NONPROFIT‐LED NEOLIBERAL GROWTH MACHINES AND THE PRIVATIZATION OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: The Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side

Virginia Parks, William Sites and Tadeo Weiner Davis

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2025, vol. 49, issue 6, 1417-1436

Abstract: We analyze the development of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago as the product of a new kind of urban growth machine—a nonprofit‐led neoliberal growth machine. Building on studies of nonprofit‐led urban development as well as research on CBA‐driven opposition, we reconstruct how an Obama Foundation‐led growth machine was able to dominate pre‐development planning, privatize public parkland and mount its own private community engagement process in ways that stymied powerful community opposition. We contend that the political resources of nonprofit foundations, especially their ability to claim a mantle of public authority and legitimacy, equip them to bypass genuinely public institutional processes and to repel even strong resistance from community actors. We argue that the array of soft political resources marshaled by the Obama Foundation—its perceived neutrality, collaborative reputation and public/private ambiguity—lend valuable assets to the task of bending participatory processes toward the political legitimation of controversial development projects. Because nonprofits are uniquely situated to deploy these political resources, the case of the OPC portends an expanding repertoire of action for growth machine actors, including the privatization of community engagement.

Date: 2025
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