These readings and accompanying current events regarding Amazon have been a deep dive into how political power is conceived, divided, and wielded in urban space. In John’s chapter from A Phoenix in the Ashes, he traces the evolution of academic thinking about urban space. In acknowledging the elements of truth and shortcomings in the pluralist and structuralist approaches, he divides identifies three categories of power-players: the state, the public, and the marketplace. In response to the neo-Marxists, in a sense he is warning them against dismissing the agency and power of the public and the power of local politics in their interactions with the market. If the Amazon deal’s collapse weren’t a case-in-point, I don’t know what is.

In considering our case study in relation to the themes of localism and neoliberal development, it is tempting to see the collapse of the Amazon deal as a triumph of localism. It is. If one wants to see the project as doomed, it was due, in large part, to the incompatibility of the corporate agenda with a localized political process, with the mayor and the governor bypassing city council, etc. However, those organizing and advocating resistance to Amazon were not just organizing on those grounds; this was part of a broader, ideological/principled fight against Amazon for its staunch anti-unionism, its market dominance, and its behavior as a public actor. And, considering that ultimately Amazon pulled out on its own terms, it’s hard not to come away seeing their corporate power intact.

Now that the area of Hunter’s Point has been highlighted on a national stage as an area for economic development, with the Governor in particular having painted its current economic landscape as obsolete (Weber). My question for the locally-focused, economic development community and those who organized against Amazon, is a version of “now what?”: How can the political coalition and people-power that was built in the fight against Amazon collaborate with the state’s economic actors to actualize an equitable economic development process? If the economic policy community can orient itself away from corporate provision of labor demand, and towards the local community’s vision for an economic future, can we create a new paradigm (i.e. not neo-liberal) for urban job creation and the re-development of urban space?

Toby Irving