THE EVERYDAY VIOLENCE OF URBAN NEOLIBERALISM: An Interview with Nik Theodore http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/theodore050411.html

NT: If we look at neoliberal urbanism -- which has been a focal point of a lot of our work -- we see a number of state strategies that are quite "productive" in terms of generating new or reworked forms of urban policy. So there is a creative side, if you will, to neoliberal restructuring. We can look at certain policy arenas and see what we mean. While we might have had the "end of welfare as we knew it" in the United States -- a rolling back of welfare entitlement -- we had a simultaneous rolling forward of workfare strategies and state surveillance of the poor. In housing markets, where we've seen the razing of public housing developments, we've seen a rolling out of voucher systems and marketized/privatized systems of housing provision.

Neoliberal urbanism and neoliberal statecraft haven't only been about dismantling inherited regulatory landscapes from a previous era; they have been about rolling forward a set of marketized, market-disciplinary forms of regulation and control. And that is seeping into evermore spheres of everyday life. That is the generative face of neoliberalism. That is its roll-out face to use Jamie and Adam [Peck and Tickell's] language. That is the creative face of neoliberalization.