Search results

Purpose – This chapter examines the electoral coalition and leadership style of Columbus’ Mayor Michael Coleman.Design/methodology/approach – An analysis of State of the City addresses, in-depth interviews, and an analysis of scholarly publications and news stories was conducted.Findings – The first Black mayor of Columbus, Ohio, Michael Coleman was elected by forging an electoral coalition between the city’s majority White and minority Black community. Once in office, Coleman was faced with the challenge of creating a governing coalition that addressed the downtown development interests of his White constituency and the community redevelopment needs of Black residents. While he has favored economic development, Coleman has delivered some noteworthy benefits to the Black community, especially in terms of neighborhood revitalization and community redevelopment. Given the challenge of balancing such divergent interests, Coleman’s accomplishments are noteworthy. Nevertheless, he has been unable to facilitate significant upward mobility of the Black community, and Blacks continue to remain underrepresented in government. This chapter explores the role of racial politics in Coleman’s elections and his policy focus once elected. Attention is also paid to the Coleman administration’s efforts to improve the socioeconomic situation of Blacks. We argue that Coleman’s leadership fits within the “universalized interest approach,” taking advantage of compromises between seemingly polarized parties to produce mutual, if qualified, benefits. In this way, Coleman has placated those with power, ensuring a long tenure as mayor and an extended window of opportunity with which to create change in Columbus.Practical implications – This chapter sheds light on how a minority mayor can come to power in a majority White city today.Originality/value – This is the first analysis of Michael Coleman’s leadership and provides a valuable example of the possibilities and limitations faced by a Black mayor in a majority White city.

Discussions on the implications of power relations among the state, market, and society in urban plans and planning processes are usually centered on urban issues. Studies on suburbanization generally look at suburbs and satellite towns as “spillovers” of high density in the cities, deteriorating conditions of the innercity – particularly in the case of the United States – as well as the longing for living closer to nature. During the twentieth century, both the garden suburb and garden city movements in Britain influenced the planning of new communities overseas. The garden city movement of Ebenezer Howard, emphasizing new and attractive planned towns with their own socialisitic administration, employment, and local facilities, has strong echoes in Singapore's new towns, although the adaptation of the concept in Singapore is more towards the physical landscapes and built greeneries rather than embracing the whole idea of the garden city.

Purpose – We examine electoral politics in the City of Atlanta, GA, and shed light on the prospect that in 2009 Atlanta elected its “last Black mayor.”  We consider how African American tensions around class and social identity may demobilize key constituents of the Black electoral coalition while an increasing Black out-migration and White in-migration had changed the city’s racial balance of electoral power. Recognizing the margin of victory in the 2009 mayoral election between Kasim Reed (an African American) and Mary Norwood (a White challenger) was small (714 votes), we examine how electoral and demographic characteristics explain this result.Methodology – We utilize (1) the 2009 State of Georgia Board of Elections voter demographic file; (2) 2010 Census data (ACS 5 year estimates), and 2009 Mayoral Election count data. We presented descriptive statistics, comparing community level factors and voter characteristics.Research implications – The limitations of this work is that it is exploratory and thus we do not statistically isolate the effects of class and social identity.Findings – Our findings indicate that Reed and other Black elected officials will have to make concerted efforts if they hope to “retain” the Black poor as well as gay and lesbian citizens within a progressive electoral coalition.

In recent years, sustainability considerations in the real estate sector have moved from being a niche market phenomenon to a mainstream trend. The movement has been accompanied by a shift in the industry’s perception of sustainable buildings. Traditional cost-saving goals are now complemented by a growing interest in the potential for sustainable buildings to tackle broader economic and social sustainability challenges as well as issues related to health and well-being. The real estate industry is increasingly expected to adapt its strategies to incorporate new and more stringent environmental and urban development requirements, to cater to shifting demographics, and to utilize new advancements in construction processes and materials. This chapter explores recent research on sustainable real estate and highlights some of the newest trends in the market. The chapter then examines how policy and technological advancements can enable real estate developers to tackle environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges. This will be exemplified through a focus on carbon taxation and timber construction. Based on these case studies, the chapter illustrates how today’s sustainable real estate sector – marked by its move beyond a focus on cost savings – requires for building practices to be strongly rooted in global, sustainable development policies.

The image of Latin American suburbs has changed in the last two decades as they have become more heterogeneous with the development of gated communities that coexist with poor-household settlements. Developers, local government staff and gated community residents are the main actors involved in the process of urban development of the periphery.

Since the end of the twentieth century a movement has been observed, both in geography of tourism and in fashion, spreading to districts located on the outskirts of cities. This is the case of Château Rouge, located in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. For years considered as a “no-go-zone,” the district is now experiencing parallel phenomena of “off-the-beaten-tracks” tourism and fashion development. This chapter analyzes the processes and actors behind the expansion of the tourism perimeter and the diversification of fashion venues, as well as the implications of these developments for the city of Paris.