Scan barcode
Reviews
How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood by P.E. Moskowitz
thedogmother's review against another edition
4.0
I’d be super curious to hear Moskowitz’s analysis of the post-pandemic rent inflation. Rents skyrocketed to a disgusting level this past summer in New York and I think a lot of us were hoping that the pandemic would have the opposite effect. I thought the section about New Orleans was the most interesting in the book.
reader1115's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
5.0
A great book on gentrification in this country. Having just read Jacob's Death and Life of Great American Cities this was a worthy follow-up for the 21st century. There is a growing dissatisfaction with suburbia and car-centric infrastructure, and there are plenty of books about it (Walkable City, Happy City). What this book does well is discuss the racist and related economic mistakes that are being made in this back-to-this-city movement. And if these problems are not addressed we are committing similar mistakes that were made during white flight to the suburbs in the middle of the last century.
annaruehlow's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I learned a lot, and the call to action at the end was a great way to tie everything together.
emmaemmaemmaemma's review against another edition
5.0
This book has opened a curiosity door for me that can never be closed.
How to Kill a City takes you through the systematic destruction of the communities in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York City. I deeply appreciated this layout as each city was gentrified in a different way, yet the information built well on the back of each successive city.
The New Orleans section lays the groundwork for explaining why gentrification happens. Obviously it’s about money, but there’s a good deal of nuance as to who wants the money in each city, and why. In New Orleans, everything started going south after Hurricane Katrina gave city officials an extreme amount of wiggle room to keep displaced people from returning (by literally restricting grants to rebuild homes from POC looking to return to the city) and go rebuild newer, shinier neighborhoods to attract a rich, white population.
Detroit fell at the hands of a few members of the superrich, who began buying properties throughout the city and displacing anyone who couldn’t afford extreme hikes in rent. All while local politicians lauded this community destruction as a grand gesture of revitalization for the city.
San Fransisco was hit by the Silicon Valley tech boom, and New York City by its brush with bankruptcy, but across the board, no matter the cause, it’s low income households, people of color, and women who are hit most severely by the effects of gentrification.
This book not only explained what gentrification is, and who it affects, but why everyone should care. Our author imagines a more equitable society, one in which housing for everyone is a priority, and no one has to be pushed out of the homes they grew up in, or the city that has housed their family for generations. It also explains why the bulk of the responsibility falls not on the gentrifiers who move in, (though they do shoulder some of it) but on the policy makers who rezone cities and create large tax breaks for corporations to capitalize on.
No one is claiming that cities don’t need capital to function, and to provide the programs that benefit it’s poorest. But a city is a conglomeration of all of its citizens, not just the privileged few. I give How to Kill a City 5 stars without hesitation, and recommend it to everyone who ever has, or ever will, live in or near a city. It’s that important.
How to Kill a City takes you through the systematic destruction of the communities in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York City. I deeply appreciated this layout as each city was gentrified in a different way, yet the information built well on the back of each successive city.
The New Orleans section lays the groundwork for explaining why gentrification happens. Obviously it’s about money, but there’s a good deal of nuance as to who wants the money in each city, and why. In New Orleans, everything started going south after Hurricane Katrina gave city officials an extreme amount of wiggle room to keep displaced people from returning (by literally restricting grants to rebuild homes from POC looking to return to the city) and go rebuild newer, shinier neighborhoods to attract a rich, white population.
Detroit fell at the hands of a few members of the superrich, who began buying properties throughout the city and displacing anyone who couldn’t afford extreme hikes in rent. All while local politicians lauded this community destruction as a grand gesture of revitalization for the city.
San Fransisco was hit by the Silicon Valley tech boom, and New York City by its brush with bankruptcy, but across the board, no matter the cause, it’s low income households, people of color, and women who are hit most severely by the effects of gentrification.
This book not only explained what gentrification is, and who it affects, but why everyone should care. Our author imagines a more equitable society, one in which housing for everyone is a priority, and no one has to be pushed out of the homes they grew up in, or the city that has housed their family for generations. It also explains why the bulk of the responsibility falls not on the gentrifiers who move in, (though they do shoulder some of it) but on the policy makers who rezone cities and create large tax breaks for corporations to capitalize on.
No one is claiming that cities don’t need capital to function, and to provide the programs that benefit it’s poorest. But a city is a conglomeration of all of its citizens, not just the privileged few. I give How to Kill a City 5 stars without hesitation, and recommend it to everyone who ever has, or ever will, live in or near a city. It’s that important.