Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World [Paperback]

Miriam Greenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0415954428 | ISBN-13: 978-0415954426 | Edition: New Ed

Winner of the 2009 Robert Park Book Award for best Community and Urban Sociology book!

Branding New York traces the rise of New York City as a brand and the resultant transformation of urban politics and public life. Greenberg addresses the role of "image" in urban history, showing who produces brands and how, and demonstrates the enormous consequences of branding. She shows that the branding of New York was not simply a marketing tool; rather it was a political strategy meant to legitimatize market-based solutions over social objectives.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A cunning, wonderfully dialectical analysis" - Mike Davis, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine

 "I love New York. I am equally taken by Miriam Greenberg's fascinating account of how powerful political interests invented this famous slogan as a strategy for asserting their claim over the city's image, resources, policies, and priorities." - Dennis Judd, Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois, Chicago

"This concise work explores the efforts of New York elites to brand their city in order to deal with repeated crises confronting the city in the last third of the 20th century...a well-written and thoroughly researched urban history that makes a valuable contribution to the field. Highly recommended." -- T.A. Aiello, Choice, February 2009

 

About the Author

Miriam Greenberg is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz, and is a visiting scholar at the Center for Urban Research and Policy at Columbia.  Her interests lie at the intersection of urban political economy and media studies.  In particular, her research focuses on the official use of media and marketing in New York City during the fiscal crisis period of the 1970s and the current, post- 9/11 era, exploring the politics of urban representation in times of crisis, as well as the relationship between city marketing and the broader efforts of neoliberal restructuring. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; New Ed edition (February 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415954428
• ISBN-13: 978-0415954426
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #432,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First rate, June 24, 2008

By 

S. Sherman "lefteyeonbooks.org" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World (Paperback)

You often hear in academia that cultural analysis should be better integrated with political economy. Usually this means that the latter should disappear beneath 'political' readings of popular cultural texts. But Branding New York actually achieves this feat, showing how neoliberal New York arose after the fiscal crisis of the mid-seventies through a cultural project that defined New York City as the stomping ground of the 'new class' (i.e. 'yuppies', epitomized by the readership of New York magazine) and a safe space for business and tourists. This counterrevolution required real work, not so much because the forces opposing it were well organized (they were not) but because such phenomenon as graffiti (which Greenberg writes sympathetically about as an effort by inner-city youth to assert their right to the city and to be heard), crime, exploitation films like 'Escape from New York', and even serial killers kept interfering with the image makeover (even the cops got into the act--angry about budget cuts, they produced leaflets warning tourists to stay away from 'Fear City'). Greenberg shows the way elite organizing drives to remake NY as a desirable locale for financial business (not its main function in an earlier era when it was dominated by manufacturing) converged with the cultural struggle through the I Love New York campaign, a wildly successful logo and jingle which was underwritten by governmental agencies (its first iteration had a slightly touching, desperate undercurrent, as Broadway casts donated their labor in an effort to lure enough tourists to keep their shows going; a later version just emphasized all the tax breaks and other favors businesses could now receive).

The cultural work that Greenberg describes has now become the 'common sense' predominant in New York, notwithstanding 9-11 (which she devotes a coda to). Much--perhaps a majority--of the city languishes in low paying jobs, lousy schools, a public transit system still getting cut even as population and ridership increases, etc. But New York is now a 'great place to live' for a predominantly white, relatively affluent class, and a great place to do business for financial and real estate interests that get a sympathetic ear from city government beyond the wildest dreams of the seventies. A new cultural struggle will need to be waged if the city is to be remade as a genuinely inclusive space that lives up to the potential of its multicultural population. Greenberg's book should be read closely by anyone interested in doing so.

4.0 out of 5 stars serious research about urban transformations, June 9, 2011

By 

veronica - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World (Paperback)

I recommend the book. It's an important research about NY transformation during the last decades. Sociologists, urban architects and urban antropologists will enjoy it.