Sunday, February 18, 2007

Place-Based vs Person-Based Community Development Policies


Planning debates over the relative merits and consequences of place-based (e.g., policing, enterprise zones, business improvement districts, neighborhood investment strategies, infrastructure, the gamut of supply-side urban development strategies, downtown redevelopment) versus people-based (e.g., training/education, some housing assistance programs, welfare as we knew it, means-tested transfers generally) are omnipresent, yet so far as I can tell there is no recent account of the overall status of these analyses, or systematic comparative assessments, or what the associated research or policy agendas might be.

This is kind of surprising given the visibility of post-Katrina New Orleans reconstruction/planning issues. Something along those lines, especially if aimed at providing a broad framework for evaluating community development initiatives and for identifying potentially fruitful areas for applied policy research on the topic, might well be handy. It's possible that I just agreed to produce one over the next couple of months. And you, dear knowledgeable reader, can help.

The Research Literature
First, there are the efficiency and equity arguments. Economists (e.g., Ed Glaeser) have long and strongly preferred person-based programs due to the locational distortions (they can promote the clustering of the poor) and crude targeting (benefits disproportionately go to property owners) associated with place-specific conditions for participation. That is, person-based policies are a first-best strategy for policies aimed at specific persons. Yet circumstances, resources, and obstacles are often spatial in character -- they are here, or over there -- as are local governments, who then in practice appear to find it much easier to find support for place-based programs. This raises the issue, among many others, of the extent to which we should instead focus, in this policy debate, on the second-best.

Roger Bolton presents just this defense in a deservedly influential 1992 Urban Studies article, that takes Winnick's even better known 1966 essay, "Place Prosperity vs. People Prosperity," as its point of departure, together with two additional, related rationales for place-based corrective policies:

It appears one can make a case for place policies only by resorting to one or more of the following lines of argument:
  1. Challenge the conclusion that place policies cause great inefficiency. One must keep in mind second-best arguments here; place policies are not introduced as the sole imperfections in a smoothly-functioning, competitive economy.
  2. Argue that place policies are actually necessary for efficiency, because there are place-specific market imperfections or externalities that make it desirable to intervene with place-specific policies. One might rely substantially on 'second-best' arguments here, too.
  3. Challenge the conclusion that place policies are not effective in redistributing income to individuals. If they are effective as redistribution, there is a positive achievement to offset against losses in efficiency. If in addition one can successfully argue (1) or (2) above, then, of course, this third argument has all the more force. (p. 192)

In his subsequent discussion, he emphasizes the importance of place-specific "sense of place." In a spirited defense of place-based federal economic development programs, Ann Markusen relies on Bolton's arguments, along with several others and a number of caveats and implementation details, in testimony before Congress just last month.

Second, in addition to textbook principles, there are the raw realities of the political economy of the policy record and agenda, both moving targets. In his comments on Quigley's pithy retrospective review of U.S. housing goals and policies in the Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs in 2000, Wheaton points out that while U.S. housing policies have gradually shifted from place- to people-based over the decades, transportation policies have done the reverse, mainly reflecting the dynamics of shifting political constituencies. Sagalyn's detailed exposition of the resurrection of New York's Times Square, Times Square Roulette, includes a litany of pretty good examples of how this works, or doesn't, at the local scale.

Third, this debate is unexpectedly relevant to that over the promotion of "accessibility" as a transportation policy goal, in place of the more traditional "mobility." Accessibility is often defined in this instance as getting people where they want to go (or the demand for destinations), where mobility refers more generically to the ease of movement (or the price of travel). If accessibility is more place-specific than mobility, the two debates may have more in common than we generally acknowledge.


Review Questions

Outside of several useful case studies, I can't find a contemporary review piece. There is the new book, The Geography of American Poverty: Is There a Need for Place-Based Policies?, by Partridge and Rickman, which addresses this issue at some length. The publisher, Upjohn, summarizes their story in this blurb,

Place-based policies have been tried but, as the authors admit, they have been generally unsuccessful. In fact, it is not clear whether local job growth helps the poor since many new jobs often go to commuters and new residents already above the poverty threshold. Therefore, economists and policymakers generally prefer people-based policies that augment the skills of disadvantaged individuals. Still, Partridge and Rickman contend that place-based policies are needed to supplement people-based policies primarily because disadvantaged workers are often less likely to move to locations with vibrant economies; jobs need to be created close enough to poor households that residents can take advantage of those jobs, whether they have received training or not. The authors show that the most economically disadvantaged areas experience the greatest reductions in poverty with the creation of new jobs.

But this is mainly in the context of rural policy, and with respect to labor market and industrial relocation issues. A good start but not as complete as would be useful for contemporary community development planners and analysts.

The efficiency, equity, and political economy of modern place vs. person policy trends, and their implications for urban development, deserve an updated literature and policy review. A clearer statement of what we have learned from the record – especially from comparative work – would be of considerable potential value to modern community development policy.

I'm starting such a review. If you have suggestions or material to share over the next couple of months, I am all ears.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that such a review is long overdue. I would advise being clear about goals. In my practice, I have tended to emphasize people-based strategies if the goal is lifting households out of poverty, and place-based strategies if the goal is bolstering the health and competitiveness of the local economy. Clearly both goals are complementary.

Jim said...

Perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, but you may be interested in some recent work from the UK:
-'Economic segregation in England: Causes, consequences and policy', by Meen et al
-'Poverty of Place', by Suzanne Fitzpatrick.

Anonymous said...

I think that overall people-based strategies may be more effective for reducing poverty with one exception: extreme concentrations of poverty. Areas with extreme concentrations of poverty seem to suffer from lack of investment, low levels of public services, and cyclic patterns of chronic problems such as crime and drug use. Place-based strategies to mix incomes may be effective in breaking these cycles, as appears to be the case with many HOPE VI redevelopments of public housing.

Anonymous said...

Hey Randy, I just saw this thread on your blog right now, almost a year after you posted it! It's amazing what installing Google Desktop will reveal to you...

In any case, I've been doing a bit of writing about people-place issues from empiricla and philosophical POV's. Two empirical pieces I have in JPER and in Urban Affairs Review examine place-based investments in LA, and compare them to the EITC. Admittedly, it's a bit of an unfair comparison, but it is revealing to know that each year the EITC channels roughly $150 million into LA's Enterprise Zones (Places). And this is directly to "people." Now, what happens to all of that investment in people? Surely it must lead to some kind of development. In a 2007 Urban Affairs Review piece I tested the economic development effects of the EITC. While not a HUGE job creation policy tool, there were certainly detectable effects on the retail job base in Enterprise Zones as well as other poor areas. All that to say what I have tried to articulate in a Policy Studies Journal piece (I think 2004). They should be seen as complementary - as one of your other respondents has noted. This is not only because we're never going to get rid of one or the other, but because (and this is what many of the effiency-oriented analysts overlook) is that they exist within political decision-making structures. Think about it this way - what does a mayor or city-council member get from the EITC? Not a whole lot - at least politically. On the other hand, a targeted neighborhood tax benefit can go a long way towards getting re-elected. My intention in examining the economic development effects of the EITC is to show that mayors might actually state that support for state-level EITC's are likely to lead to local job development (in addition to gains against poverty). The reality is that parties and administrations change - as do the antipoverty policies they promote. The important thing is to keep a range of viable antipoverty policy alternatives that can appeal to this range of policy makers.

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts you or others have on this, as I think it's kind of an under-explored area....

Happy holidays out there in I-land.
Jim

 

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