Synopses & Reviews
Resilience has become one of the first fully-fledged academic and political buzzwords of the twenty-first century. In this book, Geoffrey DeVerteuil proposes a more critically engaged and conceptually robust version of the term, applying it to the conspicuous but now residual clusters of voluntary sector organizations deemed service hubs.” The process of resilience in response to the threat of gentrification-induced displacement is compared across ten service hubs in three complex but different global inner-city regions: London, Los Angeles, and Sydney. DeVerteuil shows that resilience can be not only about holding on to previous gains, but also about holding out for transformation. The first book to move beyond pure theories of resilience and offer a combined conceptual and empirical approach, Resilience in the Post-Welfare Inner City will interest urban geographers, social planners, and researchers of the voluntary sector.
Review
“The siege on the Welfare State has destroyed most collective consumption institutions, yet voluntary organizations survive in the global city. DeVerteuil’s excellent analysis shows us how, and why it matters.”
Synopsis
The shift in the ideological winds toward a "free-market" economy has brought profound effects in urban areas. The Neoliberal City presents an overview of the effect of these changes on today's cities. The term "neoliberalism" was originally used in reference to a set of practices that first-world institutions like the IMF and World Bank impose on third-world countries and cities. The support of unimpeded trade and individual freedoms and the discouragement of state regulation and social spending are the putative centerpieces of this vision. More and more, though, people have come to recognize that first-world cities are undergoing the same processes.
In The Neoliberal City, Jason Hackworth argues that neoliberal policies are in fact having a profound effect on the nature and direction of urbanization in the United States and other wealthy countries, and that much can be learned from studying its effect. He explores the impact that neoliberalism has had on three aspects of urbanization in the United States: governance, urban form, and social movements. The American inner city is seen as a crucial battle zone for the wider neoliberal transition primarily because it embodies neoliberalism's antithesis, Keynesian egalitarian liberalism.
Focusing on issues such as gentrification in New York City; public-housing policy in New York, Chicago, and Seattle; downtown redevelopment in Phoenix; and urban-landscape change in New Brunswick, N.J., Hackworth shows us how material and symbolic changes to institutions, neighborhoods, and entire urban regions can be traced in part to the rise of neoliberalism.
About the Author
Geoffrey DeVerteuil is a senior lecturer on social geography at Cardiff University.
Table of Contents
Part One: Introducing resilience in the post-welfare inner city: conceptual and methodological considerations Introduction
Resilience and residualism
The voluntary sector within the post-welfare city
Resilience and residualism
Part Two: Case studies: spatial and social resilience in London, Los Angeles and Sydney
National and local settlements: UK
Los Angeles, US
and Sydney, Australia Established gentrified place-types
Mixed place-types
Pioneer gentrified place-types
Immigrant enclaves
Comparative analysis and summary
Part Three: Conclusions, critical resilience, commons and austerity
The critical resilience of the residuals