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

by PE Moskowitz

Overview

“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. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645030744
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	08/12/2025
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

P.E. Moskowitz is the author of three books, including Breaking Awake: A Reporter's Search for a New Life, and a New World, Through Drugs. They are a frequent contributor to publications including New York magazine, GQ, and The Nation. They run the newsletter Mental Hellth, which explores how capitalism affects our psyches. They were born and raised and live in New York City.  

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Introduction 1

Part 1 Hew Orleans 13

Chapter 1 Hanging On 15

Chapter 2 How Gentrification Works 31

Chapter 3 Destroy to Rebuild 45

Part 2 Detroit 71

Chapter 4 The New Detroit 73

Chapter 5 The 7.2 91

Chapter 6 How the Slate Got Blank 105

Part 3 San Francisco 123

Chapter 7 The Gentrified City 125

Chapter 8 Growth Machine 137

Chapter 9 The New Geography of Inequality 147

Part 4 New York 161

Chapter 10 An Elegy 163

Chapter 11 New York Is Not Meant for People 181

Chapter 12 Fight Back 197

Conclusion Toward an Un-Gentrified Future 209

Acknowledgments 219

Notes 221

Index 249

Editorial Reviews

"[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

From the Publisher

While moving nimbly from neighborhood observations to broad national and international contexts…How to Kill a City elucidates the complex interplay between the forces we control and those that control us.

The New York Times Book Review - Daniel Brook

12/12/2016
Journalist Moskowitz’s first book is ambitious but also cluttered and lacking in depth. The book begins by suggesting that gentrification is a misunderstood buzzword. Moskowitz discusses the stages cities go through before gentrification is complete, beginning with policy and planning long before the coffee shops and art galleries show up. Examining the phenomenon through four cities (Detroit, New Orleans, New York, and San Francisco) should broaden the scope of the book, but the chapters are too brief and none of the cities is afforded enough time. Moskowitz asserts that current urban planning trends don’t favor residents, noting how the populations of two radically transformed cities, Detroit and New Orleans, have declined. The book has too many threads that are not given enough room to unspool, such as the reverse “white flight” back into cities. There are many compelling beginnings. but the book reads like a summary; it’s a retread of information for knowledgeable readers and a superficial introduction for novices. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

02/01/2017
Journalist Moskowitz visits four gentrifying American cities, where revitalization and displacement go hand in hand. Real estate developers buy old apartments and local businesses, city managers deal out rezoning and tax incentives to outsiders, and trendy millennials flock to San Francisco, New Orleans, New York, Detroit, and other gentrifying downtowns. Gentrification causes rents to skyrocket and locals—mostly low-income residents—to be displaced to the suburbs. Moskowitz exposes gentrification as systemic violence against low-income minorities that is rooted in historical inequalities and spearheaded by paternalistic developers and city officials who insist that displacement is the price of progress. The upshot is a "new geography of inequality." Moskowitz laments the decline of gritty urban communities and cultures, as well as the rise of inner cities that he characterizes as bland, affluent, and hipsteresque. He also touches on the growing global phenomenon in cities such as Berlin and London. This is a valuable entry text for deeper analyses found in Matthew Desmond's Evicted and Neil Smith's The New Urban Frontier. VERDICT A forceful critique of gentrification and its impact on disempowered members of American society. Relevant to anyone who values diverse cityscapes and socioeconomic justice.—Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut

Library Journal

2016-12-06
A freelance journalist reveals the many evils of gentrification. Moskowitz, a former staff writer for Al Jazeera America, pulls no punches in his depiction of gentrification as "a void in a neighborhood, in a city, in a culture…a trauma, one caused by the influx of massive amounts of capital into a city and the consequent destruction following in its wake." The author takes as his examples the cities of New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York, places where he sees gentrification not as a product of cultural and consumer choices but as the result of specific policies by politicians, urban planners, real estate firms, and heads of corporations. These policies are often unfavorable to the poor, benefitting the accumulation of capital by the rich. In New Orleans, writes Moskowitz, Hurricane Katrina gave politicians the opportunity to re-create it as a whiter, richer city, as did the near-bankruptcy of New York City and the bankruptcy of Detroit—at least in its downtown and midtown areas. In San Francisco, the author describes the rapidly rising rents that are forcing working-class people out as the mayor courts technology firms to come in. Moskowitz chronicles his visits to each city, telling the stories of individuals affected by gentrification and in some cases fighting against it. New York is a special case, for there, his home city, the author sees himself as both a gentrifier in his changing Brooklyn neighborhood and as a victim of the earlier gentrification of the West Village, where he grew up. In the final chapter, Moskowitz draws on the work of academics and activists to present a list of six tactics for resisting gentrification, but ultimately, he asserts, there will be no solution without much greater economic and racial equality. A harsh critic of the forces changing urban life paints a vivid and grim picture of the future of American cities.

Kirkus Reviews