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

Author: PE Moskowitz

Narrator: Hayden Bishop

Unabridged: 8 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/12/2025

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

“An exacting look at gentrification” (New York Times Book Review)—and the lives devastated in the process

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. 

A vigorous exposé revealing who holds power in our cities, How to Kill a City uncovers the massive systemic forces behind gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. Now with a new preface reflecting on the present-day political landscape surrounding the housing crisis, How to Kill a City is essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of our cities and our nation. 

Reviews

Goodreads review by Thomas on January 14, 2020

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......more

Goodreads review by Emily on February 24, 2017

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 c......more

Goodreads review by Pippen on November 12, 2017

"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 p......more

Goodreads review by Simone on May 21, 2017

"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 us......more

Goodreads review by Gabriella on February 11, 2019

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......more

Quotes

"[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...They poke, prod and listen. They find 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 they highlight its stark racial realities in Detroit, San Francisco, New York and New Orleans."—Washington Post

"When it comes to housing and urban development, as with other aspects of American life, Moskowitz makes clear that the heft of one's purse and the color of one's skin are determinative. How to Kill a City is an indictment of a system that places making a home for capital above making homes for people."—Santa Barbara Independent

"Gentrification takes a community's personal tragedy, loss and destruction, and monetizes it. Understanding how this happens, and how individuals may unwittingly find themselves a part of it is what makes Moskowitz's book so important. It isn't a lesson about what happened, it's a warning about what is happening now."— Truthout

"How to Kill a City is a convincing and persuasive argument that the U.S. has a serious problem with affordable housing that is not going away any time soon."—Booklist

"Moskowitz...pulls no punches in his depiction of gentrification...They paint a vivid and grim picture of the future of American cities."—Kirkus

"A forceful critique of gentrification and its impact on disempowered members of American society."—Library Journal

"A fascinating analysis of late-stage gentrification in which corporate control of cities renders them uninhabitable to most people. Showing how gentrifiers exploit 'someone else's loss' as a consequence of long histories of racist policy, Peter Moskowitz calls for a global movement against this 'new form of segregation,' defining housing as a human right rooted in community instead of real estate profit."—Sarah Schulman, author of Gentrification of the Mind and The Cosmopolitans

"Peter Moskowitz offers a smartly written and fiercely logical indictment of city governments for selling out longtime residents to aggressive developers and rich investors, and calling it growth. This book is a wake-up call to communities to say no to state-sponsored gentrification and join together to resist their own demise."—Sharon Zukin, author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

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