Political science professor Williams (City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York, 2013) focuses this new exploration of New York City\u2019s modern development on three key areas that \u201cembody the tensions\u2026at the heart of political life in a democratic capitalist city\u201d: housing, schools, and policing. Williams\u2019 analysis of these issues inarguably bears out his points that the \u201cunequal geography of opportunity aligned closely with the geography of race\u201d and that the city\u2019s issues stemmed from \u201cthe existence of concentrated, racialized deprivation.\u201d The book begins with New York\u2019s \u201cinterlocking crises of the 1970s.\u201d Housing abandonment, untenable rent increases, and a dearth of new construction all contributed to the \u201cdestruction of the housing stock.\u201d The issue of rent regulation especially \u201cengendered remarkable political passion\u201d from supporters and detractors alike. Citizens had dismal confidence in the NYPD\u2019s ability to address street crime, and many public schools lacked the resources to educate students adequately, with a disparity in resources overwhelmingly falling along racial lines. The city\u2019s recovery started near the end of the decade as it transformed into a \u201cglobal city\u201d marked by increased financialization, but as the author rightly shows, the benefits of this recovery overwhelmingly went to the middle and upper classes. The application of the \u201cBroken Windows\u201d theory under Mayor Rudy Giuliani transformed policing; New Yorkers of color were harassed and humiliated by aggressive stop-and-frisk policies in large numbers. The advent of charter schools in the city, the first of which opened in the fall of 1999 and which expanded under the mayoralty of Mike Bloomberg, added a new fraught dimension to the debate of school choice and inequality. Williams concludes with the early 2020s; even as New York remains an unparalleled city, its continued struggles with affordability, housing, and quality of life exemplify the book\u2019s relevance.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Political science professor Williams (City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York, 2013) focuses this new exploration of New York City\u2019s modern development on three key areas that \u201cembody the tensions\u2026at the heart of political life in a democratic capitalist city\u201d: housing, schools, and policing. Williams\u2019 analysis of these issues inarguably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6650"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}