The White City: Race and Urban Politics

Urban regime analysis and growth machine theory offer critical tools to study power and inequality in cities. However, the field of urban politics has moved away from critically addressing race. I discuss these theories' potential contributions before suggesting scholars “bring race back” to urban politics in several key areas: studying “White urban regimes” in addition to Black urban regimes; examining how Whiteness factors into growth (and anti‐growth) coalitions; exploring how racial discourse shapes urban regimes; and accounting for the relationship between suburbs and “fringe cities” and the city, including suburban regimes.