Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2291457 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .95 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 308 pages

From Amazon.com
Fred Siegel loves cities but hates what has happened to them since the 1960s. Overreaching economic policies have strangled businesses and destroyed jobs. Libertine social philosophies have allowed public order to disappear. Racial antagonisms have corroded a sense of common culture. Siegel--a New Yorker with New Democrat politics--makes a strong case for why cities have declined, yet his book is not entirely gloomy. He believes that after three decades of failed public policy, America's urban centers may finally be headed toward a revival. An invigorating piece of social and political analysis, The Future Once Happened Here is the best book on U.S. cities to come along in years.

From Library Journal
Siegel, a processor of history at Cooper Union and a Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, here offers a provocative perspective on big-city politics, suggesting that a "riot ideology" of confrontation and compromise has characterized the relationships among community leaders and officials in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles since the 1960s. He argues further that officials have treated the symptoms rather than the core problems of poverty and racism. Welfare dependency, fiscal crisis, loss of community, deteriorating public space, and failures of public order have resulted. Even New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, on whose campaign Siegel worked, may not be able to overcome that legacy. The analysis will appeal to urban scholars and other followers of big city politics, although the thesis may not. A thoughtful, challenging work; for most collections.?William L. Waugh, Georgia State Univ., Atlanta
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A partisan yet sometimes penetrating analysis of urban America's decline. Siegel (History/Cooper Union) argues that ``policy wagers'' made in the 1960s have wreaked havoc in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Rather than assimilating blacks into the community, guilt-ridden liberals decided that past injustices required recognition of black culture. At the same time, economic free markets were undermined and a free market in morals was promoted. The result: an ideology of ``dependent individualism,'' political machines providing poor services at high cost, ever-expanding social-service industries that inhale revenues while politicians blame all failures on inadequate federal funding, and the charge of racism leveled against anyone favoring reform. Although racial politics are most extreme in Marion Barry's Washington and racial violence is most pronounced in Los Angeles, there is no doubt this book is really about New York. As a moderate Republican with ties to NYC's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani--described as an ``immoderate centrist'' with a talent for making enemies--Siegel eagerly blames the city's ills on liberals, Democrats, and exploiters of racial animosity. Siegel relies heavily on donning rose-colored glasses to view the city prior to the mid-'60s while using a racial magnifying glass to examine recent decades; there have always been problems, and a distorted perspective results from downplaying basic factors like aging infrastructure, changes in transportation, and shifts in national and international markets. Nevertheless, his analysis is not just ideological hot air. There are serious difficulties to be confronted in these cities, and Siegel exposes the systematic patterns of avoiding change favored by those in power intent on furthering their own narrow agendas. Siegel's arguments have as many loose ends as urban America has problems, but there is no shortage of ideas to ponder. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.