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The Politics of Ideas and the Spread of Enterprise Zones
Karen Mossberger
Georgetown University Press, 2000

This book explores how policy ideas are spread—or diffused—in an age in which policymaking has become increasingly complex and specialized. Using the concept of enterprise zones as a case study in policy diffusion, Karen Mossberger compares the process of their adoption in Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Massachusetts over a twelve-year period.

Enterprise zones were first proposed by the Reagan administration as a supply-side effort to reenergize inner cities, and they were eventually embraced by liberals and conservatives alike. They are a compelling example of a policy idea that spread and evolved rapidly. Mossberger describes the information networks and decisionmaking processes in the five states, assessing whether enterprise zones spread opportunistically, as a mere fad, or whether well-informed deliberation preceded their adoption.

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front cover of Technology and the Resilience of Metropolitan Regions
Technology and the Resilience of Metropolitan Regions
Edited by Michael E. Pagano
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Can today's city govern well if its citizens lack modern technology? How important is access to computers for lowering unemployment? What infrastructure does a city have to build in order to attract new business?
 
In this new collection, Michael A. Pagano curates engagement with such questions by public intellectuals, stakeholders, academics, policy analysts, and citizens. Each essay explores issues related to the impact and opportunities technology provides in government and citizenship, health care, workforce development, service delivery to citizens, and metropolitan growth. As the authors show, rapidly emerging technologies and access to such technologies shape the ways people and institutions interact in the public sphere and private marketplace. The direction of metropolitan growth and development, in turn, depends on access to appropriate technology scaled and informed by the individual, household, and community needs of the region.
 
Contributors include Randy Blankenhorn, Bénédicte Callan, Jane Fountain, Sandee Kastrul, Karen Mossberger, Dan O'Neil, Michelle Russell, Alfred Tatum, Stephanie Truchan, Darrel West, and Howard Wial.
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Urban Neighborhoods in a New Era
Revitalization Politics in the Postindustrial City
Clarence N. Stone and Robert P. Stoker
University of Chicago Press, 2015
For decades, North American cities racked by deindustrialization and population loss have followed one primary path in their attempts at revitalization: a focus on economic growth in downtown and business areas. Neighborhoods, meanwhile, have often been left severely underserved. There are, however, signs of change. This collection of studies by a distinguished group of political scientists and urban planning scholars offers a rich analysis of the scope, potential, and ramifications of a shift still in progress. Focusing on neighborhoods in six cities—Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Toronto—the authors show how key players, including politicians and philanthropic organizations, are beginning to see economic growth and neighborhood improvement as complementary goals. The heads of universities and hospitals in central locations also find themselves facing newly defined realities, adding to the fluidity of a new political landscape even as structural inequalities exert a continuing influence.

While not denying the hurdles that community revitalization still faces, the contributors ultimately put forth a strong case that a more hospitable local milieu can be created for making neighborhood policy. In examining the course of experiences from an earlier period of redevelopment to the present postindustrial city, this book opens a window on a complex process of political change and possibility for reform.
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Virtual Inequality
Beyond the Digital Divide
Karen Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert, and Mary Stansbury
Georgetown University Press, 2003

That there is a "digital divide"—which falls between those who have and can afford the latest in technological tools and those who have neither in our society—is indisputable. Virtual Inequality redefines the issue as it explores the cascades of that divide, which involve access, skill, political participation, as well as the obvious economics. Computer and Internet access are insufficient without the skill to use the technology, and economic opportunity and political participation provide primary justification for realizing that this inequality is a public problem and not simply a matter of private misfortune.

Defying those who say the divide is growing smaller, this volume, based on a unique national survey that includes data from over 1800 respondents in low-income communities, shows otherwise. In addition to demonstrating why disparities persist in such areas as technological abilities, the survey also shows that the digitally disadvantaged often share many of the same beliefs as their more privileged counterparts. African-Americans, for instance, are even more positive in their attitudes toward technology than whites are in many respects, contrary to conventional wisdom. The rigorous research on which the conclusions are based is presented accessibly and in an easy-to-follow manner.

Not content with analysis alone, nor the untangling of the complexities of policymaking, Virtual Inequality views the digital divide compassionately in its human dimensions and recommends a set of practical and common-sense policy strategies. Inequality, even in a virtual form this book reminds us, is unacceptable and a situation that society is compelled to address.

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