Prof: Rise of modern city dweller forces some out

The American city has a new owner: the business class, anthropology professor David Harvey says.

Harvey, who works at the City University of New York, described the role of neoliberalism - which he defined as a strong belief in private property, free markets and free trade - in transforming the modern city into a playground for the rich on campus yesterday.

"Manhattan has become a gated community for [the] transnational capitalist class," he said. "People like me are increasingly being forced out."

Studying cities requires asking "how have cities been transformed, who transformed them and what have the consequences been" he said.

According to Harvey, the business take-over of cities came out of a global capitalism crisis in the 1970s, when the rise of communism was combined with a property market crash.

Harvey said that the United States' economic situation was so dire at the time that it even developed plans to invade Saudi Arabia and occupy its oil fields.

However, the crisis was averted when the Saudi royal family agreed to recycle oil money through New York investment banks to boost the economy, he said.

But in 1975, Harvey explained, these powerful investment banks withdrew their funding for New York's expensive urban renewal programs and plunged the city into bankruptcy.

"Bankers wanted to discipline New York City according to their own image," he said.

Given more power, the banks prioritized the creation of a good business climate, he said.

Because this new climate let business leaders get very rich without having a similar effect on the poor, Harvey said that it created "astonishing increases in inequality."

According to Harvey, city dwellers have been shaped by the business environment around them.

"We've all become neoliberals without noticing it," he said. "We are much more competitive [and] individualistic."

Harvey's talk last night, featured as the 22nd Annual Urban Studies Lecture, easily filled Logan Hall's room 17 beyond capacity. Students taking Urban Studies 400, a senior seminar, were required to attend.

Audience member James Boggs, an anthropology major at Temple University, just read Harvey's book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

"The topic really interested me because I like urban anthropology," he said.

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