ABSTRACT:The growth machine perspective is reviewed in light of various critiques of urban political economy as being overdeterministic, ignoring cultural issues, place diversity, and environmental crises. The author shows how growth machines are anchored in local systems of elite sociability, ideological conceptions, and local problem solving. He stresses the role of professional consultants in generating consistencies across places that can mistakenly be taken as evidence of economic necessity. The traditional US urban situation is contrasted with certain other industrial socities and with emerging trends in various southern California locations to show how local and national politics matter in determining the strength and mode of growth machine dynamics. He examines the links between growth machine politics and impacts on the physical environment and the creation of environmental movements. The interaction of agency and structure is specified, drawing upon structuration theory.