The final case study is about urban development in Davis, California. Urban development does not take place in a vacuum, and it is important to be sure that established assumptions about the development process are manifestly accurate. Property developers usually have their way, large corporations do homogenise the American landscape with indistinguishable retail outlets, and entrepreneurs, landowners, mainstream media, and local government also support this type of growth. In other words, what Logan and Molotch (1987; 2007) famously termed the growth machine model is a fundamentally accurate way of understanding the urban development process. However, like other socioeconomic interactions, from gift-giving to hiring practices and market exchange, the politics of urban development are also highly socially, culturally, and historically determined. It is a mistake to overlook the complexities of local social norms and cultural contexts that play a far more nuanced role than the growth machine and other models suggest.
