The Role of Ethnic-Based Social Capital in Establishing the Spatial Consensus Among Urban Growth Coalitions

Abstract

Local power structure in the framework of urban growth coalition theory includes a set of property owners and place entrepreneurs who pursue their goal in establishing and maintaining consensus, providing the right conditions for outside investment and maximizing the “rents” by trapping human activities in place. Social capital, as part of the social structure, is the collective capacity of social groups for cooperation and common function to achieve public good. By translating public good to urban growth in physical context, urban coalition strives to construct a city environment in which the citizens come to the agreements and establish social relationships to maximize the profits from urban growth. Therefore, one can ascertain social capital as an instrument for dominance of urban growth coalition on urban politics. The overall aim of this article is to explore ethnic-based social capital, its crucial role on establishing consensus and facilitating the development of relationships between members of urban growth coalition, and seeks to analyze mechanisms that generate ethnic-based social capital so that urban coalition uses all networked positions and social linkage to achieve its goals.