Urban policy making approximates the components of a path-dependent model-random selection and self-reinforcement-which suggests that cities get locked into suboptimal policies. Thus, despite rigid rules of individual and collective behavior posited by many urban theorists, identical cities can evolve along drastically different paths. The author shows how simple time-series models can overlook path dependence and demonstrates the trends of a path-dependent series using budget data from Chicago and New York. New York exhibited policy lock-in in the decades following the Great Depression, but Chicago did not.
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