Product Description

City of Quartz meets Gotham—the dark side of the glittering metropolis.

New York is a city of outlandish wealth and extreme deprivation, where the abundance of high-rise office space and luxury housing belies a poverty rate of nearly twice the national average. In From Welfare State to Real Estate, prominent labor activist Kim Moody argues that the city's business elite has tilted the political structure toward an agenda that puts real estate development ahead of human needs. The result is a new Gilded Age in America's first city, overseen by the nation's first billionaire mayor.

Tracing this trend to its roots in 1975, when New York's once-generous welfare state was abandoned during a time of financial crisis, Moody shows how business leaders managed to seize an unprecedented degree of influence in local politics. From Koch to Bloomberg, the developmental bulldozer has extended its reach, placing more pressure on the city's beleaguered and divided working class. From Welfare State to Real Estate offers the first historical narrative of the key turning points in this process, from the redevelopment of Times Square to the current fight over Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards. It looks beneath the skyline to analyze the power struggles that have shaped this global city in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #792790 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
Kim Moody co-founded Labor Notes in 1979 and until recently taught politics at Brooklyn College and labor studies at Cornell University. He is the author of An Injury to All and Workers in a Lean World. He is currently a research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire and lives in London.

Customer Reviews

A Look & Perspective Into How Things Change In NYC And Why We're Back In This Economic Mess Again!
A lot of you will never ever pick this book up. There are many reason one wouldn't. Most people are just too engrossed in their ME ME ME life and rarely scratch the surface in getting to know, digest and clearly understand why things are in the state that they are AGAIN in 2009 as 2010 rounds the corner.

This book for some will be too filled with details. For others it will be just plain and simply dull or boring. But for the few who are required to read the ink between it's covers or those inquisitive enough to open this book up you will find a plethora of tidbits which will help draw a picture as to why we are back in a recession again. Why our political representatives have dropped the ball while they were in their own end zone on the football field.

Like all books it is written with an amount of perspective coming from the author's personal knowledge, point of view and beliefs. Much of it is accurate in is description of how things actually progressed historically here in NYC. (Somethings are likely hidden behind closed doors which no one will ever know about except for those who were in the room).

Bottom line is that this is a book for EVERYONE who wants to understand in a fairly rounded understanding how the cycle of history has repeated itself over and over here in the Global City we call New York. The common players are Politicians, Affluent, Working Class, and Real Estate. Hopefully through the digesting of this text people will seek out what is right for them, their children, their country and the globe.

In my opinion, being that I lived here in NYC during a good portion of the period from 1980 to present it connects the dots of what I've seen occurring in the landscape of NYC (from impoverish to affluent areas) which I never truly desired to understand nor made the efforts to piece together. I hope you are able to gleam something from this book no matter where you have lived. To understand the underlining dynamics that are in play which tug and pull at all players in NYC. And just maybe you will become involved in making it work just a bit better for everyone.