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FUTURE STUDIES
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Focusing on Neighborhood Associations
Acting as a countervailing force to the growth machine are neighborhood associations and environmental groups. These opposition groups seek to enhance the city’s use value, something that is usually but not necessarily opposed by the local growth coalition. The complex relationship of local elites and neighborhood associations and citizen groups offers fertile ground for future research.
Neighborhood associations and the citizens that they represent often times support economic growth. Although several representatives of the elites discussed the elemental differences between use-value oriented neighborhood groups and the exchange-value oriented business community, some of the elites are also members of neighborhood associations. Moreover, some of the elites contributed to the Democratic Party, and supported use value causes.
From a storytelling perspective it is tempting to draw a thick line of separation between the community elite and the neighborhoods, but the reality of the relationships between these two groups is, I feel, is more complicated. What is needed is a study of community neighborhood associations, their membership reach, and their ties to other organizations in the community, as well as their principles, activism, and politics.
From the structural perspective of the growth coalition the relationship between local elites and neighborhood associations is adversarial. While the structural relationships within communities may confirm this hypothesis, a more nuanced cultural approach may find more convergence of views and policies between these two groups.