Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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Description
This research investigates the relationship between municipal annexation and local government's financial condition. It addresses a significant gap in the literature by focusing on the roles of local government revenue structure and land use situations in affecting annexation's fiscal implications. The major research question is how these two categories of local circumstances affect annexation's fiscal implications, and what patterns may emerge based on the empirical evidence. With two parts of empirical analyses, I explore the features of the moderating effects of these two local circumstances: how the interactions between annexation and local circumstances influence local government's financial condition. The first part of the analyses examines the role of local government's revenue structure in affecting annexation's fiscal implications. Using a sample of more than six thousand municipalities, empirical analyses of OLS and interactive regression models show the effects of local taxing authority and revenue reliance. The second part underscores the effects of land use along with annexations in municipalities in the Phoenix metropolitan area across two decades. Utilizing GIS data for annexation and land use, it presents spatial patterns of annexation activities and land use changes. A fixed effects model with panel data is used to investigate the joint effects of annexation and land use on local government's financial condition. The complicated effects of different land use situations are identified. The findings suggest that annexation has the potential for fiscal gains to local government, but its positive fiscal effects may diminish if the municipality has less capability to make suitable revenue arrangement, and if a high proportion of land in the municipality that remains undeveloped. Above all, this research offers a comprehensive perspective regarding municipal annexation, land use and local government finance, to inform a larger debate of urban growth and local financial management.
ContributorsWang, Jing (Author) / Chapman, Jeffrey I. (Thesis advisor) / Lewis, Paul G (Committee member) / Herbst, Christopher M (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Cities today face new economic, political, and social challenges spurred, in part, by the growth of immigrant and newcomer populations and increasing competitive pressure in the context of contemporary globalization. In the face of these challenges, some U.S. city and county governments have adopted the “welcoming city initiative,” which promotes both immigrant integration and economic growth. To date, little research has explored why different U.S. cities decide to pursue the welcoming city initiatives, what cities really hope to achieve through them, or what governing arrangements emerge to develop and implement these initiatives. In addition to illuminating the emerging discursive, political, and organizational dynamics of welcoming, this dissertation contributes to the literatures in urban asset development, urban regime theory, and political and bureaucratic incorporation.
Drawing on 30 interviews with key actors and document analysis, this dissertation employs a multiple case study design to conduct an interpretive policy analysis of the initiatives of four U.S. welcoming cities: Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Chicago, Illinois; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The analysis explores three independent but interconnected themes. The first theme concerns multiple, context-specific framings of “welcoming” and the types of assets cities seek to leverage and develop through the welcoming city initiatives. This investigation finds that while each city puts a priority on developing a certain set of assets based on its unique political, economic, and demographic contexts, welcoming efforts tend to encourage immigrant entrepreneurialism, the leveraging newcomers’ human capital and financial assets, and the development place-based assets to attract and retain newcomers. The efforts to strengthen community capacity seek to institutionalize a new norm of welcoming, structure immigrant-friendly governance practices, and engage newcomers and longer-term residents in their community affairs. The second theme probes the ways in which these four cities create and maintain governing regimes for the initiative. The analysis finds that, while the four cities develop different governing structures, all pursue the creation of mixed types of governing coalitions that combine pro-growth and opportunity expansion regimes by incorporating the goals of economic growth and immigrant integration. The third theme investigates different modes of immigrant incorporation and their contribution to immigrant integration, the final stage in immigrant settlement. The analysis suggests that political leaders and bureaucratic agencies of the welcoming cities tend to build reciprocal relationships, rather than principal-agent relationships, in which political leaders rely on the positional, professional, and technical expertise of bureaucrats. In these early stages on the initiative, political and bureaucratic incorporation aim to create institutional changes that help immigrants and newcomers to be viewed as political constituents and clients of bureaucratic agencies.
This dissertation broadly concludes that the welcoming city initiative is a promising new urban economic development framework that could reshape urban space by integrating pro-growth demands with social integration and inclusion. Going forward, however, deeper consideration of the perspectives and rights of immigrants and newcomers themselves is needed in these initiatives.
Drawing on 30 interviews with key actors and document analysis, this dissertation employs a multiple case study design to conduct an interpretive policy analysis of the initiatives of four U.S. welcoming cities: Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Chicago, Illinois; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The analysis explores three independent but interconnected themes. The first theme concerns multiple, context-specific framings of “welcoming” and the types of assets cities seek to leverage and develop through the welcoming city initiatives. This investigation finds that while each city puts a priority on developing a certain set of assets based on its unique political, economic, and demographic contexts, welcoming efforts tend to encourage immigrant entrepreneurialism, the leveraging newcomers’ human capital and financial assets, and the development place-based assets to attract and retain newcomers. The efforts to strengthen community capacity seek to institutionalize a new norm of welcoming, structure immigrant-friendly governance practices, and engage newcomers and longer-term residents in their community affairs. The second theme probes the ways in which these four cities create and maintain governing regimes for the initiative. The analysis finds that, while the four cities develop different governing structures, all pursue the creation of mixed types of governing coalitions that combine pro-growth and opportunity expansion regimes by incorporating the goals of economic growth and immigrant integration. The third theme investigates different modes of immigrant incorporation and their contribution to immigrant integration, the final stage in immigrant settlement. The analysis suggests that political leaders and bureaucratic agencies of the welcoming cities tend to build reciprocal relationships, rather than principal-agent relationships, in which political leaders rely on the positional, professional, and technical expertise of bureaucrats. In these early stages on the initiative, political and bureaucratic incorporation aim to create institutional changes that help immigrants and newcomers to be viewed as political constituents and clients of bureaucratic agencies.
This dissertation broadly concludes that the welcoming city initiative is a promising new urban economic development framework that could reshape urban space by integrating pro-growth demands with social integration and inclusion. Going forward, however, deeper consideration of the perspectives and rights of immigrants and newcomers themselves is needed in these initiatives.
ContributorsAhn, Jeong Joo (Author) / Catlaw, Thomas J (Thesis advisor) / Lewis, Paul G (Committee member) / Lucio, Joanna (Committee member) / Mossberger, Karen (Committee member) / Williams, Linda M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017