Fred Siegel, Urban Historian and a Former Liberal, Is Dead at 78

Fred Siegel, a passionate urban historian whose rejection of the liberal establishment’s response to crime, poverty and public civility transformed him from a spokesman for the Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972 to a voter for Donald J. Trump in 2020, died on Sunday at his home in Brooklyn. He was 78.

The cause was complications of a series of infections that had left him hospitalized on a trip to California, his son, Harry, said.

Mr. Siegel was a professor emeritus at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in Manhattan, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank, and an author.

His ideological evolution was evidenced in the titles of his books: “The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities” (1997); “The Prince of the City: Giuliani, New York, and the Genius of American Life” (2005), which he wrote with Harry Siegel; and “The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class” (2014).

Mr. Siegel had been an adviser to…