Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.