Landlords, Secession, and the Family: Theorizing the Conservative Response to the Urban Crisis

• In Event: History and Theory in the Construction of Modern Politics

Abstract

This paper reviews the political projects that the writers of City Journal – the leading American conservative urban policy magazine of the 1990s – had for urban governance and New York City during its founding decade. Characterizing the root of the urban crisis in different ways, the political vision from City Journal’s writers reveal a conservative imaginary that arose largely in backlash to the economic and social policies of the 1960s and sought to vest authority in different ways beyond the state. I identify three proposed solutions in City Journal to the urban crisis – one based on familial authority, one based on fragmented neighborhood governance, and one based on governance by landowners – and highlight the ways these visions for New York’s future stress different concerns around the purpose of city life, the problems of urban liberalism, and the type of governance necessary to rebuild New York City. I argue that the distinctly conservative character of these proposals helps highlight the reactionary nature of the magazine, areas of distinctness and overlap with neoliberalism, and the relevance and influence of this conservative urbanism for contemporary revanchist backlash politics.

Author

• Michael Anthony Villanova, The Graduate Center, CUNY