The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities

Product Description

Each of Siegel’s three urban portraits–New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles,– shows the desperate remedies undertaken by cities searching for a lifeline back to the future whose promise they once seemed to embody. In a narrative that acknowledges the large historical forces that have remade the face of America over the last three decades, but insists that social policies are not merely foregone conclusions waiting to happen, Siegel holds up a mirror to our urban naure and tells us much about the way we live now.

From The New Yorker

This book is a cogent and incisive eulogy for a well-intentioned but aggravating urban experiment–the virtue-free public activism of the last half of the twentieth century.

Review

Mr. Siegel argues for cities to turn their backs on a federal government that is never likely to help them as much as they can help themselves. —
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The best book about cities in decades. —
John Leo, U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT

From the Publisher

Not just metropolises but also metaphors for American social life, New York, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles were once celebrated for their excitement and creativity as well as their ability to incorporate immigrants and solve the nation’s problems. Caught up in the social policies born in the ’60s and ’70s, each faltered badly in dealing with the politics of race and the quality of their residents’ lives in the ’80s and ’90s. Each of Siegel’s three urban portraits shows the desperate remedies undertaken by cities searching for a lifeline back to the future whose promise they once seemed to embody. In a narrative that acknowledges the large historical forces that have remade the face of America over the last three decades, Siegel holds up a mirror to our urban nature and tells us much about the way we live now.

About the Author

Fred Siegel, the author of URBAN SOCIETY and FALL FROM