Simply Attachment to Place: The Transformation and Decline of Federal Place-Based Policy

Abstract

This thesis examines the evolution, transformation, and decline of federal place-based economic policy in the United States through the case of Central Appalachia It asks how policymakers have understood the relationship among geography, economic development, and the role of the state, and how successive policy regimes attempted to resolve persistent regional inequality. I argue that the trajectory of place-based policy reflects a fundamental shift from a mid-twentieth-century framework that treated regional inequality as a problem of underdevelopment rooted in place to a late-twentieth-century framework that treated it as a problem of individual adjustment to structural economic change. This shift was poorly matched to regions such as Central Appalachia, where immobility, institutional weakness, and economic concentration constrained adjustment and contributed to cumulative decline. I employ a qualitative historical methodology, drawing on policy documents, archival sources, secondary literature, and case analysis to trace the intellectual, political, and institutional evolution of federal interventions. I integrate insights from political economy with economic and sociological perspectives on spatial inequality. Chapter I argues that Central Appalachia’s persistent poverty has its roots in extractive political and economic institutions that have dominated the region since its settlement, limiting diversification, weakening state capacity, and constraining subsequent policy effectiveness. Chapters II and III analyze the New Deal and War on Poverty, focusing on the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Appalachian Regional Commission as major place-based interventions. These programs’ large-scale public investments achieved durable gains by expanding infrastructure and enabling market activity. Chapter IV documents a later shift toward a federal policy apparatus featuring both localized, market-oriented place-based policies and people-based adjustment programs such as job training and income support. I argue that the new regime proved incomplete: place-based policies functioned as inefficient subsidies to mobile capital, while adjustment policies were never sustained at a scale sufficient to facilitate meaningful adaptation. In Central Appalachia, this approach failed to produce convergence. The decline of place-based policy was not the result of inherent ineffectiveness, but of a broader shift that misunderstood both mobility and regional economic dynamics. Major coordinated place-based interventions have been effective when they address structural constraints and are supported by sustained political commitment. By contrast, both the late-century adjustment regime and its localized place-based components failed to resolve spatial inequality. Recent revival of place-based policy recognizes these failures and the social and political consequences of geographically concentrated economic distress. Effective future policy will require combining place-based investment with credible support for individual adjustment, while recognizing the enduring role of place in shaping economic opportunity.