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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... became an iconoclast for the economic justice Left in the United States. After entering the race, he immediately separated himself from the rest of the candidates by calling for the abolition of the North American Free Trade Agreement ...
... became inspirational works for this line of reasoning. Egalitarian liberalism took root most firmly in places where anti-socialism was strongest—the United States being the most acute example (N. Smith 2002)—and became increasingly ...
... for a variety of geo-institutional contexts. In the United States, neoliberalism became tenuously connected to an equally pervasive form of social conservatism. It would be a mistake, however, to group neoconservatism and neoliberalism.
... became associated with the putative left wing of the U.S. polity, while the right wing became associated with the ideals of classical liberalism. The United States is, moreover, the most thoroughly liberalized environment in the ...
... support for the welfare state was replaced by anti-statist politics. The American inner city, long abandoned by the de facto federal urban policy of suburbanization (Mills 1987), became increasingly removed from the economic mainstream ...
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 | |