LAKE EFFECTS

<i>Lake Effects</i> is a history of urban policy making in the large Midwestern industrial city of Cleveland Ohio. Urban policy making requires goal setting in four critical areas: economic development urban growth services and wealth redistribution. Ronald Weiner shows how urban policy was conceived and implemented by the local governing elites or regimes between 1825 and 1929. Each regime-Merchant Populist Corporate and Realty-set policy goals in the four areas; set priorities among the goals; and used their power public and private to guide the city toward these ends. Each regime dominated policy making for at least 20 years and the successes and failures of each regime contribute to our understanding of how Cleveland became the city that it is today. The successes of the Merchant Regime's economic development policy made Cleveland's industrialization possible. The urban growth policy of the Corporate Regime built the downtown civic center and the University Circle. However the Populist Corporate and Realty regimes' failures to plan for Cleveland's economic future helped set in motion the declining economic fortunes so harshly in evidence today and the triumph of the expansionist Realty Regime's urban growth policy promoted heedless suburban development at the expense of the central business district and the inner city.<b>Ronald R. Weiner</b> is professor of history at the Cuyahoga Community College.