Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Impact of Municipal Finance Reform on Urban and Regional Securities Markets

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Urban growth and development have long been central preoccupations of city planners across the world. And urban experts often understand the fortunes and failures of growth and development as a function of a city's links to the local and, increasingly today, the global economy. But what is the precise role of municipal government in responding to and intervening in such economic change today? How do city governments respond to novel demands of rapid urbanization and widespread economic change? At the same time that many cities in the United States are undergoing economic decline and depopulation, cities in the Global South are contributing to a new era of urban growth. Yet when American styles of growth management are displaced to cities elsewhere in the world, they are presented with very different social and economic contexts. Understanding the effects of such policy transfers is critical for developing new policies and programs oriented towards the specific demands of urban growth in a global and cross-cultural context. Findings from this project, which trains a graduate student in methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, will be disseminated to organizations that manage and develop policy for urban planning and development. The research also fosters international scientific cooperation. James Christopher Mizes, under the supervision of Dr. Teresa Caldeira, will conduct 18 months of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and archival research on the role of municipal finance reform in the development of urban and regional economies. The majority of this research will take place in Dakar (Senegal) with additional sites in Abidjan (Côte d'Ivoire), and Washington, D.C. (U.S.A.). Dakar is an appropriate primary research site because the city is a model of urban governance and administration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Further, the City of Dakar is experimenting with programs supported by the U.S. government that are aimed at issuing the region's first municipal bonds on the regional securities market. In an effort to improve the city's finances and pay back impending debts, the City of Dakar has renewed its efforts to increase the revenues it collects from the urban informal economy. At the same time, the municipality has also developed an ambitious plan to relocate many of Dakar's vendors from the urban street. This research will examine how urban streets and municipal finance have come to be understood as contemporary problems, how an evolving set of governmental strategies are responding to these problems, and the resulting constellation of economic practices in urban street markets and regional securities markets.