ABSTRACT

The Santa Cruz growth coalition's concern about its postwar economic future was far from an isolated phenomenon during the 1940s. Leaders in both the national corporate community and city growth coalitions feared that the economy would experience a downturn after the war ended, plunging the United States back into depression. To ward off this possibility, national-level policy groups, most notably the Committee for Economic Development, actively advocated a growth agenda that emphasized the importance of establishing local planning groups to guide economic development. The Santa Cruz growth coalition was aided by the fact that on closer inspection the site south of San Jose began to look less attractive because the university would have to initiate condemnation procedures against a Catholic novitiate to secure part of the necessary land. As so happens with neighborhood-based politics, the defeat of growth-coalition projects that threatened local residents' way of life turned the 1975 city council elections into a relatively low-key matter.