The process of economic restructuring has, over the past few decades, had an enormous impact on American cities. Among those hardest hit by changes in urban economies have been African Americans and other minorities who had the fewest options in electing to leave the central cities and follow manufacturing jobs to the suburbs and even farther afield. These same groups were equally unprepared to take on the service sector jobs that developed as restructuring progressed. It is sometimes claimed that this was accidental -- that economic restructuring is merely the product of impersonal free-market forces. But government at all levels plays a major role in restructuring and, on every level, "conflict is a central feature in which competing groups, with unequal power, strive to shape restructuring to serve their own interests" (Squires, 1990, p. 102). In New York, as in every large American city, race has been a primary factor in this politics of restructuring. Despite a brief attempt at urban populism in the mid-1960s, New York's city government has largely favored development at the expense of its minority populations. The position taken by most administrations was bluntly summed up by Mayor Edward Koch who said in 1984 that he spoke out for the middle class, "because they pay the taxes: they provide jobs for the poor" (quoted by Fainstein, 1990, p. 561). Yet, while the middle class has generally prospered in New York City, the poor have found few jobs either accessible or open to them.
Restructuring refers to the "transformation of the economic bases of cities in the advanced capitalist world from manufacturing to services" (Fainstein, 1990, p. 554). This process was one result of the concentration of economic control in multinational corporations and financial institutions. Manufacturing has not only been dispersed among suburbs and other locales, in many cases it has also left the country and moved to third-world countries...