The invention of brownstone Brooklyn: gentrification and the search for authenticity in postwar New York
The invention of brownstone Brooklyn: gentrification and the search for authenticity in postwar New York
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布鲁克林上流社会的发明：战后纽约的中产阶级化和对真实性的追求
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发表时间：
2012
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通讯作者：
Stephen Petrus
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作者：
Stephen Petrus
二十世纪的城市。其中一章聚焦于1935年至1965年间的大坝时代，当时公众从称赞大坝是人类控制自然的象征，到批评大坝造成的社会和环境不公正。书中最引人注目的章节之一专门讲述了圣何塞的自来水厂。梅洛西深入研究了导致圣何塞独特地接受私人管理供水的特殊政治和经济安排。接下来的两章主要关注休斯顿，它的布法罗河的重要性，以及扩大公用事业以满足其庞大增长所涉及的困难。最后也是最有力的一章是唯一没有从以前的出版物中剔除的章节。在书中，梅洛西热情地阐述了水私有化对地方、国家和跨国的影响，重点关注将公共产品转变为本质上的商品意味着什么。毫不奇怪，梅洛西面临的最大挑战是将如此广泛的话题整合成一个有凝聚力的整体。他试图将这些章节与私人与公共管理的主题联系在一起，但他在某些章节中比在其他章节中更成功地强调了这一论点。在很多情况下，他在一章的引言中提出了这个主题，但并没有把它贯穿整个作品。因此，这本书经常被当作单独的文章来读，章节介绍最终也不足以将不同的案例研究集合在一起。这本书最好的读法是提醒今天的政策制定者和规划者，美国水资源私有化并不是一个新的危机。梅洛西清楚地表明，私人和公共控制之间的界限比我们通常想象的要模糊，它与当地条件、政治和经济密切相关。虽然私有化的倡导者可能会争辩说，这样的行动将带来更高的效率和更低的税收，但我们最终必须权衡这些好处与地方控制的丧失和应该被视为人权的东西的商品化之间的关系。
twentieth-century cities. One chapter focuses on the Big Dam Era between 1935 and 1965, when the public went from praising dams as symbols of man’s control of nature to criticizing them for the social and environmental injustices they wrought. One of the most compelling chapters in the book looks specifically at San Jose’s waterworks. Melosi delves into the particular political and economic arrangements that led to San Jose’s unique embrace of a privately managed water supply. The next two chapters focus on Houston, the importance of its Buffalo Bayou, and the difficulties involved with expanding utilities to meet its sprawling growth. The final and arguably strongest chapter is the only one that was not culled from a previous publication. In it, Melosi passionately addresses the local, national, and transnational implications of the privatization of water, focusing on what it means to turn a public good into what is essentially a commodity. Not surprisingly, the largest challenge for Melosi is to bring together such wide-ranging topics into a cohesive whole. He attempts to tie the chapters together with the theme of private versus public management, but he is more successful at highlighting this argument in some chapters than in others. In many cases, he presents that theme in the introduction to the chapter but does not carry it through the body of the work. As a result, the book often reads as separate essays and the chapter introductions ultimately do not do enough to unite the diverse collection of case studies. This book is best read as a reminder to policy-makers and planners today that the privatization of American water is not a new crisis. Melosi clearly shows that the line between private and public control was fuzzier than we often imagine, and that it was intimately connected to local conditions, politics, and economics. While advocates of privatization might argue that such actions will bring greater efficiency and lower taxes, we must ultimately weigh those benefits against the loss of local control and the commodification of something that ought to be considered a human right.