cover image The Other City: People and Politics in New York and London

The Other City: People and Politics in New York and London

. Humanities Press Intl, $35.17 (237pp) ISBN 978-0-391-03885-1

Perhaps no subject animates today's political conversation more than the fate of the city. All the talk about social services, public safety and budgets is really about the relationship between the city and the rest of the country. Today's version of the age-old public concern about cities comes at a time when the city's half-millenium-old role as a nation-state's manufacturing center appears to be over. Never has urban social breakdown seemed so overwhelming, and two prime examples are those world capitals of commerce, New York and London. In The Other City, editor MacGregor documents this decline and the response of citizens, politicians and social scientists. These essays from British and U.S. social scientists examine problems from a more or less liberal-socialist viewpoint. What's refreshing is their rejection of the easy palliatives pronounced by conservatives. There are no blame-the-victim slogans here. The Other City's writers point to unemployment and income disparity (especially artificially depressed low-end incomes) as the biggest causes of today's urban problems. But despite some of the essayists' reform proposals, their data show that today's urban crisis is long-term and structural, and that addressing issues such as income disparity is only a necessary beginning of the journey toward correcting the problems of cities, which have essentially lost their way. (July)