The Political-Economy of Local Land-Use Policy: Place-Making and the Relative Power of Business, Civil Society, and Government

ABSTRACT This study takes a new look at place development, analyzing the power of local business actors as compared to civic society and government in localities across the United States. We address the contested question of who controls place-making with a focus on growth control land-use policies. Theoretically, we draw from sociology’s growth machine framework to provide a comparative account of business actors and to speak to puzzling findings from this literature that policies ostensibly designed to stymie growth across places often promote it. Our study is based on more than 1,700 localities. We find that while business actors call the shots on economic development policy, they appear essentially apathetic about land-use policy. This suggests that land-use policies may be carefully designed to accommodate growth machine business interests. Local governments set the course for land-use as well as economic development policy, but civil society actors have relatively little influence.