A01=Daniel Wortel-London
Affordable
Alternative growth
Author_Daniel Wortel-London
Category=KCM
Category=KJ
Category=NH
Category=NHK
Civic engagement
Community empowerment
Community-centered development
Cooperatives
debt
democracy
Democratic
disparity
Economic alternatives
Economic history
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Fiscal
Fiscal crises
Fiscal sustainability
Grassroots
Historical activism
housing
Inclusive growth
inequality
Land taxation
Local governance
movements
Municipal
Municipal finance
policy
poverty
Progressive policies
Progressive taxation
Public goods
Public interest
Public utilities
redistribution
renewal
Social justice
Social movements
sociology
Sustainable cities
Urban
Urban planning
Urban reform
Wealth
Wealth concentration
Product details
- ISBN 9780226841113
- Weight: 481g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 24 Sep 2025
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Upends entrenched thinking about cities, demonstrating how urban economies are defined—or constrained—by the fiscal imagination of policymakers, activists, and residents.
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this strategy takes—tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed mega projects—its rationale remains consistent and assumed to be true. But this wasn’t always the case. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, a wide range of activists, citizens, and intellectuals in New York City connected local fiscal crises to the greed and waste of the rich. These figures saw other routes to development, possibilities rooted in alternate ideas about what was fiscally viable.
In The Menace of Prosperity, Daniel Wortel-London argues that urban economics and politics are shaped by what he terms the “fiscal imagination” of policymakers, activists, advocates, and other figures. His survey of New York City during a period of explosive growth shows how residents went beyond the limits of redistributive liberalism to imagine how their communities could become economically viable without the largesse of the wealthy. Their strategies—which included cooperatives, public housing, land-value taxation, public utilities, and more—centered the needs and capabilities of ordinary residents as the basis for local economies that were both prosperous and just.
Overturning stale axioms about economic policy, The Menace of Prosperity shows that not all growth is productive for cities. Wortel-London’s ambitious history demonstrates the range of options we’ve abandoned and hints at the economic frameworks we could still realize—and the more democratic cities that might result.
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this strategy takes—tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed mega projects—its rationale remains consistent and assumed to be true. But this wasn’t always the case. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, a wide range of activists, citizens, and intellectuals in New York City connected local fiscal crises to the greed and waste of the rich. These figures saw other routes to development, possibilities rooted in alternate ideas about what was fiscally viable.
In The Menace of Prosperity, Daniel Wortel-London argues that urban economics and politics are shaped by what he terms the “fiscal imagination” of policymakers, activists, advocates, and other figures. His survey of New York City during a period of explosive growth shows how residents went beyond the limits of redistributive liberalism to imagine how their communities could become economically viable without the largesse of the wealthy. Their strategies—which included cooperatives, public housing, land-value taxation, public utilities, and more—centered the needs and capabilities of ordinary residents as the basis for local economies that were both prosperous and just.
Overturning stale axioms about economic policy, The Menace of Prosperity shows that not all growth is productive for cities. Wortel-London’s ambitious history demonstrates the range of options we’ve abandoned and hints at the economic frameworks we could still realize—and the more democratic cities that might result.
Daniel Wortel-London is visiting assistant professor of history at Bard College.
