> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # New York, for Better and Worse - URL: https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/new-york-for-better-and-worse/ - Published: 2026-10-02T16:00:01.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-02T16:00:01.000Z - Description: On Mason B. Williams’ new history of modern New York, “City of Fortune” - Author: Joseph P. Viteritti - Tags: Book Review, History, Inequality If you are looking for an uplifting read that takes you from the hazy days of summer to the crisp days of autumn, [*“*City of Fortune: Inequality and the Making of Contemporary New York”](https://mcnallyjackson.com/book/9780393292855?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) byMason B. Williams is not for you. Indeed, this book might just as easily have been called “City of Misfortune.” What makes matters worse is that this is a true story, supported by impeccable historical research and analysis. Williams, an associate professor at Williams College and author of “City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York,” focuses in this new tome on post-fiscal-crisis New York. It takes you from 1975, when the city stood on the brink of bankruptcy, through the final days of Bill de Blasio’s turn as mayor. It charts both the city’s recovery and the price that many paid for it. The book is a commanding work of scholarship that should be required reading both for those in and around Zohran Mamdani’s administration and for all who grouse about the supposedly radical solutions he is offering. It frames the present moment in an essential economic context: In recent decades, New York’s prime struggle has been to accommodate and welcome vast wealth while remaining a place where poor, working-class and middle-class strivers can make a go of it. Many mayors have tried to square the circle; Mamdani’s agenda, while called ahistorical by some, is just a more aggressive variation on the theme. If I were asked to find one word that summarizes the thrust of Williams’ argument, I would, at the risk of some oversimplification, choose “gentrification.” Gentrification — the transformation of neighborhoods via the influx of new, higher-income residents (and often thought of by its critics as displacing Black and Hispanic residents with white ones) — was something that Ed Koch hoped would lift the city out of its fiscal doldrums; that Michael Bloomberg celebrated as evidence that the city had finally landed on solid ground; and that Bill de Blasio denounced as a force that fed and fed upon a metastatic condition of political and economic inequality. Attracting more wealthy residents and businesses may have helped New York finally escape one of its darkest moments, but, as Williams argues, it made the city inhospitable and unaffordable to many who had struggled to build it. My own overlapping work underscores this point. Williams is evenhanded in his portraits of the fascinating characters — Nelson Rockefeller, Hugh Carey, the Cuomos, Sheldon Silver, Joe Bruno and Peter Vallone, to mention a few — who, along with the mayors, helped shape a half-century of New York City policymaking, but he also writes with a clear point of view. He laments how a place that once offered immigrants and working people opportunities for better lives became a city of privilege, “captured by real estate development and commercial boosterism,” where luxury high-rises coexist with pockets of poverty and racial isolation. Williams’ “City of Ambition,” released in 2013, chronicled the productive partnership between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia that rescued New York from the clutches of the Great Depression and planted the roots of progressive government that its present mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is struggling to unearth. The two books should be read together. The first is full of aspiration and hope, which only makes the events chronicled in the second more painfully discouraging. “City of Fortune”focuses on three areas of public policy: housing, schooling and policing. That’s not all there is to consider, but it is enough to make the case Williams effectively lays out. That said, I wish that Williams had given more attention to the role played by Washington in this decline — New York’s failures were not entirely of its own making. ### Housing Housing offers the clearest case of the significant federal role, and it is especially poignant in distinguishing the can-do philosophy that drove the New Deal from a latter-day federal government that simply said “no” to the city. A main highlight of Williams’ earlier book was its illustration of how the productive relationship between Roosevelt and La Guardia led to the construction of unprecedented amounts of affordable housing in New York. For all their warts and problems, the New York City Housing Authority and its related programs continue to serve more than a half-million people in need. Federal aid for housing declined under President Jimmy Carter, and the cuts got steeper still under Ronald Reagan. Between 1981 and 1987, Washington reduced housing aid to the city by 70%. In 1992, Congress authorized funding to tear down public housing that was deemed a failure after years of neglect. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed legislation that prohibited the federal government from building public housing beyond the number of units already existing. All this is detailed in my book on Bill de Blasio, “The Pragmatist.” These national developments helped to shape the destiny of New York over the 50-year period Williams covers. Presiding over the city’s transition from calamity to solvency during the 1980s, Ed Koch defied the inevitable course of history by pledging $5.1 billion to build or rehabilitate 252,000 housing units, emphasizing the latter. Mayors David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani continued to invest in housing, but ultimately the city would need to rely on private investors as federal dollars dried up. These entrepreneurs were in business to make a profit, and their returns were not optimized by building affordable housing. Each successive mayor was pressured by powerful real estate titans to make sweeter deals, gradually carving away tenant protections and rent regulations. Businesses that threatened to leave were [granted unprecedented tax breaks](https://www.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/12pdf/ter%5F2012%5Ffinal.pdf?ref=vitalcitynyc.org). Michael Bloomberg [branded New York City a “luxury product,”](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/nyregion/mayor-says-new-york-is-worth-the-cost.html?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) but luxury items, by definition, are within reach of only a very few. Bloomberg’s massive rezoning of the city altered its profile in ways that will be debated for some time to come. As with the loss of affordable housing, economic inequality in New York City was accelerated by a federal government that mangled the progressive tax structure and undid regulations that protected the public. For example, in 1999, Congress passed and President Clinton signed legislation repealing key provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had separated commercial banks from investment banks and established rules for transparency. A year later, a new law exempted derivatives and other products from certain regulations. When the subprime mortgage crisis occurred in 2008 and millions of people lost their homes, Washington responded by bailing out the banks that had caused the crisis through predatory and irresponsible credit practices. Research by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez shows that nearly one-third of the gain in the income share of America’s richest families between 1970 and 2010 was a result of [the changing tax structure](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.21.1.3&page=401&ref=vitalcitynyc.org). ### Education Economic and housing policies don’t exist in a vacuum; the chief vehicle for leveling the playing field, at least in theory, is our public schools. Mamdani, who seems to be cobbling together an education policy day by day, hopefully will learn from what worked and what failed. Over the period Williams chronicles, waves of education reform swept over the city — and few changed the fundamental dynamics of an education system that far too frequently fails those in deepest need. Ronald Reagan didn’t know what to do when a panel appointed by his education secretary declared in 1983 that [our nation was “at risk” ](https://archive.org/details/nationatrisk0000unse)because American students were falling behind others from around the world. Education became a national priority, though, under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. It moved center stage in 2002 with George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and remained a federal priority under President Barack Obama. Washington’s focus on education standards and choice had its own champions in New York hailing from both the political left and right. Williams spotlights Deborah Meier, a progressive reformer who developed innovative schools of choice in East Harlem with collaborators who eventually took their programs to the conservative Manhattan Institute. Such alliances were difficult to sustain. Standardized testing was an especially divisive issue. Were the exams meant to serve as a barometer of performance, or were they an end in themselves? Once school choice took the form of charter schools in 1999, it drove a deeper wedge between “progressive” and “conservative” advocates. Gov. George Pataki had managed to turn around reluctant Democratic legislators on charters by agreeing to give them a pay raise. It’s debatable whether Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s inflammatory rhetoric about “blowing up” public education helped or hindered the cause. Mayor Michael Bloomberg invested more resources in charters than any of his predecessors, but he did the same for district schools. He also caused a fury among some when his chancellor, Joel Klein, began to close failing public schools. As the school population shrinks and budget problems loom, it will become harder to defend the perpetuation of schools that don’t educate effectively. Williams seems torn on charter schools, and it comes across as an ideological blind spot on his part. He recognizes charters as an innovation originally supported by a diverse coalition determined to improve opportunities for Black students segregated in failing district schools. He then repeats a litany of criticisms that became common alibis for their opponents, describing them as “regimented,” “paternalistic” and “punitive” institutions focused on standardized tests and staffed by inexperienced and overworked young idealists with high turnover rates. He finally concedes that they “worked” when he compares the pass rates of the Success Academy charter network with those of district schools on state math tests (94% vs. 35%). Results on state reading and math tests [consistently demonstrate](https://nyccharterschools.org/facts-about-charter-schools/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) that Black and Hispanic students at charter schools outperform their peers in district schools. ### Policing But ultimately, a city that’s unsafe — and especially unsafe for lower-income residents — is one that will never give all its people the lives they deserve. Mamdani, an NYPD critic before he became mayor, seems so far to have internalized this lesson in office, developing a more cooperative relationship with the department. This is very much in keeping with recent history. Except for President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, which helped expand the ranks of the NYPD, policies concerning the police were generally homegrown in the aftermath of the fiscal crisis — very much dominated by giant local personalities who would make crime reduction a leading city priority. Williams does an exceptional job explaining common elements that tied together strategies implemented by police commissioners from Robert McGuire under Koch through Ray Kelly and Bill Bratton, each of whom had two tours of duty during the Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomberg and de Blasio years. Mayor David Dinkins first infused the NYPD with significant funding under his Safe Streets, Safe City program, setting things in motion. Proactive problem-solving that targeted street crime at the community level under Koch and Dinkins was a foundation for Giuliani and Bratton’s high-profile “Broken Windows” approach centered on quality-of-life concerns. Along with CompStat, which held commanders accountable for crime numbers, this innovation yielded positive results. But an aggressive approach to low-level offenses also led to shocking incidents of abuse directed at Black men. Bloomberg and Kelly ignored pleas from civil rights advocates as they hardened enforcement under their stop-and-frisk banner, only to have the practice declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2013\. ### The great transition Reading Williams’ account of Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty is especially illuminating in light of Mamdani’s election. Notwithstanding a brief interruption by Eric Adams’ corruption-laden tenure, de Blasio appears as a transition figure between Clinton’s neoliberal Democratic regime and what was to come. As Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, Bernie Sanders emerged as a voice for a new left, and young upstarts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were beginning to take down establishment Democrats. De Blasio reluctantly supported Hillary Clinton over Sanders in the primary while publicly rebuking the Clintons’ Democratic Leadership Council. De Blasio had run on a “Tale of Two Cities” platform in 2013 as an alternative to the Bloomberg legacy, but as mayor, he would proceed with moderation. He hired Rudy Giuliani’s police commissioner, Bill Bratton. Crime went down to historic lows until the pandemic hit, and the use of stop-and-frisk also declined dramatically. But policing was still a focus of major controversy in New York during the de Blasio years, not least because of the national reaction to the murder of George Floyd. Contrary to his progressive reputation, de Blasio staffed his administration with seasoned veterans of city government with centrist dispositions. Unable to rely on either Washington or Albany for support, he paid for 75% of his housing plan with private investment. Perhaps that was as far as he could take it given the political realities he faced. Williams gives de Blasio high marks on housing. De Blasio built or rehabilitated 200,000 units, persuaded his appointees on the Rent Guidelines Board to impose rent freezes on another million, provided legal services to tenants harassed by landlords, and used zoning to exact concessions from private developers. Under de Blasio, poverty and unemployment rates declined, but the homeless population continued to grow. Other than dismissing standards and charters, his administration produced no significant plan to improve the schools. Although reelected with one of the largest popular majorities in city history, he left office an unpopular figure in the midst of a deadly pandemic. De Blasio’s most resounding success was implementing his prekindergarten program, which Mamdani would later champion and expand. “City of Fortune” concludes before Mamdani’s election, but it foreshadows many of the key themes that have defined the Mamdani administration so far. Will our new democratic socialist mayor succeed in rethinking the housing, educational and policing policies that have shaped the last five decades in New York? One thing’s for certain: This tome offers no shortage of lessons from recent history’s scrapheap. By the time Mamdani was elected, Donald Trump had returned to the White House, the alarm had been sounded, and the new mayor’s affordability agenda resonated. It wasn’t a false alarm by any means. In early September, the New York City comptroller issued [a report](https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/recent-trends-in-personal-income-wage-inequality/?ref=vitalcitynyc.org) showing that nearly two-thirds of the income growth recorded between 2019 and 2024 went to the top 1% of earners. What Mason Williams wrote about in this informative book was only the beginning. The story continues.