The industrial Big City: primeval soup of Big City economic development

This chapter concentrates on the early industrial period (1860–80) and begins by outlining the formation of the “Big City†industrial base and the period’s tendency to sector agglomeration. The profit life cycle is described, including a five-phase evolution of industry/sectors over time. The reader is introduced to the Big Cities, the large immigrant/manufacturing centers of the North, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest that had emerged victorious in the Civil War. Big Cities will be the cutting edge of American economic development, and the “initial home base†of community development. The growth in this period of these cities is assessed, with emphasis on infrastructure, particularly transportation, and urban growth. A case study of the late nineteenth/early twentieth-century “Great Subway Race†between New York City and Boston is used to vividly bring to life the competition between cities, the role of business elites and the process by which the infrastructure strategy coped with Dillon’s Law and the weakness of municipal government. A discussion is made of late nineteenth-century city business districts (CBDs), neighborhoods and early suburbs (including the use of annexation and the rationale behind suburban autonomy). Finally, the chapter reviews the “Gilded Age†policy system, elaborating on the process led by business elites, businessmen mayors, real estate exchanges and machine-dominant city councils, and the rise of the first Big City economic development–government economic development organizations (EDOs. The weakness of the public sector in municipal governance and implementation of economic development strategies compel it to “delegate†economic development to private EDOs and require formation of new hybrid EDOs: boards and commissions. This gave rise to “chamber-style†economic development as chambers became the lead agency for Big City municipal jurisdictions.