Dissertation

Value -conscious growth: A case study of Pittsburgh's first Community Benefits Agreement

Cain, Colleen

2009

Overview

This dissertation is a case study of Pittsburgh’s first Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), surrounding the construction of a new hockey arena in the Hill District neighborhood, which borders the city’s central business district. CBAs are legally-binding agreements through which communities ensure developer reinvestment in return for public support of a project. Using the Hill District case to explore the phenomenon of CBAs, I address a three-fold research inquiry: (1) Why are communities choosing to negotiate with developers and pursue benefits through CBAs?; (2) How are communities engaging in and securing CBAs?; and (3) What implications do the Hill District CBA, in particular, and CBAs, in general, hold for pro-growth dynamics? Data was generated through interviews with 32 stakeholders, as well as a year-long ethnography. Informed by a grounded theory analysis, my research contributes to the small, but growing body of work on CBAs by presenting a descriptive account of the Hill District campaign and the CBA Coalition’s organizational process, structure, and strategies. I consider the perspectives of multiple community- and non-community-based actors, and offer insight into what makes a CBA campaign successful. Additionally, I argue that the Hill District community’s history of failed urban renewal greatly influenced their decision to pursue benefits. To a lesser extent, local impacts and a large public subsidy for the Penguins hockey franchise also served as driving forces. While these motivations are specific to the Hill District case, they also speak to larger phenomena facing many urban communities within the current era of value-free growth. Connecting the literature on CBAs to that of urban political economy, my study further investigates the ways in which these Agreements have impacted pro-growth dynamics. To the larger body of urban political-economic scholarship, then, I offer a practical and theoretical assessment of CBAs. My research extends prior work suggesting that residents’ positions on growth are complex and demonstrates that while CBAs achieve value-conscious growth, they do not fundamentally alter dominant standards of growth or growth machine processes. I conclude by proposing a larger deconstruction of growth that utilizes new standards for city success and raises expectations for private and public sectors.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Sociology / Urban planning
• ISBN: 9781109671247, 1109671245