Bloomberg's New York
Subtitle: class and governance in the luxury city
By: Julian Brash
Series: Geographies of justice and social transformation -- 6
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 342
ISBN-13: 9780820335667; 9780820336817
Subjects: Politics and government; Elite (Social sciences); Urban renewal
Description: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims to run the city like a business. In Bloomberg's New York, Julian Brash applies methods from anthropology, geography, and other social science disciplines to examine what that means. He describes the mayor's attitude toward governance as the Bloomberg Wayùa philosophy that holds up the mayor as CEO, government as a private corporation, desirable residents and businesses as customers and clients, and the city itself as a product to be branded and marketed as a luxury good.

Commonly represented as pragmatic and nonideological, the Bloomberg Way, Brash argues, is in fact an ambitious reformulation of neoliberal governance that advances specific class interests. He considers the implications of this in a blow-by-blow account of the debate over the Hudson Yards plan, which aimed to transform Manhattan's far west side into the city's next great high-end district. Bringing this plan to fruition proved surprisingly difficult as activists and entrenched interests pushed back against the Bloomberg administration, suggesting that despite Bloomberg's success in redrawing the rules of urban governance, older political arrangementsùand opportunities for social justiceùremain. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The neoliberalization of governance in New York City; title: Electing the CEO mayor; title: Running government like a business; title: The luxury city; title: The Bloomberg Way; title: Far West side stories; title: Why the RPA mattered; title: The logic of investment; title: The Bloomberg Way and its others.