Bask - Shop now
$0.75 with 98 percent savings
Digital List Price: $39.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Sold by Amazon.com Services LLC.
eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
  • In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Who Cleans the Park?: Public Work and Urban Governance in New York City Kindle Edition

by John Krinsky (Author), Maud Simonet (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
5.0 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
America’s public parks are in a golden age. Hundreds of millions of dollars—both public and private—fund urban jewels like Manhattan’s Central Park. Keeping the polish on landmark parks and in neighborhood playgrounds alike means that the trash must be picked up, benches painted, equipment tested, and leaves raked. Bringing this often-invisible work into view, however, raises profound questions for citizens of cities.

In Who Cleans the Park? John Krinsky and Maud Simonet explain that the work of maintaining parks has intersected with broader trends in welfare reform, civic engagement, criminal justice, and the rise of public-private partnerships. Welfare-to-work trainees, volunteers, unionized city workers (sometimes working outside their official job descriptions), staff of nonprofit park “conservancies,” and people sentenced to community service are just a few of the groups who routinely maintain parks. With public services no longer being provided primarily by public workers, Krinsky and Simonet argue, the nature of public work must be reevaluated. Based on four years of fieldwork in New York City, Who Cleans the Park? looks at the transformation of public parks from the ground up. Beginning with studying changes in the workplace, progressing through the public-private partnerships that help maintain the parks, and culminating in an investigation of a park’s contribution to urban real-estate values, the book unearths a new urban order based on nonprofit partnerships and a rhetoric of responsible citizenship, which at the same time promotes unpaid work, reinforces workers’ domination at the workplace, and increases the value of park-side property. Who Cleans the Park? asks difficult questions about who benefits from public work, ultimately forcing us to think anew about the way we govern ourselves, with implications well beyond the five boroughs.
Previous slide of product details
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0226435619
  2. Publisher
    The University of Chicago Press
  3. Publication date
    March 24, 2017
  4. Language
    English
  5. File size
    3.2 MB
Next slide of product details

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A brilliant examination of the complexities of neoliberalization, the fluid categories of workers, and the constituencies the process produces.” ― Adolph Reed, University of Pennsylvania

“Provides useful insights on the current issues of public works and urban governance in contemporary cities. . .Written in a storytelling manner, the book is both descriptive and analytical and, it is hoped, will lead to a new set of inquiries on neoliberal public administration.” ― Journal of Urban Affairs

“A major contribution right at the intersection where studies of urban policy, political economy, and labor should meet studies of care work and of civic engagement. . . . Who Cleans the Parks? meticulously documents and theorizes everything you vaguely suspected about public/private/nonprofit partnerships. . . In this richly complex, colorful, and analytically provocative book, all the pieces fit together in relation to each other.” ― American Journal of Sociology

“Who Cleans the Park? makes important contributions to the study of public-private partnerships, labor precarity, volunteerism, and neoliberalism. Krinsky and Simonet for the first time study the park as a workplace, describing and analyzing employment relations institutionalized in the park’s labor market and showing how through neoliberal policies workers are being undermined, dismissed, and restructured. In the end, the book is not just about the neoliberalization of public parks, but that of workplaces everywhere.” ― Luis LM Aguiar, University of British Columbia

About the Author

John Krinsky is professor of political science at the City College of New York and the City University Graduate Center. Maud Simonet is a researcher with the National Scientific Research Center at the Institutions and Historical Dynamics of Economy and Society research center at the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06X3YVHX3
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of Chicago Press (March 24, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 24, 2017
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3.2 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 022643558X
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 out of 5 stars 3 ratings

Customer reviews

5 out of 5 stars
3 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

  • Ben Hagen
    5.0 out of 5 stars An Important and Engaging Book
    Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2017
    Krinsky and Simonet have written an insightful examination of the labor structure of the NYC Parks Department, coupled with a deeper analysis of the political economy that has shaped the composition of the Department’s workforce. The result is an important book – one that elucidates both the specific contours of Parks work in New York City and the broader trends that are influencing (and undermining) the sense of public space as a communal good in American urban environments. Combining an engaging, highly readable anthropological approach with a solid theoretical foundation, this book is an essential text for those seeking an understanding of the institutional forces transforming the urban commons through the application of neoliberal dogma.
    2 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Report an issue


Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report