City of Disorder

NYU Press, April 2008

Alex S. Vitale
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Brooklyn College, CUNY

New York in the 1990s faced a "quality of life" crisis of homelessness and public disorder. In response, frustrated local residents embraced the neoconservative ideas of then mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who pledged to restore order through aggressive policing and punitive social policies, shifting the focus of government from improving the lives of the needy to protecting the welfare of the middle and upper classes. In exploring this development, Alex S. Vitale shows why historically liberal New York has voted against Democrats in the last four mayoral elections.

In City of Disorder, Alex S. Vitale uses neighborhood case studies and city-wide economic development data to investigate the rise of punitive urban social policies. His findings show that the neoconservative backlash against the homeless and poor was a direct result of urban liberalism's embracing of neoliberal economic development strategies and its unwillingness to use local resources to respond to the disorder it helped create in a way that would have empowered communities and brought positive change to those on the margins.