Making of the Orderly City: New York since the 1980s/

This article advances the concept of the orderly city, which has structural qualities and as a vision has dominated ideas about law and order in New York since the 1980s. The realization of the orderly city depended on the successful implementation of broken windows policing. This implementation required considerable reforms in the criminal justice system and the provision of substantial financial resources. Even then, without a considerable decline in serious crime rates, the city government would be unable to justify a war against minor infractions. The crime decline that occurred in the 1990s allowed the city government to equate the safe city with the orderly city. Moreover, as the economy of New York improved, the orderly city was promoted as a precondition of affluence. This article shows how these correlations are questionable and how the orderly city is based on morally and legally questionable actions such as racial profiling.