Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood

Peter Moskowitz,

P.E. Moskowitz

4.09 · Rating details · 2,139 ratings · 283 reviews

The term gentrification has become a buzzword to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don't realize just how threatening it is. It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance.

Peter Moskowitz's How to Kill a Ci ...more

Get A Copy

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published March 7th 2017 by Bold Type Books

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about How to Kill a City, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about How to Kill a City

Lists with This Book

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Urban Studies for Everyone (nonfiction)

63 books — 19 voters

Popsugar 2021 #34 - A Book About a Social Justice Issue

303 books — 193 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.09 ·

Rating details

· 2,139 ratings · 283 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood

Jan 14, 2020 Thomas rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own-electronic, five-stars, nonfiction, read-on-nook

I loved this book and learned so much from it. Activist P.E. Moskowitz explores the gentrification of urban neighborhoods across the country with chapters dedicated to New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. They write about the people of color, particularly black and Latinx folks who can no longer afford to live in cities and their displacement, as well as about the root causes of gentrification and what contributes to it.

As someone with an embarrassingly limited knowledge of gentri I loved this book and learned so much from it. Activist P.E. Moskowitz explores the gentrification of urban neighborhoods across the country with chapters dedicated to New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. They write about the people of color, particularly black and Latinx folks who can no longer afford to live in cities and their displacement, as well as about the root causes of gentrification and what contributes to it.

As someone with an embarrassingly limited knowledge of gentrification – I knew the basic premise of rich, white people flooding cities and displacing poor people, especially people of color – I felt like I learned so much from this book while still appreciating its accessible writing and smart flow between ideas and concepts. I learned so much about use and exchange values and how urban land is used to enhance wealth, how suburbanization and gentrification relate to disadvantage poor people and radical community-building (e.g., omg as someone who grew up in a suburb, I now see how isolating and awful they are, ugh), and how neoliberalism itself maintains gentrification. I won’t go into all of these ideas in this review, so check out Gabriella’s review if you want more depth as she writes about these topics with depth well. Here’s one quote I’ll pull that describes the definition of gentrification:

“Gentrification, at its deepest level, is really about reorienting the purpose of cities away from being spaces that provide for the poor and middle classes and toward being spaces that generate capital for the rich. The trend isn’t limited to cities: for decades conservatives in the US government have been working to deregulate industry and defund our safety nets, to turn the United States from a welfare state based on the vision of John Maynard Keynes… into a neoliberal, corporate-friendly oligarchy concerned only with increasing the share of wealth owned by the upper class.”

I appreciate this book even more because Moskowitz describes their emotional experience with gentrification and they provide tangible strategies to fight gentrification. I felt emotional reading their experience watching their own city of New York and the people they love within it fade away and get displaced by the rich. While describing this, they also acknowledged their own positionality as a white person and a gentrifier coming from a family of gentrifiers. Toward the end of the book they provide several strategies I found useful, such as fighting to raise the minimum wage, expanding and protecting public lands, regulating housing, and more. While I felt sad and defeated reading the descriptions of gentrification in this book, Moskowitz supplies us with strategies to fight this phenomenon that may elicit more feelings of empowerment, especially if we take action.

Overall, highly recommended to those like me who had not known that much about gentrification. As Moskowitz writes about, I hope that housing justice and access become topics that are more heavily discussed in the political sphere and social justice spheres broadly. ...more

flag 56 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2017 Emily rated it liked it

To me, the book feels more emotional and anecdotal than investigative and informative. Gentrification is such a nuanced and multifaceted topic, I wish the book had delved deeper. What separates gentrification from simple rent rise - an inevitable side effect of a city's economic growth? Is there a case where a city (internationally or in the US) successfully balances freedom of movement with protection of the locals?

It is a book I'd be really keen to discuss with local and international friends ...more

flag 48 likes · Like · see review

Aug 15, 2017 Anika Rothingham rated it it was ok

Shelves: academic

"This country was founded on displacement - on the idea that white men have a greater right to space, and even to people's bodies, than anyone else. That's taken the form of slavery, segregation, the genocide of Native Americans, and now, to a certain extent, gentrification."

I'm guessing that most players in gentrification - the victims and the gentrifiers - are unaware of the systems and political acts underlying what we all can see are the effects of gentrification. While Moskowitz acknowledge "This country was founded on displacement - on the idea that white men have a greater right to space, and even to people's bodies, than anyone else. That's taken the form of slavery, segregation, the genocide of Native Americans, and now, to a certain extent, gentrification."

I'm guessing that most players in gentrification - the victims and the gentrifiers - are unaware of the systems and political acts underlying what we all can see are the effects of gentrification. While Moskowitz acknowledges that gentrification is partly due to the sum of individual acts, he mostly focuses on previous political actions and business interests (often synonymous) which paved the way for gentrifiers.

This book is well-written and easy to read (if not stomach). Divided into sections which focus on 4 different cities, we get 4 distinct pictures of gentrification and plenty of anecdotal heartaches, which drive home the effects of gentrification.

Moscowitz uses an odd reference style, which makes it unclear where some of his facts are coming from. Many of his sources are secondary, so without checking out all his sources, I can't be sure of the facts. He also doesn't talk about what would happen to cities if they hadn't chosen to gentrify. One notable example is when he mentions New York City in 1975: a nearly bankrupt city that "represented the welfare state" chose to become "the first US city to employ gentrification as governance." But how could it have lasted as a welfare state if it was about to be bankrupt?

I want to hear viable alternatives to gentrification and I want to know what is happening to the people who are displaced due to gentrification. Moscowitz gives us numbers of New Orleanseans who moved to Houston and other cities, but how can they afford to live there? Is Houston avoiding gentrification? And if so, let's hear about that! Some European cities are briefly mentioned as having more checks on capitalism and therefore more housing for the low and middle-income, but there are no specifics about how to emulate that. There are a few vague call-to-action items on the last pages of this book, but I think the truth of it is that Moscowitz doesn't have an answer. He knows how to write and engage, but his focus is narrow and his solutions are few. ...more

flag 25 likes · Like · see review

Aug 10, 2019 Mehrsa rated it really liked it

This is not an academic book--it's a subjective take from an anti-gentrification activist. I think if you do not know that, the book will not sit well. I liked it a lot. It's a fascinating take on 4 cities--I actually think his stories on Detroit and New Orleans were much more interesting than NY and San Francisco (probably because those are covered a lot already). I actually don't think that gentrification is the problem--segregation is the problem---especially because as MLK said: the point of ...more

flag 20 likes · Like · see review

Jun 24, 2017 Luigib rated it did not like it

I should have known when the San Francisco Chronicle recommended this book that it was going to be far left. As a 60-year resident of one of the cities discussed in this book, I found several crucial trends missing from this book:

1) The author focuses on certain races getting displaced and not on economic groups. Are races being targeted, or is the middle class being targeted too?

2) There is virtually no mention of EB-5 visas that allow rich people from other countries to jump to the front of th I should have known when the San Francisco Chronicle recommended this book that it was going to be far left. As a 60-year resident of one of the cities discussed in this book, I found several crucial trends missing from this book:

1) The author focuses on certain races getting displaced and not on economic groups. Are races being targeted, or is the middle class being targeted too?

2) There is virtually no mention of EB-5 visas that allow rich people from other countries to jump to the front of the immigration line with a $500,000 contribution. Aren’t allowing wealthier people into the US cities going to distort the economic balance? Aren't the Canadian version of the EB-5's affecting Vancouver to the extent they initiated a foreigner home purchase tax?

3) There is no mention of the huge millennial generation all trying to move to the cities at one time? This is a short-term phenomenon.

4) With regards to people getting kicked out of rent controlled apartments. When people treat short term contracts a life estates, it is bound to create a disparity between the fair market value of rent and the rent paid. This is overregulation creating a problem, and then Moskowitz suggesting more regulation to resolve the problem.

5) There was no discussion of the impact on families when their children are bussed across these dense cities to attend schools out of the neighborhood. What does it do to a neighborhood when two children living next door to each other attend schools 5 miles away in different directions? Do the parents have the same involvement in their children’s schools? Doesn't busing affect neighbors interacting with each other? It is a fact that there are more dogs than children in SF and the school board has had the greatest impact on the flight of families.

Then I loved these opinions (not facts):

Pg 159: “In the outer suburbs (of San Francisco) there is no public transportation.”
Actually, there is public transportation for 50 miles in every direction but the Pacific Ocean. Where did you get this stat? Name a suburb and I will send you a public transportation link.

Pg 184: “One week they noticed the building’s trash being thrown into the park across the street, and they suspected the landlords had instructed the super to that to get the residents in trouble.” Where is your evidence? Why can we not speculate that the tenants threw the trash across the street to claim the supe did this to get them in trouble?

Pg 170 “On a single three-block stretch in Midtown, 57 percent of apartments are vacant for at least ten months each year.” I calculate there are about 2,000 blocks on Manhattan, which means the author is extrapolating a little over .01% of Manhattan occupancy rates as the rule for the other 99.9%. I wonder what would happen to the crime rate of NY if NYPD was allowed to extrapolate the crime rate of just 3 blocks and schedule manpower based on that ridiculously low sample size.

...more

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

May 21, 2017 Simone rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017-read

"The ignorance of the lives of others is allows gentrification to happen. Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts points out in her book Harlem is Nowhere that whenever a neighborhood gentrifies, you hear white people and the media using phrases such as 'People are starting to move to that neighborhood,' or 'No one used to go there, but that's changing.' The implication is that before these places gentrified, no one lived there, or at least no one of importance. This is what is happening in New Orleans and every o ...more

flag 13 likes · Like · see review

Feb 11, 2019 Gabriella rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-reads, urban-studies, books-for-school, real-estate

This was a great primer on the modern and historic issues that led to the cities left "dead" from divestment, gentrification, and neighborhood change.

According to Moskowitz, city government began to embrace the faustian bargain of neoliberalism due to our country’s faulty funding mechanisms, which essentially leave cities dependent on their tax bases for economic sustainability. Because of this, elected officials often see no means of economic development outside of gentrification (thanks, Rich This was a great primer on the modern and historic issues that led to the cities left "dead" from divestment, gentrification, and neighborhood change.

According to Moskowitz, city government began to embrace the faustian bargain of neoliberalism due to our country’s faulty funding mechanisms, which essentially leave cities dependent on their tax bases for economic sustainability. Because of this, elected officials often see no means of economic development outside of gentrification (thanks, Richard Florida!), and have “turned cities into capital-producing machines...city governments have become addicted to this capital to function” (xii). I thought this whole premise was unfair, because cities shouldn’t be put in the position to only rely on property taxes for consistent funding (thanks, Ronald Reagan!)

I think New Orleans and Detroit definitely fit his framework. In stage zero of New Orleans and Detroit’s gentrification, they experienced natural and financial disasters brought on by decades of divestment. Through educational takeover of the Orleans Parish School District, FEMA’s residential takeover of evacuees’ post-Katrina relocations, and Kevyn Orr’s budgetary takeover of Detroit’s post-bankruptcy government, both municipalities were primed for gentrification by their long-standing deference to outsiders. I thought it was super smart how he connected the twin patterns of suburbanization and gentrification, which both rely on significant federal funding and housing policies benefiting well-off, whiter Americans. The deep struggles black residents in his case study cities have with tax foreclosures, excessive water bills, and subprime mortgages (Detroit); or inadequate funds for renovation and relocation after Hurricane Katrina (New Orleans); indicate that the valleys and high lands or the 7.2 and 134.8 have never been on equal playing fields in the city. Moskowitz explains that the policy decisions (often sanctioned by city mayors!) that helped white Americans escape to the suburbs and stranded many black Americans in central cities reverberate in the inequality witnessed today.

I felt most convicted by his explanation of how elected officials view urban land’s “use and exchange values.” The way these values transform the “highest and best use” of urban land into the “highest and best-paying tenants” really hit home for me, as someone who’ll be employed at a real estate and economic development firm, and doing a lot of this analysis for clients. In my career as a planner and a consultant, I’ll need to grapple with the legacy of “urban planning [as] a tool not only for economic growth but also for social and political restructuring” (155), and be honest about how real estate/planning concepts of best and highest use, TOD, and other Smart Growth practices have intentionally and accidentally bolstered gentrification, discriminatory housing policies, and economic inequality in urban spaces. I hope to discover how the planning ideals I believe in can be redirected to curb stage zero’s prioritization of the wealthy at the expense of other city residents.

In addition to his more theoretical discussions of the structural causes of gentrification, he also takes several more subjective issues with the phenomenon, like many of us do! The first issue is what Moskowitz calls the “sterilization of Brooklyn,” or the way that gentrification mutes cities through changing their architectural, economic, and societal norms. The result leaves even gentrifiers unsatisfied with their homes. He believes this sterilization stems in large part from the influx of millennials, with many values from their suburban upbringings influencing their expectations of the city. These “suburban, individualistic mentalities” of new urban transplants, combined with the standardization of real estate finance and development, have led to streamlined forms of urban real estate and neighborhood redevelopment that can be easily reproduced no matter the context. This is why people move to New Orleans for its distinct artistic culture, but then want to police it out of existence (see also: U Street in DC, Graduate Hospital in Philly, or Harlem.) This is why the grittiness that transplants to Detroit or San Francisco tout as authentic is no longer anywhere to be found in neighborhoods that, as he explains, look the exact same in both cities, despite their different architectural and cultural legacies. This particular problem leads to a lack of true memory of a place was, since all “authentic” markers have been commodified into something that can raise land values.

He also contends that gentrification is the product and continuation of a political strategy that avoids service of all but the wealthiest and most powerful residents. This can be witnessed in New York City, where elite Manhattan enclaves receive more transportation investments and less zoning requirements than low-income neighborhoods; in Detroit, where downtown and midtown have become the most prioritized neighborhoods despite the severe vacancy and economic struggles of others; in New Orleans, where homeowners in black neighborhoods and black business owners are less frequently awarded renovation and support funds from the government; and in San Francisco, where the sharpening affordability needs of even its protected tenants are largely being ignored.

Finally, he takes issue with how gentrification combines with neoliberalism, when strapped-for-funds governments hand over political control to outside parties. Again, each of his case studies has their own non-governmental players making key public policy decisions: real estate professionals (NYC), Dan Gilbert and Midtown Detroit Inc. (Detroit), charter school operators and post-Katrina nonprofits (NOLA), and tech industry leaders (SF). Moskowitz explains that these actors, despite their philanthropic publicity schemes, have largely remade their various cities for their own gain, and for the loss of longtime, disadvantaged residents.

Overall, the fact that such different cities can have such similar experiences are the whole case and point of his book. I am eager to continue the class I'm reading this book in, as we discuss cross-cutting economic development solutions that can empower both stagnating and changing neighborhoods to resist these issues of gentrification. ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Jun 06, 2019 Drew rated it it was ok

Considering how much I agree with in this book, it's a little surprising how much I hated it.

The confluence of race, class and urban policy is complicated, but the author can't resist simplifying it at every opportunity. Every opponent is a villain. Every statistic points in the same direction. Every problem has not just one cause, but a knowing conspiracy behind it. (Even when the book quotes Rebecca Solnit making the point that some of our most pressing problems are multi-causal, the author ca Considering how much I agree with in this book, it's a little surprising how much I hated it.

The confluence of race, class and urban policy is complicated, but the author can't resist simplifying it at every opportunity. Every opponent is a villain. Every statistic points in the same direction. Every problem has not just one cause, but a knowing conspiracy behind it. (Even when the book quotes Rebecca Solnit making the point that some of our most pressing problems are multi-causal, the author can't resist undermining themselves in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE to declare that, in fact, every problem has only one cause.) They want to blame everything on "neoliberalism," which is fine, but if you can ascribe everything from a party welcoming the Super Bowl to the unreconstructed racism of mid-century redlining to that ideology, you've stretched the definition of that word beyond any useful purpose.

It's also just sloppy. The suburbs are so horrible that they require a massive ad campaign to convince anyone to live in them. (By analogy, I suppose we could conclude that without the millions spent annually to advertise the product, no one would ever buy beer.) But also the suburbs are so comfortable that he cites a goddam Buzzfeed listicle to mock the brainless ingrates who acknowledge that that living in New York can be trying. (Side note: Do you see what this book is doing to me? It's so inept it's causing me to ARGUE IN FAVOR OF SUBURBS which I'm pretty sure is what Hell is like.)

It's possible the book could work as a jeremiad. After all, there's a lot to be angry about when it comes to displacement and the corporate monoculture that's taking over our most vibrant places. But, Christ, the author is such an asshole. Everyone is stupid but them! Every politician is a corporate sellout! New York is ruined! Young person yells at cloud! I couldn't tell whether I should be annoyed or refreshed when they actually admitted that because they grew up in NY, they think they're "cooler" than everyone who lives there now. I genuinely think they expect the reader to agree.

There's a strong anti-gentrification argument to be made that would be able to survive acknowledging that a lot of smart, well-meaning city officials are forced to reckon with a tough choices, but this book is either blind to that subtlety or unwilling to trust its readers' ability to live with any complexity. Simple explanations can be compelling; this is just simplistic.

Someone should write a good book looking at the damage we've done to cities over the last half century with what Jane Jacobs calls "cataclysmic money." But this book isn't it. ...more

flag 8 likes · Like · see review

Oct 28, 2019 Jennifer Fox rated it it was ok

A book that intelligently and accurately documents this critical problem is absolutely necessary, and this book is not it. "How to Kill a City" does describe the locally-specific dynamics of gentrification in each city it addresses; San Francisco, Detroit, NOLA and NYC. If one has a particular interest in those particular locations, it may be worth picking up for that reason. However, the author's observations amount to a haphazard pile, full of contradictions, with no guiding framework other th A book that intelligently and accurately documents this critical problem is absolutely necessary, and this book is not it. "How to Kill a City" does describe the locally-specific dynamics of gentrification in each city it addresses; San Francisco, Detroit, NOLA and NYC. If one has a particular interest in those particular locations, it may be worth picking up for that reason. However, the author's observations amount to a haphazard pile, full of contradictions, with no guiding framework other than general wistfulness and hand-wringing. On one hand, cities are bad when they are empty and abandoned. On the other hand, they are bad when white and upper-income folks move into those empty and abandoned spaces. The author reluctantly agrees that the coffee shops and groceries selling fresh vegetables are nice, but laments that the new people & businesses don't "acknowledge" what came before. You kind of know what he means by that, but it isn't very helpful or constructive. The author gives no specific prescriptions for what good neighborhood improvement would look like, nor provide any practical discussion of how upper income people and businesses might productively invest and co-habit in cities so as to create (or, historically speaking, re-create) healthy mixed-income communities.

The author is a writer, but not a sociologist or academic, so he also speaks only from his experience, which means that certain critical aspects of urban communities are completely absent; notably, schools. Schools and school quality simply don't figure into his world view, while coffee shops loom large. There is also no economic analysis of what gentrification actually is, or any documentation of the displacement that occurs because of gentrification. That is well outside the parameters of this wholly anecdotal book, but I hope that these egregious omissions were sufficient to inspire some academic out there to take on that necessary job, and that they are working on it right now.

In general, the author is well-intentioned, but poorly served by his lack of background in urban studies, politics, economics, or a deeper engagement with the issues that he attempts to tackle. For instance, he meets with NYC's (erstwhile) deputy mayor for housing and economic development, who previously ran an investment division at Goldman Sachs, and he doesn't mention this, but does call her a progressive. Really? By what standards? The author then proceeds to take much of what he gleaned at that interview at face value. He mentions "rent control" in New York, which is irrelevant to policy debates, since Rent Stabilization has been in effect since 1969, and rent control applies to less than 1% of the City's housing stock. He flatly dismisses the possibility of rent reform in Albany...which happened this year. In the concluding chapter, he mentions the City's public housing (NYCHA) as a proof of the success of public housing...come again? Even a casual follower of local NYC news knows that NYCHA is billions of dollars in debt, with deplorable living conditions and deferred maintenance caused by decades of inadequate funding for repairs and capital improvements. In these and other instances, the author is clearly drawing conclusions based on what he was told rather than engaging in independent critical analysis. The author is deeply concerned about his topic, and that feeling really comes through, which is very sweet, but he really is maddeningly clueless.

I read the book in hopes that the inevitable final chapter would provide some concrete recommendations, suggested by the author's explorations, but sadly, no. By the author's own admission, the conclusion is a rehash of three other books, all of which happen to be problematic, but I'm not writing a review of those books. Suffice it to say that they are all well known in the field, and one can read those instead of "How to Kill a City" if one is so inclined.

One book I will mention in the context of "How to Kill a City", since it is current and I also read it this week, is "Evicted", by Matthew Desmond. Towards the end, he says that he chose to focus on Milwaukee, a typical American City, and that he pointedly avoiding certain large cities which are often studied because they are in fact, atypical outliers; the examples he gives are New York, Detroit, and San Francisco. These three atypical outliers are three of the four cities discussed in "How to Kill a City". While Evicted is concerned with a different phenomena of poverty, it's not altogether unrelated to gentrification, so the point is well taken. It's fine to write about these cities which capture the American imagination, but it's also important to understand that they aren't really representative. "How to Kill a City" approaches an understanding of this fact by documenting shifts and changes specific to each city and certain neighborhoods, but it never arrives at any larger truths or useful conclusions. I look forward very much to reading the book that does. ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Mar 16, 2018 D.L. Mayfield rated it it was amazing

This book is so compelling--all of the complexities and facts and policies are there, but intersperse with the stories of living, breathing people who are being displaced. I have read a fair amount on gentrification, and this is the book I would put in people's hands. ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Dec 23, 2020 Celine Nguyen rated it it was amazing

'Gentrification', Moskowitz writes, 'is the most transformative urban phenomenon of the last half century, yet we talk about it nearly always on the level of minutiae.' This observation is essentially why I wanted to read this book—because most discussions of gentrification seem to be about the minutiae: $15 farm-to-table pizza instead of dollar slices, $6 boba shops…then somehow related to this is poor communities and racial minorities being pushed out of cities? Whenever gentrification is talk 'Gentrification', Moskowitz writes, 'is the most transformative urban phenomenon of the last half century, yet we talk about it nearly always on the level of minutiae.' This observation is essentially why I wanted to read this book—because most discussions of gentrification seem to be about the minutiae: $15 farm-to-table pizza instead of dollar slices, $6 boba shops…then somehow related to this is poor communities and racial minorities being pushed out of cities? Whenever gentrification is talked about at the level of minutiae, then its results start to seem inevitable, like the weather; and its negative effects become hard to pin down. So I was quite interested in this book, where Moskowitz discusses gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and NYC and tries to explain how it happened and how communities—especially activists—are responding.

The first (and maybe most important insight) I got from this book is that gentrification is not about 'some ethereal change in neighborhood character', and it's not about a bunch of individual well-off people deciding to move to a newly cool city. Moskowitz argues that gentrification is about a deeper idea of what cities should be: 'reorienting the purpose of cities away from being spaces that provide for the poor and middle classes and toward being spaces that generate capital for the rich.' The book centers the struggles of poor communities and communities of color, but Moskowitz points out that gentrification ultimately comes for us all, as cities get more unaffordable and, frankly, more boring.

Some key points I found especially striking:

Why are cities gentrifying? Moskowitz ties gentrification to two things:

First: In the past few decades, cities have received less money for the federal government, forcing them to rely even more on property taxes. This inevitably leads to investing less in poorer communities and social services, and more in things that will increase real estate development—and real estate prices—in the city.

Second: Moskowitz notes that gentrification happens when developers can make money by redeveloping a cheaper area into an increasingly expensive area. These cheaper areas are typically areas that have been under-invested in, and this is tied to historical racial inequality that has led to whiter areas receiving much better infrastructure and housing/business subsidies than Black neighborhoods. 'If gentrification requires cheap real estate,' Moskowitz writes, 'before areas can be gentrified they must be divested from, and the history of American housing is largely the history of a purposive concentration of African Americans and a subsequent disinvestment in their lives.' Detroit and New Orleans are especially interesting case studies here—Moskowitz discusses how infrastructural investments/funding in both cities are concentrated in gentrified areas that are much whiter than the rest of the city.

The above connects to a subtle and interesting point Moskowitz makes about the suburbs versus cities. Suburban communities have historically received more investment and funding than urban communities. More recently, however, the suburbs (previously favored by white and wealthy communities) are declining in esteem, and more people are choosing to move to the cities. Now it's cities that are increasingly white and wealthy spaces, and poor communities and communities of color have to move out to the suburbs to find affordable housing. This is a nice corrective to a superficial urbanism that goes 'suburbs are terrible, cities are better!' on purely aesthetic terms. Moskowitz points out that the inequalities that produced the suburbs are now operating today in the gentrification of cities: 'The suburbs were the prototype for gentrification, not aesthetically but economically. Suburbanization was the original American experiment in using real estate to reinvigorate capitalism. Gentrification can be understood as a continuation of that experiment—suburbanization part two.'

Loved this book overall (and the footnotes are invaluable!). It sharpened my understanding of gentrification and its political causes. It's an especially valuable read as the housing crisis (or what Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal would argue is a tenants' rights crisis) grows more acute every day, and it becomes more and more urgent to ensure affordable housing is accessible to everyone. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 05, 2021 Nicola rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The gist: a hyper-gentrified city isn't one you want to -- or can -- actually live in. Moskowitz does a deep dive on four cities grappling with varying stages of gentrification and upheaval: New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco and NYC. The glass-encased condos spring up, the stores and restaurants that make a neighborhood interesting close down, non-hyper-rich people suffer. I thought the sections on NYC's Greenwich Village, once an artist and activist enclave and now basically a bland playgroun ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jul 03, 2018 Dorothy Young rated it it was amazing

I have been a resident of, and consider to be home, two of the cities profiled in this book (New Orleans and San Francisco). This book is a fascinating and insightful read that does an excellent job of intertwining urban housing theory and history with anecdotes, both heartbreaking and inspiring, of people at every end and perspective of gentrification systems. Developers and politicians are humanized, as are the poor and displaced, making clear the message that gentrification is a series of lar ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Oct 21, 2017 Robert rated it really liked it

Shelves: noo-yawk, political-nonfiction, society, detroit, urban-studies, economics

The minute my friend Jason told me about How to Kill a City I was on it like a duck on a June bug. The book takes a look at four major cities in the US that have been thoroughly or partially transformed through gentrification over recent years: New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, & New York. I have ties to three of the four: I spent the first seventeen years of my life in Detroit, lived in New York City in the late 90's for four years, and have had family and friends living in San Francisco sin The minute my friend Jason told me about How to Kill a City I was on it like a duck on a June bug. The book takes a look at four major cities in the US that have been thoroughly or partially transformed through gentrification over recent years: New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, & New York. I have ties to three of the four: I spent the first seventeen years of my life in Detroit, lived in New York City in the late 90's for four years, and have had family and friends living in San Francisco since the 80's. So I've seen a lot of the changes Moskowitz describes up close and personal (actually read the section on Detroit while visiting Detroit last week).

I think the book is strongest when Moskowitz focuses on factual documentation. He presents a lot of troubling evidence that the powers-that-be in our country, in their fealty to late-period capitalism and development, do not view affordable housing with any sense of it being a basic human right (not unlike healthcare, but that's a whole other thorny subject). When Moskowitz gets more subjective, especially in a short section dedicated to bemoaning the radical changes to the West Village neighborhood of New York where he grew up, he undercuts his arguments with often heated words, which, while generally justified, tend to tip over from investigative & scholarly into broadside territory. I tend to favor a little authorial distance in books such as this—the facts he presents are damning enough, anyway. I've seen some reviews from other Goodreads reviewers who, being more skeptical of the evils of gentrification, use Moskowitz's ire as justification that he's too close to the issue to be objective, overly emotional, etc. There are also places where Moskowitz's text could have used a copy editor's eye—his punctuation is a little wonky here and there.

But Moskowitz is smart and thorough enough to overcome these flaws and he gets all of his salient points across. He is particularly spot-on about Detroit. When I was there I was thrilled to see some parts of the city burgeoning (trust me, the city had needed some serious-assed burgeoning for decades now)—but all along I knew that these bright new enclaves were never going to add any meaningful improvements to the city and its longtime residents beyond their limited parameters. There weren't physical walls surrounding these gentrified areas but you felt/sensed invisible barriers anyway. The stratification between the haves and have-nots is acute in Detroit (whereas in SF & NYC it's like the have-nots aren't even living in the city anymore—they've been pushed out to the suburbs because the rents in both cities are mostly astronomical). The Midtown section of Detroit felt more colonized than anything else.

My mission after reading this is to make sure to engage more deeply with my community and more than anything to vote for political candidates who are seriously committed to providing affordable housing and to limiting development to a reasonable degree—and not just mentioning these issues on their leaflets as if checking off items on a grocery list. I don’t want to see my city of Minneapolis going any further down the same terrible path that other cities such as Seattle and Portland have already gone. We're definitely on the cusp of major changes: a microbrewery and a fancy coffee shop have just opened down the street from me, right next to each other. They're nice to have nearby, but I'm also aware that their presence may well be a harbinger of other things to come. Anyway, People should read this book, there is a lot to chew on. I expect there will be more such books as the demographics of our cities continue to change. Four out of five stars. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 09, 2018 McKenzie Watson-Fore rated it really liked it

Shelves: cities-and-urbanization

I really appreciated Moskowitz’s book, and I think it’s a significant contribution to mainstream books currently available on the topic of gentrification. How to Kill a City is probably the most direct, wide-reaching, and accessible work I’ve read on the topic. I intentionally read it immediately after Rothstein’s heavy academic tome, The Color of Law, not to compare but as a complementary piece.
Moskowitz’s book is heavily researched both in terms of supportive scholarship and life experience, I really appreciated Moskowitz’s book, and I think it’s a significant contribution to mainstream books currently available on the topic of gentrification. How to Kill a City is probably the most direct, wide-reaching, and accessible work I’ve read on the topic. I intentionally read it immediately after Rothstein’s heavy academic tome, The Color of Law, not to compare but as a complementary piece.
Moskowitz’s book is heavily researched both in terms of supportive scholarship and life experience, ethnographic journalistic research. The book is undergirded by Moskowitz’s love for his shape-shifting hometown of NYC, personal story of familial displacement from rising rent prices and cultural shift, and the work of early urbanist Jane Jacobs.

The book was scattered throughout with personal touches, the occasional shadows caught in mirrors evincing Moskowitz’s presence and personhood. A gay white man, I was moderately impressed by the un-self-conscious way that Moskowitz referenced and relied on his own lived experience while also subtly (and other times, overtly) taking stock of his own privilege and the way his whiteness and middle-class socioeconomic standing framed his perspective.

Moskowitz is clearly an experienced journalist, citing statistics and quoting sources as ways to expand upon and ground the stories of interviewees he meets in his four profiled cities: San Francisco, New Orleans, Detroit, and New York. To some extent I was disappointed by specificity of his focus as restricted to these cities. I trust that Moskowitz chose these cities because they all have very particular legacies of housing, but as someone in a city rarely profiled except by those that live in it, I often wonder how much I can extrapolate the insights from other cities into mine. (Given that I live in Houston, the only major American city with no zoning—and Moskowitz makes clear that zoning is a major tool for the way cities control redevelopment—I can only extrapolate the stories of other cities so far.)

He’s looking at gentrification in our contemporary political moment, part of what makes the book so appealing to people who don’t have an extensive background in studying housing policy or the systemic frameworks that shaped the geographic of race and socioeconomics today. Allowing his interviewee’s insights or discoveries within his subject cities to prompt further background, Moskowitz skillfully uses his contemporary topics to open up explorations of the historical background, giving accurate and accessible synopses of housing policy such as the FHA and VA mortgage loans, redlining, and New Deal-era public housing.

I haven’t encountered many others who surpass Moskowitz in his thoughtful consideration of why the suburbs worked. This is an author who believes in the logic of cities, who sees diversity and weirdness as oft-unrecognized quality-of-life determinants. He says that the suburbs were a hard sell – who in their right mind would want to move out to the desolate nether-regions of a city’s edges, living in cookie-cutter homes without the benefit of Jane Jacob’s sidewalk life or urban color? – and he demonstrates how cities subsidized this process because it was profitable.

The conceptual framework of the book is to argue that cities have chosen to prioritize the creation of capital over the needs of human beings. I don’t hear this discussion very often outside of books, despite its seeming obviousness once you internalize the ramifications of such a shift. Essentially, Moskowitz is arguing for the same elevation of chrematistics (a financial, capitally-oriented system) over a true economy (Greek word oikonomia: a system concerned with the care and keeping of households and communities), which Wendell Berry talks about [mostly in his book What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth]. Moskowitz calls this neoliberalism.

Particularly with his exposition of the privatization of downtown and midtown Detroit, Moskowitz makes a convincing case that this capitalist orientation has been the downfall of cities as havens for the vulnerable and marginalized. Along the way, Moskowitz shares countless gems – names of other urban theorists, anecdotes about the history of urban planning, other books and concepts to check out – with his audience. The ‘locational see-saw’ was one phrase I found really intriguing; he also repeatedly refers to Sarah Schulman, author who coined the term ‘gentrification of the mind.’

How to Kill a City is a solid work of scholarship and public interest. In his final chapter, Moskowitz proposes a laundry list of strategies to half gentrification. Having spent the book demonstrating that gentrification is not about the individual, autonomous choices of hipsters and yuppies but about government policy and spending, his strategies are appropriately focused on policy and governmental spending: subsidies, tax cuts, rent protections.

Though hopeful in his anecdotes of community organizing and collective resistance, it’s a hard note for me as an individual reader to end on. I read this book while walking the streets of my neighborhood: where our neighborhood activist group struggles for internal cohesion and clarity, where each day as I walk to work I observe the progress of new construction on single family homes and goofy-looking townhouses.
In terms of education (which is power), Moskowitz’s might be the best primer that I’ve read on the subject, one that I would eagerly recommend to family and friends hoping to learn more in a balanced, researched, “objective” way [one criticism of the book is that sometimes Moskowitz employs so much done-with-gentrification sarcasm it’s hard to make out his actual point, but this is rare].

In terms of what to do with this knowledge after finishing it, the book can’t dictate that. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 12, 2019 Christopher Moltisanti's Windbreakers fan rated it it was amazing

It should be a required reading for everyone who is living in big cities, specially white affluent kids who often use the term as “gentrifier” to describe themselves, but completely unwilling to understand the process of gentrification itself. Many are ignorant about the history of the neighborhoods and the crippling effects their presence is having on poor people living in those neighborhoods for generations. Moskowitz points out the many factors of gentrification, such as the developer's greed ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 19, 2018 James rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: anyone

Recommended to James by: Jeff Carey had this as a to read item

Shelves: non-fiction, housing

Moskowitz doesn't dance around the subject of gentrification, it's the wealthy driving the poor (mostly black) residents away from the now popular civic centers and replacing low cost housing with extremely expensive upscale developments and public areas with semi-private spaces. He also points out the defunding of cities and schools over the past 50 odd years and how this helped destroy cities.

While only four cities are covered in detail, other cities are mentioned in passing, between that and Moskowitz doesn't dance around the subject of gentrification, it's the wealthy driving the poor (mostly black) residents away from the now popular civic centers and replacing low cost housing with extremely expensive upscale developments and public areas with semi-private spaces. He also points out the defunding of cities and schools over the past 50 odd years and how this helped destroy cities.

While only four cities are covered in detail, other cities are mentioned in passing, between that and the general history of suburban development, the history and current situation for American cities is made clear. Each of the cities selected has some unique situation that illustrates how gentrification happens.

New Orleans - Sudden destruction of much of the city by Katrina.
The city and state took this opportunity to destroy many of the older black neighborhoods and in many cases bragged about it, one has to wonder why hadn't they spent this money before to improve the schools? FEMA helped also, moving people out but not helping them to move back.

Detroit - Long collapse followed by the state looting the city and removing citizen control.
Detroit has spent a third of its redevelopment funds on subsidies for the wealthy and stopped supplying city services to the poorer parts of Detroit. Between the poor schools and bogus tax assessments, the working and poor are getting the shaft.

San Francisco - The endless drive for maximum revenue.
San Francisco hasn't had any recent economic crunches, with reasonable care it should be able to fully fund all of its schools and other municipal duties. However the city keeps courting tech firms, as do the other local cities which brings jobs but removes housing. For example, the cost of rent in Mountain View is almost $3,000 for a one bedroom, even with a minimum wage of $15, this is unaffordable for working class residents.

New York - Using private parties to control public spaces.
In addition to some of the issues above, New York has business development groups that have been ceded many of the powers normally exercised by city government. This means many decisions about formally public locations are now under investor control.

The author wraps up this work by listing some of the ways to fight back and a decent bibliography. The best read I've stumbled across on this subject. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 01, 2020 Caitlyn Libby rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I made the mistake of knowing of this book for nearly a year before I committed to reading it. I would suggest this book to anyone willing to listen and do not suggest it for anyone who is not ready to be skeptical of the status quo. I would also add needing a prerequisite to understanding general social academia. I don’t believe the average reader who is not well versed in the vast intersections of social justice jargon would fare well through these essays.

As for my own take, the author gave m ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

May 24, 2018 Dustin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own, non-fiction, urban-planning

For some, this book will not be radical. For some, the problems with gentrification and their causes will be gobsmackingly obvious. If that's you, may still enjoy this book, because it's well-written, well-researched and will be likely teach you how to make better arguments about what you feel.

But, for some of us, like me, who have been so busy railing against the insanity of the suburban experiment to realize the downsides of radical densification and gentrification, this book was a real eye o ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 15, 2017 Kay rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Holy grail. Gentrification is not cupcake shops and tight pants, it's the intentional collaboration between local governments and developers to harvest capital from American cities and promote their "highest and best use." ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 21, 2019 Prima Seadiva rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

3.5 stars. Audiobook, reader okay.
This was a profoundly depressing book to read/listen.
In each city the author covers, Detroit, New Orleans, San Francisco and New York, how gentrification driven by profit and local government has impacted each of these cities resulting in less affordable housing, more racial profiling and income profiling. Long time residents were driven out, often living in the suburbs commuting in to work service jobs, the urban replaced by more affluent mostly white residents 3.5 stars. Audiobook, reader okay.
This was a profoundly depressing book to read/listen.
In each city the author covers, Detroit, New Orleans, San Francisco and New York, how gentrification driven by profit and local government has impacted each of these cities resulting in less affordable housing, more racial profiling and income profiling. Long time residents were driven out, often living in the suburbs commuting in to work service jobs, the urban replaced by more affluent mostly white residents. Post economic crash Detroit and post Katrina New Orleans seemed the most extreme.
I was somewhat disappointed because by the end of the book the author has few solutions to offer to change this trend and yet I get it because I don't have solutions either.

I have seen this happening in the city I live in, where those who are not part of the "new urbanites" get priced out of housing both rental and owned. I have lived for 40 years in a neighborhood that used to be considered "sketchy", code for African American and/or low income. Now it's taken over by live in cubicle townhouses, dog spas and $5 cups of coffee. Many people can no longer afford to rent much less buy a place.
Like a few other long time residents, I'm hanging on to my place but feel like an outsider. I'm plagued by developer offers, but if I sell where will I go? I don't drive and can't afford to buy anything in the city. I'm so lucky to even have the stability I do. Many others don't.

Our local government has aligned themselves with development. Here in a state/city with no income tax, property taxes and sales tax, both of which have a higher impact on low to moderate incomes, rampant development has been supported because it brings in more money. Even those politicians who talk change are part of the same social strata.

I don't really know anyone who lives in a medium to large city where this scenario isn't happening in some form.
What happens to those who still live rural areas is another story of perhaps a different set of injustices yet controlled by the same mega interests.

...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 28, 2018 Michael Parkinson rated it liked it

Written from the perspective of a native New Yorker and self-identified gentrifier, How To Kill a City explores the phenomenon through 4 unique case studies: New York City, New Orleans, Detroit and San Francisco. I appreciate the broader audience this serves and while not an expert on 3 of the 4 case studies, I found the analysis of NYC to be relatively fair (if not entirely thorough). I would probably recommend to others but with a few caveats. Would have given a 3.5 if I could have.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 18, 2017 Blaise Lucey rated it really liked it

Shelves: nyc

This was a wonderful, comprehensive look at the cycle of gentrification across four different cities. Moskowitz's writing is compelling, casual, and very well-researched all at the same time, which I really appreciated. I learned a lot about one of the most divisive subjects today, and appreciated the anecdotal tidbits & interviews mixed with harder research & history.

That said, this book, for all its historical underpinnings, rarely focuses on things like crime rates and murder rates in the er ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 06, 2021 Frieda Pan rated it it was amazing

This book should be a requirement for anyone who lives in a US city. The author breaks down the history of US housing policy and gives four case studies of cities combating gentrification (New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York). Each of these deal with unique problems with local governments proposing varied “solutions”, but all cities are part of the same global struggle of putting everyday people’s decisions at the heart of community building.

The book guides readers through the US ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 27, 2017 Michaela rated it it was amazing

Anyone with an interest in cities, living in cities, thinking about cities... heck, even if you living in rural areas should read this book. By breaking down the scenarios of New Orleans, Detroit, San Fran, and NYC, Moskowitz effectively gets to the root causes of gentrification, displacement and inequity. While this book was a page turner and well researched, the author spends just a mere 5 pages on solutions or strategies to address these urban issues. As an urban planner, I would have liked t ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 29, 2017 Will rated it really liked it

Shelves: finished-in-2017

Peter Moskowitz's volume details the ways that city governments and federal policies have an equal hand in gentrification as city immigrants looking for cheap rents. I admired his combination of personal stories from gentrifiers and gentrified citizens alongside historical analysis and in depth policy illumination. I wish that he had included more individual strategies for combating gentrification. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 12, 2017 Lesley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017

"Before the hippie, antiwar, and civil rights movements of the late 1960s began to really take hold, there had been decades of foundational work laid by writers, filmmakers, poets, performers, activists, and others that helped people conceive of a different future. I believe we are in one of those foundational periods right now, on the precipice of something larger. It's time to start building." ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 26, 2017 Jason rated it it was amazing

A great, timely book that really opened my eyes and gave me a better understanding of the root causes of gentrification (hint: it's not caused by hipsters with mustaches, they're just one of the symptoms). There's also an inspiring chapter at the end about what we can do to turn things around, although it's definitely going to be an uphill battle. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 02, 2018 Rachel Hundt rated it it was amazing

Very educational and relatable. This is a must read for those who want to be conscious of the way they live and occupy space within the context of communities: what those communities have historically represented and how and why change happens through displacement of those communities.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 10, 2019 Megan Gafvert rated it really liked it

Shelves: politics

Living in NW DC, it’s easy to pick out the glaring indicators of gentrification in main stretches of the area. It’s also easy to identify which blocks might be the next location of renovated luxury apartments, fancy coffee shops, and organic markets that take the place of old but affordable housing, local restaurants, and bodegas. I always had trouble placing myself within this dynamic of change, pushout, exploitation, and renewal because although I am not a middle income transplant from the sub ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Nonfiction

178 users

Politics

59 users

Cities > Urban Planning

53 users

Social Movements > Social Justice

34 users

History

30 users

Geography > Cities

30 users

Sociology

29 users

Race

26 users

Economics

25 users

Cities > Urban Studies

25 users

See top shelves…

About Peter Moskowitz

Peter Moskowitz

3 followers

Also see P.E. Moskowitz. ...more

Books by Peter Moskowitz

Oprah's Angels: 65 Families, One Big Storm, the American Dream

More…

News & Interviews

Meet the Authors of Summer's Biggest Mysteries

It's always the perfect time to lose yourself in a mystery or thriller...but there's nothing like summer to curl poolside with a...

Trivia About How to Kill a Cit...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from How to Kill a Cit...

“Gentrification, at its deepest level, is really about reorienting the purpose of cities away from being spaces that provide for the poor and middle classes and toward being spaces that generate capital for the rich.” — 3 likes

“The hipster narrative about gentrification isn’t necessarily inaccurate—young people are indeed moving to cities and opening craft breweries and wearing tight clothing—but it is misleading in its myopia. Someone who learned about gentrification solely through newspaper articles might come away believing that gentrification is just the culmination of several hundred thousand people’s individual wills to open coffee shops and cute boutiques, grow mustaches and buy records. But those are the signs of gentrification, not its causes. As” — 2 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — How to Kill a City by Peter Moskowitz

How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Peter Moskowitz

Books by Peter Moskowitz

News & Interviews

Trivia About How to Kill a Cit...

Quotes from How to Kill a Cit...

See a Problem?

Preview — How to Kill a City by Peter Moskowitz

How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Peter Moskowitz

Books by Peter Moskowitz

News & Interviews

Trivia About How to Kill a Cit...

Quotes from How to Kill a Cit...

new topic
Discuss This Book