The FUTURE ONCE HAPPENED HERE [Hardcover]

Fred Siegel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 1997

In The Future Once Happened Here, Fred Siegel tells the beguiling story of America's three most influential cities, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Amplified by their place as media capitals and nerve centers of American liberalism, these three cities have shaped how Americans view urban life. Big-city America, once celebrated for its ability to incorporate immigrants and other newcomers, faltered in the face of redressing three hundred years of racial oppression and the destabilizing impact of the 1960s riots. New York, Washington, and Los Angeles were each caught in the vortex of social policies created in the '60's and '70's and each suffered the consequences. Nevertheless, these three cities tell a complex story in which decline is not a foregone conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fred Siegel loves cities but hates what has happened to them since the 1960s. Overreaching economic policies have strangled businesses and destroyed jobs. Libertine social philosophies have allowed public order to disappear. Racial antagonisms have corroded a sense of common culture. Siegel--a New Yorker with New Democrat politics--makes a strong case for why cities have declined, yet his book is not entirely gloomy. He believes that after three decades of failed public policy, America's urban centers may finally be headed toward a revival. An invigorating piece of social and political analysis, The Future Once Happened Here is the best book on U.S. cities to come along in years.

From Library Journal

Siegel, a processor of history at Cooper Union and a Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, here offers a provocative perspective on big-city politics, suggesting that a "riot ideology" of confrontation and compromise has characterized the relationships among community leaders and officials in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles since the 1960s. He argues further that officials have treated the symptoms rather than the core problems of poverty and racism. Welfare dependency, fiscal crisis, loss of community, deteriorating public space, and failures of public order have resulted. Even New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, on whose campaign Siegel worked, may not be able to overcome that legacy. The analysis will appeal to urban scholars and other followers of big city politics, although the thesis may not. A thoughtful, challenging work; for most collections.?William L. Waugh, Georgia State Univ., Atlanta
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1ST edition (September 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684827476
• ISBN-13: 978-2702814581
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #448,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The truth can hurt, July 29, 2000

By 

Todd Winer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America's Big Cities (Paperback)

This is a story - a classic tragedy, if you will. The rise of the big cities. The fall of the big cities. And finally, the promise of their redemption. Fred Siegel's book identifies the source of urban America's decline: their enthusiastic embrace of Sixties Liberalism, not only in personal behavior but as public policy. In 1965, America was in the midst of a midlife crisis. Strong and self-rghteous for so long, the country began to entangle itself in self-doubt. The origins could be tracked to the original Civil Rights Movement which rightfully forced middle-class America to confront their own hypocricy and prejudice. The aims of the original Civil Rights leaders was not to overthrow American society. Rather, it was to demand that we enforce our Constitutional laws and stop mocking the principles in the Declaration of the Independence. Men like Dr. King understood the promise and beauty of America. The last thing they wanted to do was undermine it. But five days after President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Los Angeles erupted in a race riot. Large sections of Watts were burned to the ground and dozens were killed. In 1967 and 1968, deadly race riots broke out in Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, and other urban centers. Middle class families who lived in the city couldn't understand what was happening. Many of them fled to the suburbs; the so-called "white flight." But most of them stayed - at least initially. At the end of the 1960s, the question that urban leaders faced, writes Siegel, was "how do we deal with the twin problems of race and poverty?" One option was to stick with the past solution of cultural assimilation and private sector advancement. But that wasn't good enough anymore. Instead, a combination of intellectuals, minority activists, big-spending pols, and "compassionate" voters took a large and unprecedented gamble. The millions of black families that had crowded into northern cities since World War II would be the guinea pigs in a great liberal experiment. Blacks and other racial minorities would no longer be encouraged to assimilate into American society. Afterall, the middle-class lifestyle was "sick" and "guilty." In a complete reversal of Dr. King's dream, blacks would be expected to create their own norms, values, and institutions. While this may seem to be a perverse triumph of individualism, it was a unique form; it would be what Siegel labels "dependent individualism." In other words, while city residents would be expected to unshackle themselves of moral restraints, they would also do it at taxpayer expense. Poverty, the liberal activists charged, was a problem of money - people didn't have enough of it. It some cases that was true. But in other cases it wasn't true. Unfortunately, welfare payments came to subsidize a whole dysfunctional subculture. In the 1970s and 1980s, the "riot ideology" impregnated a large majority of city voters. Even though the large cities were in an inexplicable decline, government leaders insisted that the road to Utopia could be reached with even more liberal policies: ever larger "social programs" including job training, public housing, and drug treatment. And even looser moral standards including drug users and prostitutes crowding city parks and aggressive panhandlers harassing city streets. In 1992, after the trillion-dollar "War on Poverty" and a crass civil culture that had dismissed every moral restraint as a need for therapy, Los Angeles erupted into violence again. Siegel says that these riots, which were even deadlier than the Watts upheaval of 1965, fundamentally discredited urban liberalism. After reading his book, the only question the reader can ask is: "What took so long?" In the late 1990s, mayors like Rudy Giuliani of New York and Richard Riordan in Los Angeles have cut crime and the size of the Welfare State. They've proven to be very popular and successful. But resistance to their policies remain, especially in the intellectual class. In recent years, the cities have experienced an "Indian summer." Whether this climate will mature into a "new spring" is far from certain. An engaged citizenry, alerted to the historical mistakes of liberalism but still enchanted by its romanticism, hold the key to our future.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Deceptively well-written, May 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The FUTURE ONCE HAPPENED HERE (Hardcover)

This book is written well enough that one might overlook the numerous flaws in Mr. Siegel's case. This case, while sometimes compelling, is far too often flawed. Simplistic logic seems to be Mr. Siegel's forte - that is, he takes things as cause and effect without offering proof of any assocation. He argues, for instance, that Cuomo's building of prisons lowered the crime rate and Reagan's deregulation led to economic growth. Proof behind either statement is lacking, as it is throughout this book. For a history, this was also majorly flawed in that it did not identify sources - where does Mr. Siegel get the few statistics he puts in the book? Demonizing conservatives and liberals also seems to be Mr. Siegel's strong suit, as this avoids the need to offer a comprehensive ideology of his own. I did learn more about all three cities from this book but cannot be sure how much is definitively true due to the large amounts of spin. Worth reading, but do so critically.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good message, uneven delivery, January 6, 2000

By 

Michael J. Berquist - See all my reviews

This review is from: The FUTURE ONCE HAPPENED HERE (Hardcover)

This book is excellent dissection of the failure of American urban policy since the 1960s, but it does have some flaws of note. Fred Siegel has a clear point to make, but all too frequently he gets waylaid by his own grudges. It is obvious that this man is a Democrat in the conservative mold furious at the disastrous manner in which Liberals in the late 1960s and 1970s ran three of America's finest cities. Fine. 1960's Liberalism was a disaster for Americas cities, particularly New York, Washington & Los Angeles. Point taken and agreed upon, but time and again this point is made in an angry and confrontational manner.

Siegel's publisher would have done good to convince his author to adopt a more conciliatory tone. This book is angry, and the author's anger perhaps serves a dual purpose- to showcase how angry moderate, suburban Democrats (such as this reviewer) are at how urban liberals led the party astray, and to mirror the anger and contempt these liberals felt towards their critics.

Good message. Uneven delivery.