A Plague on Your Houses
How New York Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled
Rodrick Wallace author Deborah Wallace author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Verso Books
Published:17th Feb '99
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Using an epidemiological approach, this text charts the changes wrought by misguided social policy on the American landscape since the 1970s. It begins with the decision of Nixon's urban advisor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to operate "benign neglect" on the fire companies of New York.
A Plague on Your Houses is a scorching indictment of the decision to close fire companies in New York City and a frightening study of the way misguided and malevolent social policy can spark a chain reaction of enormous and unforeseen urban collapse.
A Plague on Your Houses breaks new ground for political ecology of urban decay. It is also a provocative foretale of what 'radical urban science' might be. -- Mike Davis * Metropolis *
A Plague on Your Houses deserves attention for its insights into the connections among urban communities and the ease with which diseases and social problems of the poor and vulnerable can spread into the mainstream and the suburbs. It asks new questions about the determinants of urban decay and public health, and challenges the dominant paradigm of disease causation mostly related to individual choices and lifestyles. * JAMA *
This is a book which transcends the boundaries between politics, theory, empirical research and political activism. When was the last time you read something that really describes how the connections between policy, community and individual characteristics actually work? Wallace and Wallace have woven 20 years' worth of research, passion and action from he front line into an astonishing narrative. * Critical Public Health *
ISBN: 9781859848586
Dimensions: 244mm x 163mm x 25mm
Weight: 478g
240 pages