At the core or liberalism's failures has been its economic development policies. Chapter 5 of the book looks in depth
at the ways in which New York liberals adopted neoliberal economic development policies in an attempt to become a global city.
This approach emphisized the corporate and financial sectors at the expense of manufacturing along with cuts to social services.
The result was a tremendous polarization of wages, which spilled over to housing markets as well. This lead to widesread homelessness
and poverty which contributed to the disorder problem of the 1980's and 90's.
The disorder crisis in turn led community groups, business leaders, and politicians to begin to adopt more punitive outlooks
towards the homeless and disorderly, ushering in the neoconservative era of Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.
Overall, the book emphasizes that when local governments pursue economic development strategies that result in economic
and social polarization, they will come under tremndouse pressure to adopt punitive social control measures.
This means that urban liberalism as a political philosphy will become untenable once it adopts neoliberal economic
policies.
