How to Kill a City

Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood

De: P. E. Moskowitz

“An exacting look at gentrification.... How to Kill a City elucidates the complex interplay between the forces we control and those that control us.”―New York Times Book Review

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.

P. E. Moskowitz’s How to Kill a City takes listeners from the kitchen tables of hurting families who can no longer afford their homes to the corporate boardrooms and political backrooms where destructive housing policies are devised. Along the way, Moskowitz uncovers the massive, systemic forces behind gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. In the new preface, Moskowitz stresses just how little has changed in those same cities and how the problems of gentrification are proliferating throughout America.

The deceptively simple question of who can and cannot afford to pay the rent goes to the heart of America’s crises of race and inequality. A vigorous, hard-hitting exposé, How to Kill a City reveals who holds power in our cities and how we can get it back.

©2017 P. E. Moskowitz (P)2025 Bold Type Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

"[An] exacting look at gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco and New York, exposing how large institutions-goverments, businesses, foundations-influence street-level processes that might appear as organic as the coffee shop's dark roast. ... How to Kill a City elucidates the complex interplay between the forces we control and those that control us."—New York Times Book Review

"Moskowitz is a talented and impassioned writer...[H]e pokes, prods and listens. He finds holes in official stories and gifted storytellers among people who have been steamrolled."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Movingly conveys [gentrification's] emotional and sometimes tragic toll as he highlights its stark racial realities in Detroit, San Francisco, New York and New Orleans."—Washington Post