system and the resulting effects of inequality. "Ironically, schooling, the service-delivery system said to best exemplify America's commitment to equality, is largely provided by the level of government least able to engage in redistribution" (94). In metropolitan areas, a dual education system has emerged. In central areas, with "big city school systems" managing very large areas and cities unable to "choose" their residents, redistributive objectives dominate; rich people pay for poor households through inter-neighbourhood redistribution. "With uniformity comes redistribution, and with redistribution comes damage to the city's economic interests" (105). Conversely, in the peripheral municipalities, which are often economically homogenous and have a greater capacity to be socially exclusive, each municipality pursues development objectives above all else.