The contributors also view the environmental impact of energy industries and demonstrate how, in the depletion of reserves or a shift to new energy sources, regions have or have not been able to recover economically. The cities of Tampico, Mexico, and Port Gentil, Gabon, have seen their oil deposits exploited by international companies with little or nothing to show in return and at a high cost environmentally. At the opposite extreme, Houston, Texas, has witnessed great economic gain from its oil, natural gas, and petrochemical industries. Its growth, however, has been tempered by the immense strain on infrastructure and the human transformation of the natural environment. In another scenario, Perth, Australia, Calgary, Alberta, and Stavanger, Norway have benefitted as the closest established cities with administrative and financial assets for energy production that was developed hundreds of miles away.

Fossil fuels propelled industries and nations into the modern age and continue to powerfully influence economies and politics today. As Energy Capitals demonstrates, the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels has proven to be a mixed blessing in many of the cities and regions where it has occurred. With case studies from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Africa, and Australia, this volume views a range of older and more recent energy capitals, contrasts their evolutions, and explores why some capitals were able to influence global trends in energy production and distribution while others failed to control even their own destinies. Chapters show how local and national politics, social structures, technological advantages, education systems, capital, infrastructure, labor force, supply and demand, and other factors have affected the ability of a region to develop and control its own fossil fuel reserves. The contributors also view the environmental impact of energy industries and demonstrate how, in the depletion of reserves or a shift to new energy sources, regions have or have not been able to recover economically. The cities of Tampico, Mexico, and Port Gentil, Gabon, have seen their oil deposits exploited by international companies with little or nothing to show in return and at a high cost environmentally. At the opposite extreme, Houston, Texas, has witnessed great economic gain from its oil, natural gas, and petrochemical industries. Its growth, however, has been tempered by the immense strain on infrastructure and the human transformation of the natural environment. In another scenario, Perth, Australia, Calgary, Alberta, and Stavanger, Norway have benefitted as the closest established cities with administrative and financial assets for energy production that was developed hundreds of miles away. Whether coal, oil, or natural gas, the essays offer important lessons learned over time and future considerations for the best ways to capture the benefits of energy development while limiting the cost to local populations and environments.

Oil wealth and Federal Conflict in American Petrofederations documents the critical relationship between oil rents and federal conflicts by illustrating key concepts with six representative cross-regional case studies. Each case study discusses encompasses qualitative, quantitative and comparative elements under a common structure. With each petrofederation ranging in conflict types and modalities, the work as a whole identifies key differences including oil rent decentralization (in terms of resource property, sector management and distribution of revenues), sectoral importance (considered at national and subnational levels), and federation redistribution policy (in terms of fiscal federal imbalance, fiscal equalization, and oil rent use for regional equity). Collectively, the book generalizes a consistent theory of causality between oil rents and federal conflicts that take into account systemic variables. The book's conclusions will serve as a guide for researchers and policymakers seeking pathways to translate oil rents into development and stability. - Reviews the intimate relationship between the oil sector and its governance in the political system - Provides comparative analysis of the regulation, political institutions, rent decentralization, sectoral importance, and rent redistributive policies in the oil sector - Generalizes approaches to the causality between oil rents and federal conflicts, including implications for policymakers

Since World War II, Houston has become a burgeoning, internationally connected metropolis—and a sprawling, car-dependent city. In 1950, it possessed only one highway, the Gulf Freeway, which ran between Houston and Galveston. Today, Houston and Harris County have more than 1,200 miles of highways, and a third major loop is under construction nearly thirty miles out from the historic core. Highways have driven every aspect of Houston's postwar development, from the physical layout of the city to the political process that has transformed both the transportation network and the balance of power between governing elites and ordinary citizens. Power Moves examines debates around the planning, construction, and use of highway and public transportation systems in Houston. Kyle Shelton shows how Houstonians helped shape the city's growth by attending city council meetings, writing letters to the highway commission, and protesting the destruction of homes to make way for freeways, which happened in both affluent and low-income neighborhoods. He demonstrates that these assertions of what he terms "infrastructural citizenship" opened up the transportation decision-making process to meaningful input from the public and gave many previously marginalized citizens a more powerful voice in civic affairs. Power Moves also reveals the long-lasting results of choosing highway and auto-based infrastructure over other transit options and the resulting challenges that Houstonians currently face as they grapple with how best to move forward from the consequences and opportunities created by past choices.

For millennia, urban centers were pivots of power and trade that ruled and linked rural majorities. After 1950, explosive urbanization led to unprecedented urban majorities around the world. That transformation--inextricably tied to rising globalization--changed almost everything for nearly everybody: production, politics, and daily lives. In this book, seven eminent scholars look at the similar but nevertheless divergent courses taken by Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Los Angeles, and Houston in the twentieth century, attending to the challenges of rapid growth, the gains and limits of popular politics, and the profound local effects of a swiftly modernizing, globalizing economy. By exploring the rise of these six cities across five nations, New World Cities investigates the complexities of power and prosperity, difficulty and desperation, while reckoning with the social, cultural, and ethnic dynamics that mark all metropolitan areas. Contributors: Michele Dagenais, Mark Healey, Martin V. Melosi, Bryan McCann, Joseph A. Pratt, George J. Sanchez, and John Tutino.

Hegemonic transitions are never clear, and they usually emerge from a period of multi-polarity in the world-system. Two types of state tend to contend for power: trading states and territorial states, although most states are never “pure” and tend to contain within them multiple polities with different agendas. This book describes the hegemonic transition between two major trading states, Britain and America. British decline began in the late Victorian era, but the transition to American power was slow, and other states also sought hegemony. Transitions between trading states focus on economic struggle, though struggles between trading and territorial states and between territorial states are marked by armed conflict. In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson saw three arenas of competition developing between Britain and America: in international transportation, international communication, and petroleum. But Britain was challenged economically by America as early as 1861 via the Morrill Tariff, her economic hegemony was gone by the 1880s, and she was “defeated” by 1947. From the 1880s on both America and Germany sought to replace Britain as hegemonic power not only through their implementation of protectionist economic policies, but also through the adoption of revised versions of the world-economy, through new technologies, and, in the case of Germany, military power. Britain struggled to stay in place. Britain’s world-economy was that of a pure trading state. Maritime trade in organic materials was organized through global capitalism and control over submarine cable telecommunications rather than territorial possession. America’s rise was greatly helped by being a capitalist power in possession of a secure territorial base in the mid-section of the North American continent, but America suffered from multiple polities competing for power, with the South particularly problematic. Germany developed a radically new world-economy that synthesized resources using organic chemistry. German science and technology began to diffuse to American corporate laboratories before World War One. After that war, diffusion to American laboratories and universities was massive and helped secure American hegemony.