Curious. This article is three yrs old. http://inthesetimes.com/article/15621/city_of_the_future_who_holds_the_keys
I wonder if anyone has input on what has been happening?
5 Cities in the Midst of a Neoliberal Takeover
Chicago: The city that brought you neoliberal education reform is pioneering new depths of privatization. after handing over its freeway and parking meters to investors, Chicago is about to become the first metro area to sell off a major airport. Still on the horizon is a new “infrastructure trust” that will open the floodgates of profiteering–er, leverage private investment–on public works projects.
San Francisco: The city by the bay has courted new “sharing economy” businesses like Sidecar and Airbnb. But the economic benefits aren’t, in fact, shared very widely: the city faces a $170 million deficit, and evictions are at a 12-year high as gentrification continues to send rents soaring.
Philadelphia: When Mayor Michael Nutter appeared on a Brookings Institution panel to discuss “Philadelphia as a model for the nation,” residents were perplexed. Philadelphia does bear the distinction of closing 23 schools while building a $400 million state prison. It is also busy selling off the Philadelphia Gas Works, the nation’s largest municipally owned gas utility, with help from JPMorgan.
Atlanta: A crop of “contract cities”–which outsource nearly all public services to private corporations–has popped up in the metro Atlanta region since 2005. Critics say that they are naked attempts to create lily-white enclaves walled off from Atlanta, which has the fifth-highest foreclosure rate in the nation.
Baltimore: The city that gave us The Wire is about to get even more hyper-segregated, thanks to an enormous redevelopment project by Johns Hopkins university and its non-profit partner East Baltimore Development, Inc. The $1.8 billion raze-and-rebuild has already displaced more than 700 families.
vs
5 Cities on the Verge of a Progressive Upswing
Jackson, Miss.: In June, voters elected a new mayor: black nationalist organizer and attorney Chokwe Lumumba. Lumumba’s platform of “self-determination and economic democracy” won the hearts of Jackson’s residents, 80 percent of whom are African-American, and engaged them through a “people’s assembly” process that the new mayor plans to repeat every three months.
San Jose: Inequality soared in San Jose, as in many tech-industry-dominated cities, during the past decade. But students at San Jose State University, many of them low-wage workers, spearheaded a campaign to help close the gap. Their ballot initiative mandating a minimum-wage increase–from $8 to $10 an hour–passed in November.
Cleveland: Worker-owned cooperatives are helping revitalize this rust-belt city. Launched in 2008, the Evergreen Cooperatives, which include a green laundry and an urban-farming initiative, are bringing living-wage jobs to six low-income neighborhoods. The businesses received start-up capital from the city and draw on the purchasing power of local hospitals and universities.
St. Louis: Even though privatization of city water systems is often an unmitigated disaster, it’s proceeding apace in many cities. But in St. Louis, a campaign by progressive activists forced Mayor Francis Slay to put the city’s contract with Veolia, the largest private water service provider in the world, on hold this February.
Chicago: The city known as ground zero for free-market reform is also home to a vigorous democratic rebellion. Following the unpopular closures of 50 school public schools this summer, the Chicago Teachers Union and its allies are building a movement to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his loyalists in the 2015 elections.
Well, Rahm got re-elected in Chicago. And Baltimore had its $15 minimum wage defeated by city council Democrats just recently.
Cleveland won the NBA Championship this year.
Any other good news?
The most curious experiment by Chokwe Lumumba was cut short by his death.
http://www.vice.com/read/free-the-land-v23n2
Philadelphia: When Mayor Michael Nutter appeared on a Brookings Institution panel to discuss “Philadelphia as a model for the nation,” residents were perplexed. Philadelphia does bear the distinction of closing 23 schools while building a $400 million state prison. It is also busy selling off the Philadelphia Gas Works, the nation’s largest municipally owned gas utility, with help from JPMorgan.
The sell off of Philly Gas Works didn’t happen because City Council didn’t approve of it. They took a lot of heat from Nutter too but it was the right thing. I haven’t heard anything about it since Kenney became Mayor.
thanks
About those Georgia “contract cities”…http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/a-georgia-town-takes-the-peoples-business-private.html?_r
=0
I think the best Atlanta story is the sad tale of milking the public for a new baseball stadium.
if you care there’s a whole sequence of good stories at deadspin ( http://deadspin.com/search?q=atlanta+stadium ) but I’d start with
Cobb County Needs To Raise Taxes To Pay For Public Parks Because All The Park Money Already Went To The Braves’ New Stadium
http://deadspin.com/cobb-county-needs-to-raise-taxes-to-pay-for-public-park-1780832038
San Francisco and San Jose are both on your list so I’ll say something about the Bay area.
this is the basis of everything
>>the economic benefits aren’t, in fact, shared very widely
there are good high-paying jobs here (I’ll leave aside the various kinds of discrimination in hiring). There isn’t enough housing, partly because in general jobs create revenue for the city and housing creates costs. Partly because we’re a patchwork of small cities surrounding the three largish ones, all are independent, and the rich happy small cities like the status quo.
Rent is insane. Longtime owners are smug, wannabe buyers desperate.
the most interesting “progressive” issue here in the south bay is San Jose’s coming vote on a bond issue for building public housing for the homeless.
homelessness is always a big issue in San Francisco, with the Chronicle always strong on the side of property owners who’d prefer them chased somewhere else.
In Oakland I think the biggest government issue is whether they can establish civilian control of the police.
Thanks. And for the Atlanta links.
Those corporate cities seem right out of a Gibson novel.
When has Atlanta not been a neoliberal city?
When has any sports facility in Atlanta not been built with public funds for private gain?
Or any other “progressive” Southern city.
Where do the transplants to Atlanta move? The same sort of white flight suburban rings they they inhabited in their former cities.
I dare say the cities with a progressive “upswing” are those in which neoliberalism is forcing gentrification to bring the affluent back to the city, where they can save on transportation costs and commuting time to redeveloped city offices and shopping areas. That certainly is the case in Chicago, which has closed a third of its public schools and half of its mental health clinics.
And the progressive upswing is the populist reaction to the dominance of neoliberal gentrification in many neighborhoods at once.
Johns Hopkins University’s East Baltimore facility faces a crisis in attracting low-wage workers and middle level medical staff to commute there or life nearby. It is a self-interested and particular form of forced gentrification.
There are probably some less noted urban hospitals that have pursued the same workforce strategy on a lesser scale. When I was in Chicago in 2012, I wondered what had so transformed the area around Rush Hospital.