Bloomberg's New York

Bloomberg's New York

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg claims to run the city like a business. In Bloomberg’s New York, Julian Brash applies methods from anthropology, geography, and other social science disciplines to examine what that means.

He describes the mayor’s attitude toward governance as the Bloomberg Way―a philosophy that holds up the mayor as CEO, government as a private corporation, desirable residents and businesses as customers and clients, and the city itself as a product to be branded and marketed as a luxury good.

Commonly represented as pragmatic and nonideological, the Bloomberg Way, Brash argues, is in fact an ambitious reformulation of neoliberal governance that advances specific class interests. He considers the implications of this in a blow-by-blow account of the debate over the Hudson Yards plan, which aimed to transform Manhattan’s far west side into the city’s next great high-end district.

Bringing this plan to fruition proved surprisingly difficult as activists and entrenched interests pushed back against the Bloomberg administration, suggesting that despite Bloomberg’s success in redrawing the rules of urban governance, older political arrangements―and opportunities for social justice―remain.

English language edition.

Magasinet TWENTYFIRST 02.Books on cities:

"Designing the world's second home: With Michael Bloomberg as the central figure - the very personification of neoliberal governance - Brash portrays contemporary class struggle in the world's global cities with New York City as an example. With his background as CEO, Bloomberg claimed to run the city as a business and that it should be branded as a luxury good to attract the right 'customers'. While Bloomberg and his supporters considered their regime a pragmatic one where rather rather than pursuing a political ideology, it was about 'getting things done', Brash reveals how this was in fact reinforcing class interests through the logics of investment, transforming the city into a destination for the Transnational Capitalist Class.

Brash has interviewed almost all of the top officers in Bloomberg's administration, and though obviously not a strong supporter of the Bloomberg Way, he paints a loyal picture of the former NYC mayor and his staff, making the logic behind their actins and decisions the more comprehensible - also in a context much wider than that of New York City.