Special Section: Chronologies and Complexities of Western Neoliberalism

Christopher Mele

Casinos, Prisons, Incinerators, and Other Fragments of Neoliberal Urban Development

Neoliberal urban development, as a set of governance practices and regulations intended to valorize cities as sites for capital accumulation, has increased social polarization and produced enclaves or cities within cities. Local governments have relinquished administrative and legal control to private corporations over how certain areas in the city are developed and used (or consumed) and by whom. In this article I examine the emergence of governance strategies around urban fragmentation in Chester, an older, former industrial city in southeastern Pennsylvania. My analysis focuses primarily on modes of state (de)regulation and intervention in privatized urban redevelopment, emphasizing how common patterns in governance have surfaced despite changing definitions of urban redevelopment over different time periods. In doing so, this analysis fits within critical studies of actually existing neoliberalism, in which the forms and practices of neoliberalism are examined as historically contingent and geographically specific.

Neoliberal urban development, as a set of governance practices and regulations intended to valorize cities as sites for capital accumulation, brings
Social Science History 35:3 (Fall 2011) DOI 10.1215/01455532-1273357 2011 by Social Science History Association

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about increasing social polarization and uneven spatial development at a number of scales within metropolitan areas, often producing a patchwork quilt of islands of relative affluence struggling to secure themselves in a sea of spreading decay (Harvey 2000: 152). The appearance of these self- contained, insular enclaves is born of a neoliberal ideology that vilifies comprehensive planning efforts to overcome segregation and celebrates market- based solutions to urban economic development (Dumenil and Levy 2004; Harvey 2005). Los Angeles is often cited as the exemplar of fragmented urbanism (Dear and Flusty 1998; Dear and Dahmann 2008), but older, former industrial cities have similarly participated in enclave- oriented redevelopment. State power, in particular, has become instrumental to the private market creation of isolated spaces of luxury shopping, entertainment, and housing vigorously disconnected from poor, mostly minority neighborhoods in cities like Baltimore, Maryland, or Camden, New Jersey. The neoliberal push toward state- facilitated market solutions, intercity competition for capital, and public- private development partnerships has compelled municipalities to institute new spatial strategies that make room for development through enhanced racial and class segregation and exclusion. In the past few decades state and municipal authorities have deployed new mechanisms of urban governance that relinquish to private corporations administrative and legal control over how certain areas in the city are developed and used (or consumed) and by whomeffectively rendering such spaces cities within cities. Although much of the literature on neoliberalism is theoretical in scope, recent work has addressed the sociohistorical dimensions of how modes of neoliberal regulation and governance practices take shape (May et al. 2005; Hackworth 2007). In this article I examine the recent emergence of governance strategies around urban fragmentation in an older, former industrial city as a window through which to view the actual and often contradictory workings of neoliberalism and its impacts (Brenner and Theodore 2002; Peck and Tickell 2002; Hackworth and Moriah 2006). My analysis focuses primarily on modes of state (de)regulation and intervention in privatized urban redevelopment, emphasizing how common patterns in governance have surfaced despite changing definitions of urban redevelopment over different time periods. In doing so, this analysis fits within critical studies of actually existing neoliberalism, in which the forms and practices of neoliberalism

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are complex politico- ideological hybrids derived from contextually specific adaptations, negotiations and struggles (Brenner and Theodore 2002: 360). I begin with a statement of the problem by introducing the seemingly contradictory forms of urban development in Chester, Pennsylvania. I follow with a detailed discussion of the sequence of governance strategies that have produced fragments of development in an otherwise impoverished city along with the social costs of their implementation.

Disjointed Development in Chester

Chester is a small city (4.8 square miles) of 36,000 persons located on the Delaware River, just 15 miles south of Philadelphia. Chester is the states oldest city; it was settled by Swedes and Finns in the 1640s, and William Penn spent a year there (in part to settle a land dispute) before relocating upriver to present- day Philadelphia. It remained a minor port town until the end of the nineteenth century, when shipbuilding and industrial manufacturing fueled a robust population growth of immigrant workers and a vibrant commercial downtown. Its twentieth- century history of industrial decline, suburban outmigration, and racial unrest is true of any number of comparable cities in the Northeast and the Midwest. Today Chester is bleak and brutally poor. Its population is half its peak of the 1950s, and the majority of its residents (75.7 percent of the total population) come from black families whose annual incomes are far below the states median level (US Census Bureau 2008). The citys landscape remains, for the most part, desolatedilapidated row houses, empty storefronts, abandoned lots. It includes a handful of corner grocers (but no supermarket), an auto shop, a pharmacy, and a number of bars, taverns, and liquor stores. It has long ranked at the top in the state for gang activity, assaults and homicides, poorly performing schools, and sagging community health levels, and most incidents of these phenomena are clustered in the confined space of Chesters ghetto (ibid.). Reflective of a downward spiral since the early 1970s, most Delaware Valley residents have low regard for Chester: they take pains to drive around it and actively reproduce its negative reputation (which is helped along by memories of racial unrest and routine news reports of homicides and unemployment rates). From a casual visitors perspective, Chester is (tragically) unremarkableit could be any deindustrialized US city. Yet Chesters story offers something peculiar. The eight- lane Interstate

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95 cuts through the city, marking (if not making) the northeastern boundary of Chesters ghetto. The boundary to the southwest is the citys waterfront and the location of its once- bustling shipbuilding and factory district, marked by Route 291. Chesters short stretch of waterfront boasts a striking assortment of nondescript warehouses and small factories; garbage- strewn and overgrown lots; an international paper products plant; a state prison; a handful of colonial- era buildings; Class A office space in a renovated power plant; a municipal trash incinerator; Harrahs casino and racetrack; a professional soccer stadium; and plans for an upscale housing, retail, and office complex. To the north of Chester lie more plants and factories and an international airport; to the south, one of the largest oil refineries on the East Coast. Together with its ghetto, Chester is a city of fragments separated by widened roads and empty lots, with each enclave sustaining its own function, economy, and demographic, ranging from incarceration, bare subsistence, and legalized gambling to noxious industry, insurance underwriting, and, if built, high- end consumption. There is little interaction among the users of these discrete microworlds. Other than the ghetto, with its predominantly poor and black residents, the enclaves are the intended domains of visitors of sorts: gamblers, prisoners, white- collar workers, truck drivers, laborers, and soccer fans. Gamblers drive along the gloomy Industrial Highway to get to Harrahsa fortresslike, brightly lit complex of restaurants, shops, a racetrack, a parking garage, and a 2,700slot machine gaming floor. Harrahs stands in stark contrast to the surrounding smokestacks, the empty lots, and, curiously, a state prison (juxtaposing the jail cell and the slot machine floor with forced temperance and indulgent excess). The nearby waste incinerator is testament to the rampant fiscal desperation of the 1980s and 1990s; the noise of garbage trucks and plumes of smoke remind even the most ardent city boosters that this is still Chester. A very short distance south along the waterfront, the cluster of renovated office space; a Major League Soccer stadium; and planned upscale shopping, condominiums, and apartments is named Rivertowna place- name that has no historical connection to Chester whatsoever, as its developers gladly intend. On the surface, the citys turn to the promise of gambling, prison construction, waste management, and a professional sports arena reflects separate and discrete development strategies, each linked to national and international trends in urban economic development (and reflected in the scholarly

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literatures on gaming, mass incarceration, and environmental racism). But there is something more here, made obvious by the fact that these different fragments of urban development coexist in a confined space in a small city. And while Chesters curious effort at revitalization certainly reflects its unique and specific history, the forces behind these developments are best understood as localized manifestations of neoliberal urbanism. The hodgepodge urban landscape of todays Chester is the result of two chronological waves of neoliberal governance strategies. In the first wave, local government sought to make the most of the citys deindustrialized expanse, an increasingly obsolete labor force, and the lack of economic development options by allowing, if not welcoming, private companies to locate noxious industries and unwanted institutionsincinerators and a prison in former industrial parcels adjacent to poor, black neighborhoods. This first wave of chasing smokestacks may be conceived as a localized version of what Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (2002) call roll- back neoliberalism and is largely defined by (1) the active dismantling of urban land- use policies rooted in an earlier period of comprehensive physical and social planning and, concurrently, (2) a readiness among governments to use public resources and governance powers to promote private- sectorinitiated development. Peck and Tickell temporally locate roll- back neoliberalism in the 1980s, when states and municipal governments faced federal cutbacks and were compelled to turn to market- based solutions to address long- standing urban problems. Peck and Tickell refer to an ensuing period of roll- out neoliberalism beginning in the 1990s, in which states and local governments developed aggressive policies to attract private capital. Faced with the limitations of chasing smokestacks in an increasingly postindustrial political economy, Chesters redevelopment strategies steered clear of the citys industrial past and, using an array of state- based incentives and subsidies, actively courted amusement/consumption- oriented developmentcasinos and stadiumsin former industrial spaces bordering poor, black communities. State and local governments have rolled out a variety of site- specific development incentive programs, including property tax relief, favorable land- use policies, and direct capital assistance, to foster the private urban redevelopment of certain areas and not others. Today the result of both waves is a landscape of disconnected fragments of redevelopment that coexist awkwardly. Chesters recent past, I contend, provides a supportive case for conceiving neoliberalism as temporally

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dynamic and continually adaptive (Peck and Tickell 2002; Peck 2004)an illustration of both roll- back and roll- out neoliberal urban development. Below I examine roll- back and roll- out chronological forms of neoliberalism in Chesters recent efforts to undo the problems left behind by deindustrialization. In both examinations attention is paid to the implications of new forms of governance for the citys marginalized populations. First, it is helpful to review the sociohistorical context that gave rise to Chesters curious mix of redevelopment projects along its waterfront.

Chesters Brief Rise and Long Fall

Governance practices associated with roll- back and roll- out phases of neoliberalism have aggravated the sociospatial disconnect between Chesters waterfront enclaves and its adjacent ghetto, but they did not cause it. The divide between the city and its waterfront occurred during the decades following World War I. As in many older industrial cities located adjacent to water, the waterfront played an intrinsic role in the historical development of Chesters residential, commercial, and retail districts. The citys industrial rise was originally tied to shipping; raw materials were delivered to manufacturing plants along the Delaware River, and finished goods were loaded onto ships for export. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the riverfront housed numerous light manufacturing industries, producing dyes, artificial silk, mens and womens worsteds and wools, and metal syringes. By the 1920s Chesters waterfront emerged as a premier location for heavy industry along the eastern United States. Dozens of firms manufactured brick, chemicals, steel castings, and iron tubing, employing tens of thousands of immigrant laborers from Europe. The Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company (where both Harrahs casino and the state prison now sit) was the citys largest industrial concern at the time. At its peak it employed 10,000 people in a 54- acre facility stretching a mile and a half along the bank of the Delaware. Sun Shipbuilding mass- produced oil tankers and wartime vessels in its huge complex and housed many of its workers in adjacent company- owned housing (Meli 1972: 21). Chesters powerful industrial growth fueled a rapid expansion in population. Between 1910 and 1920 its population grew from 39,000 to 58,000. Italians, Poles, and other southern and eastern European immigrants streamed into the area to fill manufacturing positions and stamped the citys social and

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cultural identity with a palpably working- class feel. By 1920 Chester was shipping over 50 percent of its output to markets outside Pennsylvania. The reliance on manufacturing output left Chester, like other industrial- based cities, susceptible to vagaries in the national economy, including the Great Depression. World War II reenergized the local economy, however, and stimulated another round of industrial and social change. Industrial employment tripled between 1939 and 1943, from 14,000 to over 42,000. By 1947 industrial employment in the city was back to its prewar level (ibid.: 22). As in many industrial cities, the twin postwar processes of deindustrialization and suburbanization produced long- term sociospatial effects for Chester, many of which remain visible today. Chesters manufacturing economy disappeared incrementally in the decades after World War II. Capital depletion hastened the deterioration of the industrial sector following the war, along with a national trend toward industrial decentralization to the suburbs. Larger firms relocated to cheaper and bigger parcels in the immediate suburbs, in the South, or, eventually, overseas; no sizable new firms replaced them. Many remaining smaller firms continued to operate into the 1960s and 1970s, investing little if any in capital improvements, new technologies, or maintenance. The citys housing stock that had once stretched to accommodate wartime workers was badly in need of repair or replacement. Few large- scale government- sponsored housing projects were completed in the city immediately following the war. As industries along the river shut down, waterfront parcels lay polluted and vacant. Department stores, restaurants, and small commercial businesses vanished from the adjacent downtown business district. Between 1967 and 1972, for example, Chester lost 199 nonindustrial establishments (a loss of 1,487 jobs) and 32 industrial facilities (a loss of 3,000 jobs) (ibid.: 76). As in many industrial cities, factory closings and the accompanying decline in industrial employment occurred roughly in tandem with major demographic changes, mainly the arrival of a black workforce and the exodus of white residents. Blacks composed only about 12 percent of Chesters population between 1900 and 1920 but 17 percent by 1940. As was the case elsewhere, large numbers of southern blacks migrated to Chester during the war and afterward, while whites took up residences and jobs outside the city. Between 1950 and 1960 the percentage of black residents increased from 21 percent to 33 percent. By 1970 blacks accounted for 45 percent of the total population, but the citys increasingly large proportion of blacks was pri-

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marily an effect of staggering overall population losses due largely to the departure of whites. The citys population was estimated at more than 80,000 in 1945. However, that number quickly fell after the war, to 66,000 in 1950, 63,000 in 1960, and 56,000 in 1970. The outward movement of mostly white families and small businesses and the decline in industrial employment left Chesters remaining, largely black population few economic options. In addition, the housing options for blacks were limited to the older neighborhoods bordering the increasingly defunct industrial district. Together, limited employment opportunities and overcrowded, substandard housing conditions provided the necessary preconditions for Chesters ghetto to materialize (Harris 2008). A landscape of vacant and fallow (post)industrial space adjacent to depopulated residential and increasingly abandoned commercial districts was not unique to Chestera point not lost on city planners and administrators, who, along with federal and state officials, worked throughout the 1960s and early 1970s to address a growing number of problems linked to unemployment, racial segregation, and inner- city decline. What is both telling and significant about this era of state intervention is the effort at social inclusion (which stands in obvious contrast to the exclusionary practices of neoliberal governance). Although many urban renewal programs in Chester and throughout the United States resulted in inequitable distributions of wealth and resources, progressive planning cultures and organized citizen input demanded that government attention remain focused on improved housing and access to jobs for low- income people. Local citizen pressure, in tandem with national political trends, had some bearing on the shape and form of federally funded and locally implemented employment, education, and housing initiatives in Chester and similar cities in the 1960s and early 1970s. Early in 1964 Chester was rocked by civil rights demonstrations led by several organized groups protesting the lack of community action and leadership in seeking solutions to mounting economic and social problems. These outbursts, at times violent, attracted national attention and led to the development of a wide variety of programs for rehabilitating job training, education, and other aspects of community structure. The Chester City Planning Commission formulated an overall redevelopment plan in 1965, and a quasi- public agency, the Greater Chester Movement, was formed to administer various human resource development programs authorized under newly enacted federal regulations. The citys Redevelopment Authority formulated

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plans for promoting industrial development on the waterfront, subsidizing low- cost housing, and revitalizing the downtown commercial district. As in many other cities, however, the local government, in carrying out these plans, focused on aggressive slum clearance and committed only minimal resources to upgrading or replacing the housing supply (Chester City Planning Commission 1965; Meli 1972). The 1965 plan is noteworthy because it both acknowledges extant social and economic conditions and lists proposals to directly engage and address social problems (although most were never properly funded or initiated). In short, such programs emphasized the acknowledgment and improvement of the citys situation as presented in the mid- 1960s; there is no mention of imagined alternative scenarios in which the needs of present residents are overlooked and the extent of the citys social problems simply ignored. Early in the 1965 plan the authors spell out this principle very clearly: In developing goals for development, it was recognized that the general character of the City is working class. The population is predominantly in the low and middle income group with a strong immigrant component of white, foreign born immigrants to begin with, largely replaced by Negroes during the last several decades. This general character has been accepted as a basic element of the plan: Chester should provide the best possible environment for a low and middle income population. (Chester City Planning Commission 1965: 5) In the ensuing pages of the plan, urban poverty is presented as multicausal and the visible deterioration of neighborhoods and commercial districts as yet another manifestation of it, along with unemployment, crime, community health problems, and juvenile delinquency. In short, despite limited successes, the ideological stance of state intervention in the 1960s and 1970s tied social planning with physical planning and recommended comprehensive urban policies that were holistic and, at minimum, addressed the structural needs of Chesters resident population. Conditions in Chester worsened in the 1970s and 1980s. The citys manufacturing base collapsed, employment levels plummeted, and the downtown core and adjacent run- down working- class neighborhoods witnessed rising crime levels, worsening educational opportunities, and increased poverty and destitution (Chester City Planning Commission 1994). Chester today is a much smaller and poorer city than it was 50 years ago. Located in one

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of the most affluent counties in Pennsylvania, the city is a pocket of severe deprivation. The current population (36,000) is little more than half that of 1950 (66,000). It is 76 percent black, 5 percent Latino, and 18 percent white. Twenty- eight percent of the citys residents live below the official poverty level (three times the state average), and the majority of poor residents are clustered in the ghetto adjacent to the former manufacturing district along the waterfront. More than half of the citys residents are renters. Chesters unemployment rate is double the state average. Thirty- two percent of its residents over the age of 25 have not earned a high school diploma (US Census Bureau 2008). Federal subsidies and leadership in urban policy had receded by the mid- 1980s, compelling state and municipal governments to devise different governance arrangements specifically suited to the growing local political and economic needs and circumstances. Despite differences, emerging forms of urban governance shared a common dimension: municipal policy priorities moved away from redistributive concerns based on expanding social welfare rights toward creating an amenable pro- business government culture to attract increasingly footloose private capital (Harvey 1989: 4; Clarke and Newman 1997). This ideological- practical shift in governance priorities initially took a form of rolling backa gradual unraveling of urban spatial regulations and a defunding and dismantling of social welfare protections. Like many other cities caught in the midst of cost- cutting measures in public safety, education, and other social services, Chester turned to private sources to spearhead even the most modest form of urban redevelopment and offer some promise of replenishing empty city coffers. Chester became receptive, if not vulnerable, to particularly opportunistic forms of private- sector investment.

Roll- Back Neoliberalism: Chasing Smokestacks and Prisons

Historically, Chester has long seen its share of environmental problems from industrial production and shipbuilding bleeding into adjacent neighborhoods of working- class row houses. Generations of working- class residents living close to factories and refineries endured a daily onslaught of noise, smells, smoke, and other toxic emissions. Most of the citys stock of factories and industrial facilities had departed by the early 1980s, leaving behind a swath of

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seemingly unusable contaminated brownfields along the Delaware River. Yet the toxic yield from remaining industriescoal- and gas- fired power plants, a paper mill, downsized factories, a neighboring oil refinerycontinued to inundate Chesters west- end neighborhood and its surroundings. Environmental conditions in Chesters poor and minority neighborhoods only worsened in the late 1980s and early 1990s as limited efforts at local urban redevelopment took shape in toxic form. Legislators and government officials from Delaware County and Chester partnered with investment firms and private corporations to transform a large portion of Chesters waterfront into a waste magnet, allowing former industrial land to be developed as a specialized zone for various trash treatment and waste processing plants. By the early 1990s Chesters waste zone included a household and light industrial waste incinerator, a wastewater and sewage treatment facility, a medical waste treatment facility, and three waste processing plants. Environmental watchdog organizations and scholars have examined the ecological impact of Chesters waste zone and its accompanying community health risks (Mendel- Reyes 1995; Chester Environmental Justice Factsheet 1996; Foster 1998; Ewall 1999; Cole and Foster 2001). Among the more important findings, the studies conclude that the large concentration of toxic sources adjacent to mostly poor, minority neighborhoods; the lack of input from local residents in the decisions on where to locate waste facilities; and the consequent elevated health risks indicate a clear case of environmental racism (Mendel- Reyes 1995; Foster 1998; Ewall 1999; Cole and Foster 2001). Ninety- five percent of the residents in the neighborhoods adjacent to the waste facilities were working- class black renters and home owners (Ewall 1999). In the 1990s Chesters infant mortality rate was the highest in the state; its percentage of low- weight births was nearly double the percentage for all of Delaware County. Chesters lung cancer mortality rate was nearly 60 percent higher than that of Delaware County. According to an Environmental Protection Agency study, 60 percent of children had blood- lead levels over the maximum recommended level (US Environmental Protection Agency, Region III, and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources 1995; Chester Environmental Justice Factsheet 1996). One account depicts the everyday nuisance created by the flow of incinerator- bound garbage trucks through residential streets: Since 1991, when the incinerator opened, trucks with New York, Delaware, and Ohio license plates barreled down Thurlow Street, once

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a quiet residential road, often 15 or more hours a day. The noise kept sleepy children awake until late at night, and woke them early the next morning. Their parents swept the dust that invaded their homes, and tried to get rid of the trash that flew off the heavily loaded, uncovered trucks, before it attracted the rats which arrived with the incinerator. Mothers and grandmothers watched their children as carefully as they could, to catch them before they chased a ball into the street where the trucks rattled by. Many noticed that they were coughing more, and that their kids seemed to be missing more days of school because of illness. (Mendel- Reyes 1995: 155) Chesters waste zone is an enclave carved out for a specific use through a public- private initiative that generates private profit and some public revenues (through municipal and county operating fees) at substantial community costs. The story of how the waste zone came to be exemplifies roll- back neoliberal urban governance. Local, county, and state governments fast- tracked land- use variances and created a business- friendly environment with little environmental oversight for an industry not typically associated with sustainable urban economic development. But there is money to be made in waste management, and the emergence of Chesters waste zone exemplifies a dependence on public- private partnerships characteristic of neoliberal governance. In 1985 a Pittsburgh- based investment banking firm, in partnership with the Pittsburgh- based Westinghouse Corporation, purchased several neighboring, mostly abandoned parcels along Chesters waterfront with the express intent of creating a waste treatment industrial park. The purchasing partners, Chester Solid Waste Associates, won approval from county officials to recruit officials from existing waste companies, such as trash transfer companies and recycling plants, to relocate to Chester or to form new companies. The plan for a concentrated zone of waste industries appealed to city and county officials: it held out the ultimately elusive promise of local job creation and offered reuse of mostly contaminated former industrial space. With few revenue- generating development alternatives on hand or looming, officials began to envision Chesters rundown waterfront as an obvious magnet for the waste treatment industry. Local government enthusiasm handed the private waste business consortium a profitable return: where other communities took legislative steps to force out waste treatment plants, Chester welcomed them.

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In 1988 the cooperation between Chester Solid Waste Associates and Delaware County expanded; officials approved permits and provided county financing to build a trash- to- steam incinerator. County officials presented the Westinghouse incinerator deal as beneficial to their constituents: all of the countys trash would be burned, thus saving landfill space. Chester officials were enticed by the companys commitment to pay a yearly fee into the citys coffers. The costs to the community were high, however. The incinerator was built only 80 feet from a residential neighborhood (Mendel- Reyes 1995: 155). And although incineration reduces the mass of waste to be deposited in landfills, the burned trash releases dioxins, heavy metals, and other toxic air emissions. In addition, the county approved permits to build an incinerator much larger in size and capacity than needed to burn its volume of solid waste (the facility built is the seventh largest in the United States). The larger capacity allowed Westinghouse (now Covanta) to reap sizable profits by burning 50 percent more solid waste, hauled to Chester from sources outside Delaware County and Pennsylvania (Chester Environmental Justice Factsheet 1996; Ewall 1999). Shortly after the incinerator was approved, other waste management corporations approached the city and the county with plans to build facilities. In a similar fee- based revenue- sharing plan with the city, Delaware County officials approved construction of an infectious and chemotherapeutic medical waste autoclave adjacent to the trash- to- steam incinerator. Once built, the plant was the largest medical waste autoclave in the United States (it closed in 1996). At the peak of its operation in 1993, its owner, Thermal Pure Systems, processed three times the amount of medical waste produced in the entire state of Pennsylvania. Chester and Delaware County officials gave similar approval to plans and permits to construct two contaminated soil remediation sites (incinerators), but these facilities never opened (Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living v. Department of Environmental Resources, 668 A.2d 110 [Pa. 1995]; Foster 1998). Within a decade a large portion of Chesters abandoned waterfront had been transformed into a waste treatment industrial park, as city and county officials, Chester Solid Waste Associates, and smaller operators had intended. Delaware County, the city of Chester, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (PADER) approved the start- up of five waste treatment facilities in Chesters waste zone between 1986 and 1997 (Balter 1999). Operating fees flowed to city and county governments as nearby black and

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poor residents contended with pollution, noise, and mounting incidences of health- related problems (Cole and Foster 2001). Chesters urban development strategy of chasing smokestacks demonstrates key elements of an initial wave of neoliberal governance arrangements. Urban redevelopment becomes defined as project- specific and territorial- specific, not neighborhood- focused or community- wide. Local governments partnerif even implicitlywith private companies to fast- track regulatory approvals and grant exceptions and variances to land- use policies within the targeted area. In return, local governments are drawn to much- needed revenues from operating fees. Within the (de facto) development zone, local government oversight is minimized, and corporations are granted extensive autonomy over operations. In Chester the principal private- sector stakeholder, Chester Solid Waste, retained control over every facility that has been permitted to locate in Chester, exerting direct influence over its waste- processing tenants (ibid.: 38). Left out of this arrangement were the public in general and residents of adjacent neighborhoods in particular. Cooperation between government and the private sector excluded any mechanisms for meaningful citizen participation and dissent. As the number of existing and planned facilities in the waste zone grew, however, residents became increasingly organized. Any immediate economic benefits from waste industry development are offset by a range of negative externalities (OSullivan 1993; Frey et al. 1996; Kunreuther and Easterling 1996; Hamilton and Viscusi 1999). Fed up with noise and odors and increasing concerns over health consequences, residents living adjacent to the waste zone formed the community- based organization Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) in 1992. Ignored by local government and waste company officials, CRCQL (and the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia) first sued Thermal Pure Systems, the operator of the autoclave, and the PADER in 1993 for the companys risky practices in transporting and sorting infectious waste. The local court decided in CRCQLs favor, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the ruling; Thermal Pure Systems continued to operate until its owners closed the facility in 1996 (Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living v. Department of Environmental Resources; Thermal Pure v. Department of Environmental Resources, 63 E.D. Misc. Dkt. [Pa. 1995]). CRCQL sued the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) in May 1996, mounting a novel legal claim of discrimination

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under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The lawsuit held that the state discriminated against the black community when PADEP did not consider the racial makeup of Chester or the number of existing noxious facilities before allowing permits for a fifth waste treatment plant. A key allegation in the suit reads, The total permit waste tonnage capacity of facilities in census tracts where African- Americans comprise more than 50 percent of the population is 2.3 times the total permit tonnage capacity of waste facilities in census tracts where white persons comprise more than 50 percent of the population (Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living v. Seif, 944 F.Supp. 413 [E.D.Pa. 1996]). The district court ruled in favor of PADEP and the company that had applied for a permit to open a contaminated soil incinerator, Soil Remediation Services. In 1997 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in favor of the residents. The US Supreme Court was to hear the case but dismissed it that year after Soil Remediation Services withdrew its application for a permit to operate. CRCQL disbanded shortly after the 1997 ruling, but the effects of its protest and legal actions were lasting: the movement drew media and legal attention to Chesters toxic cluster of waste treatment facilities. In 1994 CRCQL pressured the Chester City Council into passing an ordinance that required new companies wishing to locate in Chester to certify that they would not contribute to a net increase in pollution levels in the area. The ordinance proved instrumental to a shift away from toxic development in the late 1990s. In addition to chasing smokestacks, Chester officials turned to another unconventional form of urban development that promised to deliver jobs and community development: housing prisoners. In the past two decades, poor, mostly rural communities across the United States have often turned to prison construction and operation as a subsidized solution to local economic development problems and unemployment. In part a reaction to steady declines in federal- and state- funded community development programs, local officials across the United States have turned to the prison economy as a means to rejuvenate local economies. In the early 1990s, when incarceration levels were predicted to rise dramatically, a growing amount of federal and state penal dollars became available for new prison construction in primarily poorer, rural towns. As research on the prison- industrial complex has indicated, awarded projects typically featured a neoliberal mix of public and private cooperation: state construction funds were typically funneled to low- bidding private construction firms, and private companies became increas-

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ingly responsible for the provision and management of inmate health, education, and reentry programs. The anticipated broader, positive economic effects of penal- based development are seldom realized. There is little evidence that prisons stimulate direct growth or generate positive spillover effects within communities (Huling 2002; Hooks et al. 2004). To the contrary, the construction and operation of a new prison seems to hinder other development possibilities and tends to reinforce local preexisting patterns of spatial class and racial inequalities (Lobao and Hooks 2007: 49). After intense lobbying efforts by local officials, Chester was selected as the site for a new state prison in the mid- 1990s. The State Correctional Institution at Chester (SCI- Chester), which opened in 1998, is a medium- security prison for male inmates with a documented history of substance abuse. It is one of only two such US institutions designed to treat substance abusers in a therapeutic setting. The treatment program is a joint effort of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and a nonprofit addiction and mental health services corporation. State prisons are not typically built within an older citys limits. But Chester and Delaware County politicians (particularly members of the Republican Party) lobbied intensely for the Chester site, arguing that the prison would create much- needed jobs and economic spillover effects for Pennsylvanias poorest city. Chester officials were attracted by the additional revenues from federal substance abuse treatment funds that a drug rehabilitation facility would bring. The decision to locate the prison on the waterfront, adjacent to the few remaining industries (including the newer waste treatment facilities), speaks to the limited redevelopment options available to Chester in the mid- to late 1990s. The prisons small size would help it blend in with an already fragmented landscape of occasional factories, empty lots, and abandoned warehouses. When the prison opened, the streets across Industrial Highway were known for petty crime, small- time drug dealing, prostitution, and gang activity. Nine years after the SCI- Chester opened, Harrahs casino and racetrack opened a very short distance away. Harrahs marked the end of Chesters chasing smokestacks and prisons and marked the beginning of a new phase of destination- based development. The change in strategy from waste burning facilities and a prison to a casino and soccer stadium development required a shift in the underlying forms of neoliberal governance.

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Roll- Out Neoliberalism: The Promise of Casinos, Sports Stadiums, and Upscale Development
Chesters spatial fix to dire economic problems in the 1980s is indicative of early forms of neoliberal governance that were characterized by a prolonged dismantling of social welfare protections and ceding of governmental management and oversight over designated enclaves to corporate or extrajurisdictional control. Citizen participation in the decision to accommodate the waste and prison industries along the waterfront was nonexistent, as were any direct or indirect community- wide benefits. Indeed, the social costs of waste facilities to Chester residents were startling. In June 1994 the Chester City Council passed an ordinance requiring new industries interested in conducting business in Chester to certify that overall pollution levels would not increase when they began operating. The ordinance was a victory for the citys grassroots environmental movement and put an end to the citys waste magnet strategy of economic development. Nearly two decades earlier Anita A. Summers (1978), an economist for the Federal Reserve, had published a working paper titled The Economy of Chester: What Are the Alternatives? The paper concluded that any meaningful recovery for Chester had to be devised and administered locally; federal assistance, which had done little to reverse the citys plight, was no longer forthcoming. Summers dismissed then- popular calls for economic recovery premised on a revival of Chesters manufacturing sector or on spending resources on the existing physical or social circumstances of its poorest residents. Instead, Chester needed to lure the private sector to develop white- collar employment and new housing opportunities. Chesters municipal leaders first took a turn to subsidizing waste industries, but Summerss advice proved prescient to the citys neoliberal agenda for urban development launched some 15 years later. In their periodization of neoliberalism, Peck and Tickell (2002) conceive governance strategies as continually adapting to circumstances on the ground and responding to both opportunities and challenges as cities and nation- states compete for private capital. In their conceptual ideal, roll- out neoliberalismcharacterized by proactive and novel forms of governance succeeded roll- back neoliberalism in the mid- 1990s. Governments increase alliances and partnerships with the private sector and in effect institution-

440Social Science History

alize governance through and by the market (Weber 2002: 520). Cities no longer simply accommodate private development requests; they often act as the driving force of private redevelopment. In their roles as directors of private urban development projects, municipal governments have depended on two mechanisms in particular. The first is the formation of local extragovernmental development authorities, which evolved from earlier efforts at city boosterism but have been granted significant administrative and fiscal powers once monopolized by local and county governments. The second is the increasing dependence on publicly subsidized tax abatement incentives for private redevelopment. Although created by local governments, local development authorities operate, with few exceptions, outside the framework of direct local government control; they are accountable less to constituents and their representatives than to the successful achievement of a generalized directive to increase local economic development. Development authorities routinely leverage private investment capital around particular development projects, but they do much more: they initiate development schemes with private developers; coordinate city, county, state, and federal government assistance; assemble real estate parcels and promote a citys use of eminent domain and similar takeover powers when necessary; coauthor project designs; assure fast- tracking of local permits and approvals; secure capital by offering government coffers as collateral (bond sales); obtain public subsidies through tax abatements; and deliver infrastructure improvements (sewers, roads, sidewalks). Local investment and business communities strongly supported the administrative consolidation of development planning and assistance outside the rules- driven policy oversight of municipal government. Development authorities are charged not as impartial intermediaries between citizens and corporations but as representatives of business interests that in turn become city interests (Clarke et al. 2000). Chester followed the lead of larger cities and in 1994 created the Chester Economic Development Authority (CEDA) to serve as a quasi- nongovernmental administrative agent for economic and community development programs and activities. The authority works directly with city agencies in seeing a redevelopment project through from inception to completion.1 CEDA benefits from its political legitimacy as a municipal creation and has been granted a broad mandate to define and execute development project choices. The authority also oversees state economic and community develop-

Neoliberal Urban Development441

ment funds and two key development incentive programs generated by the state and municipal governments: the Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) program, which resembles enterprise zones in place in most US states, and the Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance Act (LERTA), a state tax incentive program. KOZ is a state- initiated tax abatement and incentive program for private redevelopment of specific zones of abandoned, unused, or underused land and buildings throughout Pennsylvania. There are KOZes in 61 counties across the state. The KOZ program provides full tax forgiveness until 2013 for municipal, school district, and county real estate taxes. Corporations are also exempt from taxes on earned income/net profits, business gross receipts, sales and use, wage and net profits, and realty use and occupancy (Pennsylvania General Assembly 1998, 2000, 2002; Delaware County Planning Department 2006). KOZes appeal to large private development corporations because they offer large tracts of shovel- ready land for development, free of any existing cultural, social, legal, or political privileges, claims, or entitlements, along with considerable tax savings (Argall 2006). KOZ designations are awarded to eligible geographic zones and are not tied to any specific redevelopment activity or project. To be eligible for KOZ designation, proposed zones must be located in a distressed area, defined by a set of socioeconomic and demographic criteria spelled out in the application. The criteria include areas where at least one- fifth of the population lives below the poverty level; the unemployment rate is higher than the statewide average; at least one- fifth of surrounding real property, including housing, is deteriorated; median family income is low; population loss is high; and job losses have been significant. Chester clearly qualified for three rounds of KOZ designations in 1998, 2001, and 2003. And although individual building and smaller lot parcels in the inner city were included in the KOZ designations, the largest beneficiaries were sites along the waterfront that would eventually be developed as the casino and the Rivertown soccer stadium and mixed- use complex. CEDA has cobbled together a variety of tax abatement programs, direct subsidies, and grants from federal, state, county, and city sources to further the redevelopment of Chesters waterfront. Delaware County and the city of Chester have offered additional tax incentives to corporate relocation, development planning, and construction in KOZs. The Chester municipal government opted to implement LERTA for companies involved in the revital-

442Social Science History

ization of deteriorated properties in specific areas in the city. LERTA allows private companies to defer increases in real estate taxes on the value of the improvements over 10 years. CEDA managed the KOZ application process, sought private developers as partners, and assisted in the design of redevelopment projects. Local development authorities and tax abatements make up an innovative and powerful set of governance mechanisms that directly facilitate fragmented and exclusionary forms of urban redevelopment. In empowering local development authorities and deploying tax incentives tied to geographic zones, cities create sublocal fiscal enclaves (Weber 2002: 533) that are fiscally and administratively disconnected from municipal operations in ineligible areas. In Chester the use of KOZ- designated subsidies means development is project- and site- specific. Chesters KOZes favor a doughnut- shaped pattern of development, in which newer, upscale sites ring the poorest residential neighborhoods and the defunct central business district. The zones are also not contiguous, leading to fragmented redevelopment. Newer developments, then, are disconnected from the urban core, allowingif not encouragingdevelopers to define their projects as distinct from the city proper. The locations of Chesters KOZes facilitate what many developers consider as significant as the subsidies and tax breaks: a projects physical separation from the ghetto. A projects success hinges on the degree to which it is isolated and protected from the ghetto and its reputation as a dangerous space. Two recent KOZ developments along the Chester waterfrontHarrahs casino and racetrack and the Rivertown soccer stadium and mixed- use complexbest illustrate how physical separation from the ghetto makes social and cultural boundaries feasible as well. The SCI- Chester sits a stones throw from Harrahs casino. More descriptively, the prison and casino buildings are so close together that they appear to occupy the same parcel of land. The prisons barbed- wire fence, which runs alongside the casinos rather narrow entry driveway, is the only telling sign of separation. Both the prison and the casino are located on the former Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company site. Their architectural facades complement each otherboth are boxy, seemingly windowless, and matching in color tones (pink cinder- block prison and pink neon casino). Harrahs casino and racetrack opened in 2007. The casino features a 100,000- square- foot gaming floor with 2,700 slot and video poker machines,

Neoliberal Urban Development443

while the five- eighths- mile harness racetrack has a 1,500- seat grandstand, a buffet, 24- hour restaurant service, and a 300- seat clubhouse dining area. The complex operates around the clock and every day draws about 8,500 visitors, most of whom live outside the city. The location of the casino development qualified for KOZ designation. As a result, Harrahs saved over $8 million in taxes during the construction phase of the $429 million complex alone. If the casinos owners should sell it before 2013, they will pay no tax on capital gains (FAIR Deal Coalition of Chester 2006). When Harrahs announced its intention to build and operate the casino in a Chester KOZ, many county and state legislators were troubled by the idea of gambling companies profiting from the tax- free zones. Yet the state law that produced KOZ stipulates the tax incentives be attached to the land itself rather than to specific kinds of taxpaying corporations or types of industries. CEDA was instrumental in bringing Harrahs to Chester. The agency worked with the casino industry and state officials to overcome legal restrictions and helped wage a public relations campaign to assuage concern about gambling and the negative effects of a casinos presence in the community. CEDA, Chesters mayor, and other city leaders portrayed Harrahs as Chesters best and last hope for casting off its reputation as a poor, crime- ridden city (Delaware County Times 2006a). In response to the casinos critics, CEDA predicted that Harrahs would create a multiplier effect in the adjacent deprived neighborhoods, attracting new restaurants, new gas stations, and numerous other tourist- driven businesses. While no new businesses have appeared nearby, Harrahs reportedly uses local vendors for some of its restaurant supplies. The company also endowed a $200,000 college scholarship for Chester students in 2008 (Philadelphia Inquirer 2009). CEDA correctly reported that the casino would generate close to $10 million in annual revenue for the city (roughly 20 percent of Chesters annual budget). Prior to the casinos opening, Harrahs sponsored job fairs in Chester to recruit for over 750 positions (Delaware County Times 2006b). While city leaders unabashedly predicted community- wide benefits from the casino, others questioned the anticipated spillover effects based on the experience of gambling and urban development in Atlantic City, where the impact has been overwhelmingly negative (Curran and Scarpitti 1991; Braunlich 1996). A community- based organization formed to oppose the casinos construction noted the gap between Chesters current labor market and predictions of revitalization:

444Social Science History

There seems to be an assumption on the part of proponents of legalized gambling that the injection of new capital into the local economy, regardless of where it enters the system, will eventually trickle down to those at the bottom. We find this to be a highly dubious assumption, especially in a community where so many residents lack the training and skills to compete in the job market. (FAIR Deal Coalition of Chester 2006) The original development plan specified that a quarter of the construction contracting and labor would come from local sources; the actual proportion was significantly smaller. Chester residents have been offered mostly low- paying, part- time positions as maintenance staff, cooks and helpers in restaurants, valet attendants, and security personnel. Most of the higher- paying positionswhich require extensive criminal and credit background checks in addition to casino experiencehave been filled by persons relocated from other Harrahs properties (Philadelphia Inquirer 2006). Outside of economic effects, the social costs of legalized gambling to surrounding communities are generally negative (Eadington 1995). Just south of Harrahs is Rivertown, a multiyear, multimillion- dollar private development project that also runs along the Delaware River on former industrial land. A large office complex, a pedestrian walkway along the river, and a soccer stadium for the Philadelphia soccer franchise have been completed. Developers first took advantage of the 90- acre KOZ designation in the purchase and total renovation of the former Chester Station Power Plant into an office and recreation complex called the Wharf at Rivertown. The power plant stood empty for decades, and its owner, Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO), had planned to demolish it until the site earned KOZ status in 1999. In October 2000 Preferred Real Estate Investments Inc. purchased the plant from PECO for $1 with the provision that the new owner tackle interior environmental cleanup. The cost of the cleanup of asbestos and other contaminants was $50 million (Old Chester PA [www.oldchesterpa.com]). Prior to the plants conversion, many observers were highly skeptical of the plan to attract corporations to Class A office space in Chester. First, the power plant was virtually inaccessible to roadways. It had been located on the waterfront for easy access to coal ships, and manufacturing plants had operated adjacent to the plant. Empty lots replaced the warehouses and factories, and for years the electric plant stood abandoned and isolated. Second, the projects developers were asking companies and their employees to put aside long- standing fears and Chesters long- lived reputation as overrun by crime

Neoliberal Urban Development445

and poverty. Working in this context of fear, risk, and doubt, the Wharf s investors gained considerable concessions from city and state governments. Chesters mayorseeing the Wharf as a showcase of the citys potential helped Preferred Real Estate Investments secure nearly $1.1 million in public subsidies. The state provided $2.6 million in grants and loans to Preferred for infrastructure development, land reclamation, and installation of fiber- optic cable (Business Wire 2001; Fishman 2004). ThenUS Senator Rick Santorum won $15 million in federal assistance, mainly for a direct highway link between Rivertown and the Commodore Barry Bridge to allow workers to bypass downtown Chester and avoid seeing or interacting with its residents (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation [www.i95- us322.com]). A secured access road leads directly to the Wharf, and a natural barrier of lots made empty and laid barren by deindustrialization separates the complex from Chesters poor residential neighborhoods. The first tenant to sign on, Synergy, was the largest employer to locate in Chester since the 1960s. The firm develops and sells incentive- compensation software and services. A second tenant, AdminServer, provides back- office services for life, annuity, reinsurance, and health segments of the insurance industry. AdminServer took advantage of the KOZ incentives; when the firm relocated to the Wharf, its workforce grew from 26 employees operating in 6,000 square feet of office space to 225 employees occupying over 40,000 square feet (Fishman 2004). A much larger property development firm, the Buccini/Pollin Group (BPG), purchased the Wharf in 2005 and immediately began to work with state and local officials to develop the remaining acreage still eligible for KOZ benefits. BPG, private capital investors, and city, county, and state politicians, armed with promises of state and county funding and tax incentives, lobbied for Chester as a site for a Philadelphia Major League Soccer expansion team. In March 2008 Philadelphia was awarded the leagues 16th franchise, with its home stadium in Chesters Rivertown (Philadelphia Business Journal 2008). The development of the Rivertown soccer stadium and planned residential and commercial district is a public- private endeavor. Keystone Sports and Entertainment LLC, a conglomerate enterprise of operating partners from BPG and the soccer franchise, among others, will construct and manage the 18,634- seat stadium. Private investor funding for the stadium hinged on a $30 million bond from Delaware County, $10 million from the Delaware River Port Authority for waterfront improvements, and an anticipated $25 million

446Social Science History

in state aid (not to mention $400 million slated for future on- site mixed- use development). Delaware County led negotiations over lease options and acquired the land for the stadium. The second phase of the development calls for 180 townhomes, 225 apartment units, 42,000 square feet of retail space, 435,000 square feet of new office space, and a 200,000- square- foot convention center. A community boat marina and spacious greenways complete the developers plans for the 70- acre site. Common recreational spaces created adjacent to the new developments include a river walk along the Delaware River. The river walk is completed but remains largely unused, because it is separated from where most Chester residents live by fencing and by Route 291, the wide, multilane highway. These pseudopublic spaces are mostly inward- oriented, attached to the large projects. Construction is under way for exit ramps from Interstate 95 directly to Rivertown, bypassing Chesters poorest neighborhoods completely (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation website, www.i95- us322.com). Rivertown becomes its own entity, a city within a city, expressly disconnected and dissociated from Chester (BYM Property News 2008; Philadelphia Business Journal 2008).

Conclusion
Drawing on the work of Peck and Tickell (2002) and Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore (2002), we can best explain Chesters disjointed redevelopment landscape not as a result of haphazard or bad planning but as of the result of two successive waves of neoliberal urbanism: roll- back and roll- out governance arrangements that favor exclusionary redevelopment. In chronological terms, municipal governments increased alliances and partnerships with the private sector to redefine and institutionalize redevelopment as market- driven, territorial, and project- based. Accordingly, cities no longer simply accommodated private development needs and requests; they developed new policies that initiated and drove private redevelopment using an arsenal of tax cuts and direct subsidies (Fuller et al. 2004; Geddes 2006). The programs and policies identified as roll- back and roll- out together mark a neoliberal mode of governance: administrative and fiscal control is largely ceded to private developers acting in conjunction with local development agencies; public accountability and participation are limited; and development is targeted to local enclaves rather than to the entire city (Briffault 1997: 511). The consequences of neoliberal urban development for the majority of

Neoliberal Urban Development447

poor, disenfranchised residents are mostly negative. Discursive efforts to include poor minority residents in Chesters renaissance appear routinely on websites, such as Chester Yes (chesteryes.com) and Kickstart Chester (www.philadelphiaunion.com/content/chester), and in promotional brochures that accompany announcements of new development projects. Substantial revenue flows from Harrahs into city coffers. Yet the casinos presence has had little tangible effect either on the surrounding streets of dilapidated homes and empty lots or on the job opportunities of Chesters residents. City and county officials and Rivertowns developers have touted the future benefits of the soccer stadium and the residential- office- shopping complex (Kickstart Chester). After more than three years of waiting for the casinos spillover benefits, many locals are skeptical. While some residents are hopeful that the economic investment in the waterfront will pay off, others question whether the benefits of redevelopment will include them. In a letter to the local newspaper, for example, a councilperson asserts: Lets be real. The new [Route] 291 has become a dividing line, with rich people on one side and the not so rich on the other. I dont see people kicking down doors for a soccer stadium in Chester. I am not saying we should block it, but how about a real supermarket first? (Delaware County Daily Times 2007). Neoliberal urban governance suggests two related meanings of the dividing line between the fragmented developments along the waterfront and Chesters adjacent ghetto. First, the developments exclude most of Chesters residents. The normative ideal of a city as a space that accommodates social, class, racial, sexual, and gender differences is untenable when urban landscapes are carved up into self- contained fragments designed for specific social groups and types of behaviors and not (many) others (Fincher and Jacobs 1998; Mitchell 2003; see also McCann 2002). The fragmented city therefore allows for a delimited set of specialized statuses and subjectivities for users of each of its enclaves or zones at particular times: the gamblers in the casino, the sports fans at the soccer stadium, the white- collar workers in the office complex, and the marginalized prisoners and ghetto residents in their respective carceral and carceral- like spaces. State support for enclave- oriented private redevelopment (and subsequent disregard for more holistic, community- wide development) reinforces and normalizes long- standing patterns of class exclusion and racial segregation. Consequently, deep- rooted urban social and economic problems that pertain to large segments of the city are no longer addressed, nor are there public efforts to attempt to solve them. Instead, disagreeable

448Social Science History

conduct and unwelcome activities are zoned out of exclusionary spaces where regulation of social behavior (and in turn subjects) is privatized. Access to and from specialized enclaves, such as the casino or the stadium; free movement within their adjacent public spaces; and the range of social activities prescribed to occur within such spaces are monitored and controlled. Private security, surveillance cameras, and other regulatory mechanisms effectively weed out not only generally offensive behavior but many other activities (loitering, organizing, nonconsuming) that fall outside a zones stated purpose. Sally E. Merrys (2001: 20) work speaks directly to this form of spatial governmentality, which operates not by containing disruptive populations but by excluding them from particular places. . . . The individual invested with rights is replaced by the individual who defines himself or herself by consumption. This control is promotive rather than reactive, voluntary rather than coercive, based more on choice than constraint. Power appears to disappear behind individual choice. Systems of private regulation are backed by formal legal processes, which will remove those who cannot govern themselves. Second, recent development projects are uniquely and intentionally isolated from the remainder of the city. Rhetorically, city leaders and developers have stressed that the casino, the soccer stadium, and the proposed residential and entertainment complex will spur development in the surrounding city (across the dividing line of Route 291). As the editors of the local newspaper state, One thing we have stressed is that all the development along the riverfront will only have true meaning for the city if it crosses Route 291 and spreads to all neighborhoods in the city (Delaware County Daily Times 2009). But the mechanisms that now govern redevelopmentproject- specific public- private ventures with highly specific funding sourcesmake a spillover effect improbable. Tax abatement zones, for example, focus on increasing economic activity within their boundaries, not throughout the city. There are no development incentives for small shopkeepers or owners of small parcels surrounding Harrahs or Rivertown. Indeed, neoliberal urban development is structurally incapable of stitching together the disparate enclaves it produces. Extreme disparities in wealth and income are not bridged by exclusionary enclave development; they are further legitimized, naturalized, and made to appear inevitable.

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Notes
This research was funded in part by a University at Buffalo Civic Engagement Fellowship and a grant from the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy. 1 CEDA also directly oversees and manages several federal programs, including the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Development Block Grant Programs and HOME Investments Partnerships program. CEDA applies for and administers funds made available from HUDs Economic Development Initiative, Brownfields Economic Development Initiative, and Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program for economic development.

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