Economic Development in American Cities: The Pursuit of an Equity Agenda

6. ROCHESTER: TWO FACES OF REGIONALISM, 1993–2006

CHAPTER SIX ROCHESTER: TWO FACES OF REGIONALISM, 1993–2006 Pierre Clavel INTRODUCTION In 2003, William Johnson capped a decade as Rochester’s only African American mayor with a quixotic and unsuccessful campaign for county executive of surrounding Monroe County, dominated by Johnson’s history of advocating for “metropolitan solutions to metropolitan problems.” As mayor, Johnson had sought participatory reforms in Rochester’s neighborhoods, made reforming the city school system a major priority, and repeatedly wrestled with worsening problems in a “poverty crescent” of census tracts surrounding the downtown. All of these problems were exacerbated by announcements of layoffs and downsizing in the city’s “big three” photonics and imaging firms: Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and Xerox. Since Johnson could have taken other approaches, one might ask why he focused as much as he did on regional issues. Suburban interests imposed a crushing disadvantage on the central city, and it was arguable that the suburbs’ pursuit of tax advantages and local control was not in their own long-term interest, much less that of the city. By the 1990s, metropolitan regionalism had thus come into favor as a reform instrument in many places (see extensive analysis in Pendall, Goldsmith, and Esnard, 2001). But equally, it had met with a general lack of success. Johnson himself had clashed with the previous county executive over his advocacy, a series of conflicts that 159 160 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN AMERICAN CITIES damaged both officials—and most central city mayors sought other remedies. Why, then, did Johnson persist to such a remarkable extent? How did Johnson’s campaign and his longer period of advocacy advance—or inhibit—other municipal policies and objectives? This chapter reveals that mayoral visions are frequently not enough to fashion innovative responses to tight labor markets. Old-fashioned politics plays a role in terms of interjurisdictional competition, timing, and institutional capacity. Yet unemployment dropped considerably even in the face of manufacturing layoffs. The next phase in Rochester’s approach to economic regionalism, workforce development, and social equity has yet to be agreed on. History and Economics Rochester was more fortunate than other upstate cities in the last decades of the twentieth century. Buffalo, Syracuse, and many smaller cities had already lost their once substantial manufacturing base by 1990, while Rochester’s big three firms specializing in optics still prospered.1 Moreover, Rochester was well governed, in part because of the interests of these locally owned firms. Industrial Leadership Hard times finally did hit Rochester’s economy, starting in the 1990s. Layoffs at Kodak and the other larger firms periodically made headlines, and the question facing the leadership of the big three was how to manage their worldwide corporate interests and how to balance those interests with their local role. While exemplary corporate citizenship had persisted, recent decades had witnessed something of a withdrawal. The story was one of straitened circumstances in both public and private sectors in the 1990s so that any collective success would be the more remarkable. City Government It had fallen to city government to handle the needs of the city’s population while doing what it could to encourage the engines of growth to maintain at least a semblance of their earlier vitality. Many would cite the reduced capacities of government. Part of this was the increasing preponderance of regional over city resources. Rochester had represented two-thirds of the Monroe County population in 1950, a figure that was reduced to one-third in 2000.2 There was a list of other problems, including a mounting population concentrated in a “poverty crescent” of census tracts near Rochester’s downtown. There were dramatic changes in the city during the 1990’s, as indicated in table 6.1. Rochester’s government had significant resources as well. There had been a storm of ethnic revolt in the 1960s, opening a rift and exposing 161 ROCHESTER discriminatory practices by corporate and public elites.3 But in response, a strong liberal, multiracial political coalition emerged. It tried school integration through busing and police reform and was nourished by an active set of community organizations. Very difficult problems remained—poverty and school dropout rates were as high as or higher than they were in the 1960s. But the city had been well run.4 Thomas Ryan, the reform mayor who had held office for more than two decades (through 1993), was lauded as a manager and kept the city on a sound financial...