The term ‘urban crisis’ emerged in the USA in the 1950s. Ever since the term came into popular use, it has been mobilised to advance a range of political and economic interests. Utilising a genealogical approach, this article traces the evolution, uses and abuses of the concept. It suggests that the various meanings attached to the term are rooted in two overarching frameworks. While one finds the origins of urban crisis in structural, primarily material, forces, the other sees the crisis as grounded in culture and immorality. The article argues that the concept was deployed in the 1950s and 1960s to justify government intervention of various sorts to stimulate economic growth. However, it finds the fiscal crises of the 1970s gave rise to a dominant understanding of urban crisis that promoted the spread of urban neoliberalism.

With the onset of the Great Recession, it looked for a moment that neoliberalism had become vulnerable to challenges from the urban level. Yet, it appears that the neoliberal ideas, institutions, and policy frameworks continue to dominate urban governance. As such, there remains a need to develop interpretive frames through which to examine the construction and reproduction of urban neoliberalism. This article seeks to provide a historically grounded account of urban neoliberalization, which pays specific attention to how neoliberalism has been constructed ideologically, politically, and institutionally. Through a comparison of cases in the United Kingdom and the United States, I suggest that the respective alignment of ideas, institutions, and interests accounts for “the pace, extent, and character” of urban neoliberalization. I argue that the variation in the manner of urban neoliberalization may be captured through two key mechanisms: neoliberalism by design and neoliberalism by default.

Cities matter. They are often the sites in which the helping hand and the clenched fist of the state makes first contact with the citizen. They are engines of national economic growth and, often, the source of political movements that become national and transnational in scope. Yet, the theoretical tools available to study change at the urban level are limited. This article seeks to address this shortcoming by offering a new account of urban political development. I argue that urban political development is driven by the impact of multiple political orders. My aim is to highlight three apparently contradictory patterns of urban political development: the imposition of urban austerity measures, the rise of the urban carceral state, and the emergence of progressive economic policymaking, such as local minimum wage ordinances. I suggest that these shifts reflect underlying operation and competition among neoliberal, conservative and egalitarian political orders respectively.

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