Of great interest to urban activists and workers at the interface of the public and private sectors, with much food for...
An argument for decentralized government at the urban and municipal levels, where interesting economic and political trends are shaping up in the bargain.
Urban studies scholar Katz (Centennial Scholar/Brookings Institution; co-author: The Metropolitan Revolution, 2013) and community investment leader Nowak (Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, Drexel Univ.) observe that power of various kinds is “drifting downward from the nation-state to cities and metropolitan communities [and] horizontally from government networks of public, private and civic actors.” This comes as a result, at least in some measure, of cities actively campaigning to recruit industries that require high skill levels and education in order to achieve productivity. Kansas City is a case in point: its civic leaders within and without government are in agreement that they want five things to happen, including building “a workforce for tomorrow” and “making the city the most entrepreneurial in America.” Many things have to happen to bring about such developments, including forging political alliances and investing in urban infrastructure. Beyond that, the authors show that leading urban areas in the “new localism” movement are those that have invested in “innovation districts,” or clusters of business development mixed with academia and, often, government. A good example is Erie, Pennsylvania, where the strong presence of the insurance industry and cybersecurity think tanks has led to a hybridization in risk management, “following the path of customization and alignment.” Financial innovation is necessary to fund such development, but cities are often wealthier than they think; as the authors note, cities are very good at reckoning how much they owe but not how much they own. To this end, they counsel putting “public asset corporations” to work in developing long-term strategies and capturing public wealth that can be reinvested in making cities better places to live—as increasing numbers of people around the nation and world have concluded they are.
Of great interest to urban activists and workers at the interface of the public and private sectors, with much food for thought for investors as well.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8157-3164-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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