Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans

by Kevin Fox Gotham, Miriam Greenberg

Overview

Crisis Cities blends critical theoretical insight with a historically-grounded comparative study to examine the redevelopment efforts following the 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters. Based on years of research in the two cities, Gotham and Greenberg contend that New York and New Orleans have emerged as paradigmatic crisis cities, representing a free-market approach to post-disaster redevelopment that is increasingly dominant for crisis-stricken cities around the world. This mode of urbanization emphasizes the privatization of disaster aid, devolution of recovery responsibility to the local state, use of tax incentives and federal grants to spur market-centered redevelopment, and utopian branding campaigns to market the redeveloped city for business and tourism. Meanwhile, it eliminates "low-income" and "public benefit" standards that once underlay emergency provisions. Focusing on the pre- and post-history of disaster, Gotham and Greenberg show how this approach exacerbates the uneven landscapes of risk and resiliency that helped produce crisis in the first place, while potentially reproducing the conditions for future crisis. At the same time, they highlight the expanding coalitions that formed following 9/11 and Katrina to contest these inequities and envision a more just and sustainable urban future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199752218
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/05/2014
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kevin Fox Gotham is Professor of Sociology at Tulane University.

Miriam Greenberg is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Table of Contents

Preface
List of Acronyms
Chapter 1: Introduction: Comparing the Incomparable: Towards a Theory of Crisis Cities
Chapter 2: "Tighten Your Belts and Bite the Bullet": The Legacy of Urban Crisis in New York and New Orleans
Chapter 3: Constructing the Tabula Rasa: Framing and the Political Construction of Crisis
Chapter 4: Crisis as Opportunity: Tracing the Contentious Spatial Politics of Redevelopment
Chapter 5: Landscapes of Risk and Resilience: From Lower Manhattan to the Lower Ninth Ward
Chapter 6: Re-Branding the "Big Apple" and the "Big Easy": Representations of Crisis and Crises of Representation
Chapter 7: Conclusion: Lessons In the Wake of New York and New Orleans
Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Every urban crisis is also an opportunity, and in this penetrating study of post-disaster New York and New Orleans, Kevin Gotham and Miriam Greenberg show how and why the market-model of redevelopment does so little for the people and places that need it most. Crisis Cities is insightful, sophisticated, and, alas, timely. It belongs not only in the classroom, but on every mayor's desk." —Eric Klinenberg, author of Heat Wave and Going Solo

"In this wide-ranging and carefully researched book, Gotham and Greenberg explore the crisis-driven strategies of urbanization that have been pursued in two major post-disaster U.S. cities and their deeply uneven, polarizing and destructive impacts upon the social and ecological fabric. A fundamental and original analysis of early twenty-first century urban transformations in the age of disaster capitalism, this book is a superb demonstration of how the methods of critical urban studies can illuminate the powerful social, political, economic and ideological forces that are reshaping cities and regions today." —Neil Brenner, Professor of Urban Theory, Harvard Graduate School of Design

"Crisis Cities is a critical revelation of the political and economic forces that direct the resources offered to cities after catastrophes. The authors clearly show how the resources are not necessarily directed to the rebuilding and recovery projects that serve all segments of the communities and would provide a successful collective future. Drawing on catastrophes in two well-known American cities the dangers of this common path are clearly presented." —Shirley Laska, Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of New Orleans

"The history, empirical work, and theoretical framework provided by Crisis Cities is a major contribution to urban sociology and, I hope, to urban policy." —American Journal of Sociology

"Professionals in emergency management roles, particularly those responsible for preparedness and recovery planning in large urbanized areas, will recognize the challenges described in the book as relevant to the devolution of disaster recovery response and a growing reliance on privatized redevelopment. Crisis Cities should serve as required reading in this new era of crisis planning and recovery." —Social Service Review

From the Publisher