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middle class led him to step back from expansive federal programs, to oppose increased federal urban spending, and to promote the capacity of the private sector (including both for-profit and nonprofit entities), rather than the government, to address urban problems.³⁸ Like Nixon, Carter attacked redundant programs and excessive paperwork and passed along as much oversight as possible for urban development to state and local governments. He rejected large-scale job creation programs and housing subsidies in favor of comparatively inexpensive programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts $35 million “Livable Cities” program for local public art and mural projects. In 1977, he introduced Urban Development Action Grants to stimulate private-sector urban redevelopment, and he instituted a countercyclical assistance program as part of an economic stimulus package to provide federal aid to states and localities particularly hard hit by the recession. The Carter administration also shifted a greater share of Community Development Block Grant funds to northeastern and midwestern cities. In general, however, Carter’s urban policy was an amplification of Nixon’s New Federalism.³⁹

      For reasons of political expediency—Carter knew he would need to attract both the suburban and southern vote in 1980—the president wanted to emphasize programs that provided “incentives,” “leverage,” and “catalysts” for private sector activity, which were less of a political liability than increased direct federal expenditures in cities. When it was released, Carter’s urban policy unequivocally signaled to big city mayors that the federal government would not provide large federal outlays to reverse urban decline or temper the effects of industrial restructuring. Cities were “more than just simply centers of jobs, communications and commerce,” A New Partnership reminded its readers. They were also “centers of learning, centers of culture, centers of social services.”⁴⁰ It was this latter—postindustrial—assemblage of services that the Carter administration wanted to emphasize.

      For Pittsburgh’s new mayor, Richard Caliguiri, the postindustrialism the Carter administration tacitly promoted was already a familiar paradigm. City council president Caliguiri became acting mayor when Flaherty left for Washington. Flaherty’s successor surely would have preferred a national urban policy that included increased federal funding, but his own view of the future of industrial cities hewed closely to that expressed in A New Partnership. The son of a milkman from Pittsburgh’s working-class, largely Italian Greenfield neighborhood, Caliguiri had followed Flaherty’s example and run for City Council as an independent in 1971, beating out the Democratic Party-endorsed candidate. When he ran for mayor in 1977 at the end of Flaherty’s term, the Democratic Party refused to support him. He again ran as an independent, backed by a group called “Pittsburghers for Caliguiri” that a suburban newspaper described as “a collection people, Democrats, independents, Republicans, volunteers, city payrollers and others not yet identified.”⁴¹ Even with broad support from his constituents, Caliguiri narrowly beat the Democratic candidate, popular Allegheny County commissioner Tom Foerster. When he ran for re-election in 1981 and 1985, he did so on the Democratic Party ticket and won by large margins.

      Caliguiri may have taken a page out of his predecessor’s playbook when he spurned the local Democratic machine, but his mayoral ambitions for a second Renaissance made him more like David Lawrence than like Flaherty. Where Flaherty sought at the outset of his first term to loosen the bonds between the city government and corporate leaders, Caliguiri set out instead to restore the city’s public-private partnership. His desire to do so was seemingly a pragmatic response to national policies that increasingly privileged partnerships for urban and economic development. Renaissance II’s success hinged on introducing a wide array of public incentives for private development to induce corporate leaders to undertake large-scale construction projects for downtown office buildings. Caliguiri established the Mayor’s Development Council, a more business-friendly version of Flaherty’s mayoral advisory committee, to plan Renaissance II; he instructed his department heads to cooperate with developers; and he merged the city’s Departments of Housing and Economic Development with the URA to centralize redevelopment activities. One of the new mayor’s first official acts was to call a meeting with the Allegheny Conference and ask for help fixing the roads Flaherty had allowed to fall into disrepair. Gulf Oil CEO Jerry McAffee offered to bring in a macadam expert from California and loan him to the city for six months. The following summer, Caliguiri repaved “something like 120 miles of street.” That gesture symbolically renewed the close relationship between the Allegheny Conference and the city government, and the Allegheny Conference resumed a leading role in planning urban development.⁴²

      As soon as he restored the relationship between the city and the Allegheny Conference, Caliguiri launched his second Renaissance “to recover lost ground and to determine a new direction” for the city.⁴³ He and his Planning Department routinely tried to downplay the devastating effects of industrial restructuring on the urban economy and focused instead on cultural development, high technology, and service sector job creation.⁴⁴ “As in any mature city which is undertaking revitalization,” the mayor’s office announced, “Pittsburgh’s efforts are a mix of conserving, maintaining and nurturing its strengths on one hand while introducing new, creative and exciting activities on the other.”⁴⁵ Caliguiri’s staff optimistically pointed out that, while manufacturing work had disappeared, jobs in health, education, and professional and service sectors had increased, which they thought heralded the emergence of “a more diversified and, therefore, healthier” local economy.⁴⁶ Faced with difficult decisions about how to save a declining city, Caliguiri and his Planning Department chose to pursue a postindustrial redevelopment strategy without much apparent hand-wringing over its potential impact on low-income and working-class residents.

      Caliguiri wanted to redevelop the city in a way that would make it more compatible with the perceived needs of young, white-collar workers. Renaissance II reflected the first Renaissance’s focus on downtown construction and improvement projects, but Caliguiri expanded the range of activities to include neighborhood stabilization, economic development, and large-scale projects well outside of the central business district.⁴⁷ His ambitious agenda for a second Renaissance benefitted from the Home Rule Charter Pittsburgh’s voters had approved in 1974. The charter secured for the city government the authority to carry out any function not expressly precluded by Pennsylvania state law or the U.S. or state constitutions. In this system of local government organization, the mayor was both executive and administrator, while the city council served a legislative function. The mayor independently appointed (and removed) the heads of city departments and members of public authorities and commissions, while the city council created commissions, passed resolutions, and established city ordinances. Under Home Rule, the mayor had veto power over city council decisions, rather than the other way around. Except in cases where Pittsburgh accepted state and federal funds, city officials were free of oversight from other levels of government and not compelled by anything other than political pressure to cooperate with the county government. The Planning Department’s land use and economic development decisions were largely autonomous. With few constraints on how he used public funds, Caliguiri issued a six-year, $323 million capital budget for Renaissance II four months after taking office, which he called a “blueprint” for Pittsburgh’s revival.⁴⁸

      Caliguiri’s Renaissance II budget affirmed his commitment to working through what he described as a “city-citizen partnership.” When Caliguiri restored the relationship between city agencies and the corporate sector, he incorporated new members into Pittsburgh’s public-private partnership. “We believe that the City and the private sector are partners,” his office noted. “The City will do its share by providing direct services and projects. But you will have to do your share as well. You, the residents and the businessman, will have to make commitments and investments in your homes, your communities and your businesses.”⁴⁹ The “civic” partners included neighborhood groups (primarily community development corporations, or CDCs); the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University; and local foundations, especially those of the Mellon, Scaife, Heinz, and Hillman families; and the state government.⁵⁰

      Pittsburgh’s reconstituted partnership reflected the institutional arrangements of the growth partnerships that took shape in North American and Western European cities between New York City’s 1975 near-bankruptcy and the

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