The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American UrbanismCornell University Press, 2014 M01 15 - 248 pages The shift in the ideological winds toward a "free-market" economy has brought profound effects in urban areas. The Neoliberal City presents an overview of the effect of these changes on today's cities. The term "neoliberalism" was originally used in reference to a set of practices that first-world institutions like the IMF and World Bank impose on third-world countries and cities. The support of unimpeded trade and individual freedoms and the discouragement of state regulation and social spending are the putative centerpieces of this vision. More and more, though, people have come to recognize that first-world cities are undergoing the same processes. In The Neoliberal City, Jason Hackworth argues that neoliberal policies are in fact having a profound effect on the nature and direction of urbanization in the United States and other wealthy countries, and that much can be learned from studying its effect. He explores the impact that neoliberalism has had on three aspects of urbanization in the United States: governance, urban form, and social movements. The American inner city is seen as a crucial battle zone for the wider neoliberal transition primarily because it embodies neoliberalism's antithesis, Keynesian egalitarian liberalism. Focusing on issues such as gentrification in New York City; public-housing policy in New York, Chicago, and Seattle; downtown redevelopment in Phoenix; and urban-landscape change in New Brunswick, N.J., Hackworth shows us how material and symbolic changes to institutions, neighborhoods, and entire urban regions can be traced in part to the rise of neoliberalism. |
From inside the book
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... Banks were willing to continue extending credit to the beleaguered city on the important condition that Kucinich privatize the city's electricity provider, Muni Light. When he refused to agree to this The Place, Time, and Process of ...
... banks cut off the city's credit, and Kucinich was ignominiously recalled, ironically for doing what he was elected to do in the first place. Largely because of this episode, many considered Cleveland the classic prototype of municipal ...
... Bank, and bond rating agencies (see Gill 1995; Sassen 1996; Hackworth 2002a). The boundaries of urban governance have shifted dramatically in the past thirty years, partially because of structural constraints to governments (municipal ...
... Bank serve as policing institutions in this regard, rewarding cities that adhere to a particular order and penalizing those that do not (Gill 1995). In the “developed world,” particularly though not exclusively in the United States ...
... Bank—that increasingly determine where, when, and how capital gets invested throughout the world (Gill 1995; Sassen 1996; Hewson and Sinclair 1999). Though less frequently cited in this regard, bond-rating firms, such as Moody's ...
Contents
The Glocalization of Governance | |
The PublicPrivate Partnership | |
The Acceleration of Uneven Development | |
The Neoliberal Spatial | |
The Reinvested Urban Core | |
Neoliberal Gentrification | |
Bread or Circus? | |
Contesting the Neoliberal City | |
Social Struggle in a Neoliberal Policy Landscape | |
Alternative Futures at the End of History | |
References | |