City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics

Portada
NYU Press, 2008 M04 1 - 252 páginas

2009 Association of American University Presses Award for Jacket Design
In the 1990s, improving the quality of life became a primary focus and a popular catchphrase of the governments of New York and many other American cities. Faced with high levels of homelessness and other disorders associated with a growing disenfranchised population, then mayor Rudolph Giuliani led New York's zero tolerance campaign against what was perceived to be an increase in disorder that directly threatened social and economic stability. In a traditionally liberal city, the focus had shifted dramatically from improving the lives of the needy to protecting the welfare of the middle and upper classes—a decidedly neoconservative move.
In City of Disorder, Alex S. Vitale analyzes this drive to restore moral order which resulted in an overhaul of the way New York views such social problems as prostitution, graffiti, homelessness, and panhandling. Through several fascinating case studies of New York neighborhoods and an in-depth look at the dynamics of the NYPD and of the city's administration itself, Vitale explains why Republicans have won the last four New York mayoral elections and what the long-term impact Giuliani's zero tolerance method has been on a city historically known for its liberalism.

Dentro del libro

Contenido

Introduction
1
Conceptualizing the Paradigm Shift
15
Defining the QualityofLife Paradigm
29
Defining Urban Liberalism
54
The Rise of Disorder
70
Globalization and the Urban Crisis
93
The Transformation of Policing
115
The Community Backlash
144
Conclusion
183
Notes
195
Bibliography
215
Index
223
About the Author
231
Derechos de autor

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 33 - Improving the Quality of Urban Life and states: The Congress hereby finds and declares that improving the quality of urban life is the most critical domestic problem facing the United States.
Página 65 - Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax.
Página 34 - Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966". TITLE I— COMPREHENSIVE CITY DEMONSTRATION PROGRAMS FINDINGS AND DECLARATION OF PURPOSE SEC. 101. The Congress hereby finds and declares that improving the quality of urban life is the most critical domestic problem facing the United States. The persistence of widespread urban slums and blight, the concentration of persons of low income in older urban areas, and the unmet needs for additional housing and community facilities and services...
Página 36 - Now I realize that the argument is often made that there is a fundamental contradiction between economic growth and the quality of life, so that to have one we must forsake the other. The answer is not to abandon growth but to redirect it
Página 58 - Those generally implicated by the imprecise terms of the ordinance — poor people, nonconformists, dissenters, idlers— may be required to comport themselves according to the lifestyle deemed appropriate by the Jacksonville police and the courts.
Página 203 - Dolbeare and Barry Zigas, A Place to Call Home: The Low Income Housing Crisis Continues (Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Low-Income Housing Information Service, 1991). 10. Alan Finder, "Apartment Doubling-up Hits the Working Class," New York Times, September 25, 1990.
Página 200 - Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1963).
Página 33 - Let us be clear about the core of this problem. The problem is people and the quality of the lives they lead.
Página 33 - The problems of the city are problems of housing and education. They involve increasing employment and ending poverty. They call for beauty and nature, recreation, and an end to racial discrimination. They are, in large measure, the problems of American society itself. They call for a generosity of vision, a breadth of approach, a magnitude of effort which we have not yet brought to bear on the American city.
Página 33 - We want to build not just housing units but neighborhoods; not just to construct schools, but to educate children; not just to raise income, but to create beauty and end the poisoning of our environment.

Acerca del autor (2008)

Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He is the author of The End of Policing (Verso) and City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics (NYU Press, 2008).

Información bibliográfica