The Long Crisis

The crisis alluded to here is the fiscal collapse of 1975 that brought New York to the brink of bankruptcy. Holtzman wants to “move away from the conventional narratives about the ascent of marketization during the final decades of the twentieth century” (3). He offers an alternative explanation to those historians who have “commonly depicted the imposition of market-based logics as being the product of the dogged influence of the business sector, economists, libertarians and conservative activists” (3). His alternative narrative focuses on what he calls “popular marketization,” wherein local actors who were not ideologues “pushed for creative solutions to troubling situations” and “through their messaging and actions promoted the notions that the city itself was no longer able to solve the crises affecting its livable spaces and that new initiatives from those outside of government were needed” (4). Holtzman has taken a bad bet. We can't pretend that the long-term political and economic effects of the 1975 fiscal crisis had their origins in a series of spontaneous civic actions taken by ordinary people.While Holtzman does not apply the “ideologue” label to these local actors—which might have suggested a “false consciousness” based on blind belief rather than observable reality—their messaging and actions very much reflect the right-of-center thinking that emerged in response to the liberal agenda blamed for New York's near demise. Holtzman's project is further compromised by his overstating the level of “marketization” that actually occurred; and the local services he chose to focus on undermine and confuse his argument. Furthermore, in the immediate aftermath of its near bankruptcy, New York was ill equipped to deliver services needed by an increasingly poor population, and the political machinations of the finance and real estate communities had much to do with that. The crisis had an existential effect on the city's political landscape and priorities. Because Holzman's story of the “long crisis” ends for the most part during the mayoralties of Edward Koch (1978–89) and David Dinkins (1990–93), he does not explain the full impact of these changes. His analysis is also weakened by his omission of key developments during these two mayoralties and the years that immediately preceded them.Holtzman examines six areas where municipal responses to the crisis came up short: low- and middle-income housing, parks, crime, economic development, and homelessness. Each of these had different implications for the city that the author doesn't quite get a handle on. With parks, he writes about a range of private initiatives to save neighborhood parks like Tompkins Square, regional parks like Van Courtland, and tourist magnets like Central Park. These hardly represent a larger movement toward “marketization,” or “privatization” as some would call it. As Holtzman admits, most parks and playgrounds in poor neighborhoods were overlooked by local activists gifted with generous resources. What happened to parks was more a story of retrenchment and abandonment than privatization.Holtzman's coverage of the crime issue describes the efforts of neighborhood crime watches, tenant patrols, private security guards, and Business Improvement Districts—many of which received public funding. None of these represented a serious move toward “marketization” when it came to criminal justice. The size of the police budget began to grow under Mayor Dinkins, and not always for the better. Stop-and-frisk policies enacted under Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg led to the mass incarceration of Black and Brown men. Even a more progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio, resisted calls to “defund the police” in the wake of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Mayor Eric Adams outright opposes them.I would place Holtzman's four other areas of concentration—low- and middle-income housing, economic development, and homelessness—all under a single umbrella covering the economic and political infrastructure of the city. The real estate and business sectors were always of the private realm. To appreciate their role in the crisis, one needs to return to 1975, when Governor Hugh Carey put the city in virtual receivership and appointed panels like the Emergency Financial Control Board (EFCB) and the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC), which empowered private sector executives to make consequential public decisions. The cuts they imposed fell disproportionately on municipal workers and residents most dependent on public services. Holtzman pays little attention to these historic factors that recast the structure of governance.Holtzman heralds programs that encouraged renters to become owners, solidifying their stake in the city's future. Such programs had a modest impact on the political economy of the city, when compared to the rising influence of corporate and real estate titans who demanded tax breaks to stay and to build. Holtzman places much of the blame for “marketization” on Mayor Koch. He seems oblivious to the fiscal pressures that shaped Koch's agenda or that of his immediate successor, David Dinkins. Notwithstanding an eroded tax base, Koch launched the most ambitious housing program since the New Deal, and he did it without federal support. When David Dinkins took office in 1990, Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who chaired the MAC board, sat on his transition committee; Philip Michael, the EFCF's former executive director, was installed as Dinkins's budget director.The most serious flaw in Holtzman's analysis is that it is ahistorical. In the concluding chapter, he mentions Mayors Giuliani, Bloomberg, and de Blasio, identifying counterproductive policies they enacted to make New York inhospitable to those who struggle. He never fully explains how precedents set during the period he studied established a foundation for the present and future or how they evolved from what had happened in the past. He fails to recognize how gentrification that displaced struggling people with the more privileged was part of a recovery strategy engineered by plutocrats. He faults Mayor John Lindsay for backing the state's 421A Housing Program, which gave developers tax breaks to build affordable housing—a program that led to abuses. The program became most egregious later, however, when the real estate market boomed and developers were given tax breaks to build luxury housing.Holtzman might have mentioned in his conclusion that 421A was renewed at the urging of Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2017 over protests by affordable housing advocates. As I write in the spring of 2022, the state legislature appears finally prepared to suspend the program, this time over the objections of both Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Adams. We'll see what happens in the long run. The more things change, the more they stay the same. That is why we learn from studying history

Demise · Ideology · Marketization · Narrative · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US