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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... funded, locally managed) redistributions such as public housing, unemployment insurance, and food stamps. These were justifiable in part because they fit within the ideological bounds of Keynesian managerialism in particular and ...
... Fund, the World 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 ...
... Fund (IMF) and the World 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 ...
... funded through municipal bonds (such as payroll) are affected by the decision of bond-rating agencies, because credit reports are based on overall patterns of fiscal decision-making and economic health. Bond-rating agencies thus not ...
... funds, money market funds, and insurance firms now constitute a greater share of the securities industry than before. Several new and existing federal laws in the United States and abroad place limits on the amount of speculative-grade ...
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 | |