City Services by Design: Policy Feedback, Social Construction, and Inequality

• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Author: Patrick Grogan-Myers,Megan E. Hatch
• DOI: 10.1177/0160323X19847518
• Subject Matter: Reviews & Essay

Reviews & Essay

City Services by Design:

Policy Feedback, Social

Construction, and Inequality

Patrick Grogan-Myers

1

and Megan E. Hatch

1

Abstract

This article reviews Jessica Trounstine’s book Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in

American Cities, situating it within the literature on local government policies, segregation, and

inequality. In doing so, we demonstrate social construction and policy feedback reinforce the

relationship Trounstine identifies between property owners’ desire to protect their property values,

local government policies, segregation, unequal services, and political polarization.

Keywords

segregation, urban policy, politics

Urban politics literature has long urged scho-

lars, policy makers, and the public to examine

the ways in which cities and their policies fun-

damentally affect the lives of residents and

nonresidents. The devolution of power from the

federal government to states and cities has

made this relationship more apparent. Accord-

ing to Peterson (1995), the federal government

is responsible for redistribution, while local

governments have dominion over th e develop-

ment of physical and social infrastructure.

This division of power can have negative

effects such as the racial targeting of policies

(Soss, Fording, and Schram 2008). Research

in particular has highlighted the nexus of

housing policies, zoning, and racial segrega-

tion (Rothstein 2017). The book Segregation

by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in

American Cities by Jessica Trounstine (2018)

adds insight to this literature into the black box

between city policies and racial segregation:

the importance of politics.

Trounstine’s perspective is that local gov-

ernments’ role in creating and maintaining

racial and class segregation is a significant and

understudied area in the literature. She asks

“how segregation becomes entrenched, why its

form changes, and what the consequences are”

(pp. 2 and 3). In doing so, she adds to the liter-

ature on local government politic s, inequality,

urban planning, and segregation in several sig-

nificant ways. The book is a historical analysis,

detailing the changes in housing segregation

from 1890 to the present day. Such true histor-

ical analyses are rare among urban political sci-

ence (Rast 2012), yet provide essential insight

into how urban spatial form and politics

1

Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA

Corresponding Author:

Megan E. Hatch, Cleveland State University, 1717 Euclid

Avenue, UR 316, Cleveland, OH 44115, USA.

Email: m.e.hatch@csuohio.edu

State and Local GovernmentReview

2019, Vol. 51(1) 68-77

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0160323X19847518

journals.sagepub.com/home/slg