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oapen-20.500.12657-576632022-07-29T02:55:51Z While Waiting for Rain Schlegel, John Henry Buffalo, Community, Development, Economic History, Economy, Grace, Innovation, Jane Jacobs, Law, Legal History, Middle Classes, Political Economy, Railroads, Redevelopment, the Rust Belt, Transportation, The United States, Working Class, Ethnic Neighborhoods, The Fifties bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBJ Regional & national history::HBJK History of the Americas bic Book Industry Communication::K Economics, finance, business & management::KC Economics::KCZ Economic history bic Book Industry Communication::R Earth sciences, geography, environment, planning::RP Regional & area planning::RPC Urban & municipal planning What might a sensible community choose to do if its economy has fallen apart and becoming a ghost town is not an acceptable option? Unfortunately, answers to this question have long been measured against an implicit standard: the postwar economy of the 1950s. After showing why that economy provides an implausible standard—made possible by the lack of economic competition from the European and Asian countries, winners or losers, touched by the war—John Henry Schlegel attempts to answer the question of what to do. While Waiting for Rain first examines the economic history of the United States as well as that of Buffalo, New York: an appropriate stand-in for any city that may have seen its economy start to fall apart in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. It makes clear that neither Buffalo nor the United States as a whole has had an economy in the sense of “a persistent market structure that is the fusion of an understanding of economic life with the patterns of behavior within the economic, political, and social institutions that enact that understanding” since both economies collapsed. Next, this book builds a plausible theory of how economic growth might take place by examining the work of the famous urbanist, Jane Jacobs, especially her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Her work, like that of many others, emphasizes the importance of innovation for economic growth, but is singular in its insistence that such innovation has to come from local resources. It can neither be bought nor given, even by well-intentioned political actors. As a result Americans generally, as well as locally, are like farmers in the midst of a drought, left to review their resources and wait. Finally, it returns to both the local Buffalo and the national economies to consider what these political units might plausibly do while waiting for an economy to emerge. 2022-07-28T08:53:49Z 2022-07-28T08:53:49Z 2022 book 9780472075614 9780472055616 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/57663 eng application/pdf application/epub+zip Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 9780472902972.pdf 9780472902972.epub https://www.bibliovault.org/thumbs/978-0-472-07561-4-frontcover.jpg; https://www.bibliovault.org/thumbs/978-0-472-07561-4-thumb.jpg University of Michigan Press 10.3998/mpub.12158309 10.3998/mpub.12158309 e07ce9b5-7a46-4096-8f0c-bc1920e3d889 0cdc3d7c-5c59-49ed-9dba-ad641acd8fd1 9780472075614 9780472055616 Sustainable History Monograph Pilot (SHMP) Sustainable History Monograph Pilot (SHMP) 408 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation open access
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What might a sensible community choose to do if its economy has fallen apart and becoming a ghost town is not an acceptable option? Unfortunately, answers to this question have long been measured against an implicit standard: the postwar economy of the 1950s. After showing why that economy provides an implausible standard—made possible by the lack of economic competition from the European and Asian countries, winners or losers, touched by the war—John Henry Schlegel attempts to answer the question of what to do.
While Waiting for Rain first examines the economic history of the United States as well as that of Buffalo, New York: an appropriate stand-in for any city that may have seen its economy start to fall apart in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. It makes clear that neither Buffalo nor the United States as a whole has had an economy in the sense of “a persistent market structure that is the fusion of an understanding of economic life with the patterns of behavior within the economic, political, and social institutions that enact that understanding” since both economies collapsed. Next, this book builds a plausible theory of how economic growth might take place by examining the work of the famous urbanist, Jane Jacobs, especially her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Her work, like that of many others, emphasizes the importance of innovation for economic growth, but is singular in its insistence that such innovation has to come from local resources. It can neither be bought nor given, even by well-intentioned political actors. As a result Americans generally, as well as locally, are like farmers in the midst of a drought, left to review their resources and wait. Finally, it returns to both the local Buffalo and the national economies to consider what these political units might plausibly do while waiting for an economy to emerge.
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