Bank-owned bikeshares and empty condos. Record numbers of homeless families and “curated” pop-up shops. A poverty level that’s higher than the “Fear City”–era. Such are the realities of living in New York City in 2018. In his July cover story “The Death of a Once Great City,” Kevin Baker peels back the veneer of urban affluence and reveals how public amenities have been gradually destroyed by private interests and neglect from politicians. In this inaugural episode of The Harper’s Podcast, web editor Violet Lucca is joined by Baker and Jeremiah Moss, author of Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul, to discuss the neoliberal underpinnings of this decline and how to reverse it.

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