Articles on structural inequality in NYC?

February 9, 2014 5:07 PM

I would like to be pointed towards an article that connects how NYC's investment in corporate and banking interests directly worsened the prospects of the poor and working class in NYC during the Bloomberg years. This should be intelligent but not too dense -- something that could be easily readable by college freshmen without background in social science, written in a style such as you'd find in the New Yorker, Atlantic, NY Times Mag, etc in style and difficulty level. Thanks! Note: I **don't** need ethnographic stories focusing on people's lives, such as the Dasani article in the NY Times. (Those are great but I have plenty.) Rather I need a non-specialists' discussion of the structural connections between wealth and poverty in NYC, something explaining exactly why choices to invest in fancy buildings led to more homelessness -- for example, detailing how city money was diverted from x to y during these years.
posted by third rail to Education (4 answers total)

Best answer: It's more politically pointed than what you'd read in The New Yorker, etc., but the International Socialist Review's Mayor Michael Bloomberg: A Depreciation has some good data and references that should help.
posted by scody at 5:12 PM on February 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'll keep looking for not excessively academic texts (I'm in a PhD program for urban planning so my tolerance for turgid prose is quite high) but in the meantime (selflink but click thru) here's a great report from Picture the Homeless in NYC.

A little sideways to what you're asking for but definitely relevant to how poor people in Red Hook got screwed over in the wake of Hurricane Sandy: Race, Class & Disaster Gentrification
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:09 PM on February 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: These are all *great.* Please keep suggestions coming!
posted by third rail at 3:20 AM on February 10, 2014

Best answer: I've been pondering while procrastinating tonight and have only come up with things other than articles...

Two films: My Brooklyn and El Barrio Tours

An organization: Center for Urban Pedagogy
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:17 AM on February 17, 2014