| This project is an examination of Chicago's public transportation system and the forces shaping public transportation policy. The study of Chicago's public transportation system provides a window through which we can view the intersection of: (1) capital accumulation, (2) the local and regional state, (3) horizontal and vertical class relations, and (4) the accumulation regimes that emerge from these combined forces. Factors such as use-value versus exchange-value, technical efficiency versus monetary efficiency, short term versus long term investment cycles, and socialized public good versus privatized profit, operate in the logic of the market, the machinations of the state, between classes, between fractions of classes and across accumulation regimes. Taken together, the logic of capital accumulation, the role of the state, class relations and accumulation regimes constitute the determinant social forces shaping public transportation policy over the past 60 years in Chicago. Specifically, I focus on the forces of accumulation in the neoliberal and global city building era. Both neoliberalism and global city building have contributed to or deepened pre-existing forms of uneven geographic development in the city. And yet, neoliberalism and global city building have been shown to be antithetical projects. In response to neoliberal state retrenchment in the public service sector that has degraded public transportation, causing wide-scale inefficiencies and unreliable service, global city stakeholders and everyday residents led an effort to restore the state's role in public transit delivery. This move away from neoliberalism reveals the vulnerability of neoliberal policies and practices as its contradictions have surfaced. |
