The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America's Big Cities

by Fred Siegel

Overview

Each of Siegel's three urban portraits—New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles,— shows the desperate remedies undertaken by cities searching for a lifeline back to the future whose promise they once seemed to embody. In a narrative that acknowledges the large historical forces that have remade the face of America over the last three decades, but insists that social policies are not merely foregone conclusions waiting to happen, Siegel holds up a mirror to our urban naure and tells us much about the way we live now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781893554108
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	02/01/2000
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.74(w) x 8.48(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1380L (what's this?)

Editorial 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.

Kirkus Reviews