urban politics written final exam

Instructions: Please put your answers to all of the exam’s ten (10) written questions into one file, and
submit it by 11:59PM (one minute before midnight) on thursday, december 17, to the Turnitin link posted under
Assignments on Blackboard. Please make sure to do your responses in order, and number them so that we
know which question you are answering. Please do NOT include the text of the questions in the file you
submit, only the question numbers of the questions as you answer them. Each of the 10 questions is worth
up to 10 points, so the whole exam is worth 100 points total. Your response should require no more than
4-5 single-spaced pages at maximum. You should not need to cite any sources other than the lectures,
Levine text, and Blackboard readings. Please do make sure to indicate when you are quoting from any
source, whether from in the class resources or outside them, and make sure to provide full citations for
any sources you use that are not included in the class syllabus. Usually, it is a bad idea to use any
extracurricular sources because it is at the expense of the sources from class that you should be citing.

1. Please discuss the L.A. transportation system and architecture. Do you agree with Reyner Banham’s
admiration of Los Angeles, or find that city’s structure unsustainable?

2. Please explain and discuss Ingram’s Law, my maxim about the downside of governmental proliferation
in the United States.
3. How does policing reflect the racially discriminatory aspects of street-level bureaucracy? Why have
civilian review panels not been able to enhance the relationship between law enforcement and people of
color living in urban areas?

4. Please comment on the difficulties with intra- and inter-ethnic coalition building. Are Browning et al
and Erie et al’s arguments relevant or obsolete, in light of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential coalition?

5. Why might someone refer to modern American cities as privatopias? Please discuss the privatization of
public space in the United States.

6. What do Erie and Ingram mean when they refer to the Department of Water and Power in their research
as a kind of political machine? How does MWD fit into this picture?

7. Why might the long-term outcome of the Community Action Program be considered ironic rather than
iconic? Please explain.
8. In the last chapter, the Levine book discusses the problem of urban policy and how to achieve it in
indirect, stealthy ways. Why would it be politically necessary to go an indirect route?

9. To what extent do Newman’s findings on race and the tourist bubble in Atlanta conform to the
expectations of neopluralism and the “hollow prize” theory we discussed in lectures?

10. Are Michael Katz’s arguments now obsolete given the experiences of American cities since the
creation of BLM and the execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis? Please explain.