Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State in The Majority Report Podcast Goodreads Group

Mar 24, 2019 Rob Smith rated it it was ok

I fucking hate hearing about New York City. Most of the country doesn't live in these AAA, rich-as-Crassus cities, and NYC has a particular complex political/economic/social eco-system. A lot of the examples of the real estate state (itself a clunky phrase I hate) are pulled from the Big Apple and just aren't doable in your small town, mid-size regional cities.

It's a solid book overall tho. The information is solid, necessary and breaks down complex economic and political factors into an easy to I fucking hate hearing about New York City. Most of the country doesn't live in these AAA, rich-as-Crassus cities, and NYC has a particular complex political/economic/social eco-system. A lot of the examples of the real estate state (itself a clunky phrase I hate) are pulled from the Big Apple and just aren't doable in your small town, mid-size regional cities.

It's a solid book overall tho. The information is solid, necessary and breaks down complex economic and political factors into an easy to read format. It's second chapter is one of the best analyses and explainations of gentrification I've seen in print. The third chapter on the bi-partisan support of gentrification policies between billionaire mayor who thinks he's a king, Michael Bloomberg and current Mayor De Blasio is excellent. The chapter on the Trump family is good in showing how rich families historically always exploit laws and loopholes for their personal gain. These chapters aren't bad, I find it rehashs a lot of insular circumstances that really only apply to the weird Lovecraftian hybrid that is New York City.

I live outside the Providence metro area in Rhode Island, for example. I can pinpoint two or three big or well-known real estate groups that defintely use some of the processes described in chapter two, but probably not similar examples to those found in chapters three and four.

Along with the chapter on gentrification, I especially enjoyed the final chapter detailing actual socialist solutions to de-commodify the housing market. I really wish the stuff on NYC was shortened or excised into a separate book entirely, and the author focused on gentrification and socialist responses to it. Stein details a number of interesting policies and ways to completely de-center our current approach to (private) property. I want to know more about community land trusts, first-right-of-refusal laws, and co-operatives.

Two more complaints: I find Samuel Stein overestimates the importance of planners, and under-emphasizes urban grassroots movements, and secondly his citations are all over the place. I was a history major in college, so his overuse of ibid and his random citing of particular sentences comes off as... bad. Page 122 (Chapter 4) has three ibids in a row, two more on the succeeding page, and the last citation on page 121 is also an ibid. Changing these to endnotes who remove this footer clutter and make the book look more professional and less like a thesis paper. Also an index would be helpful. The citations are a minor issue, and won't detract anyone from enjoying the work.

If you haven't read anything about gentrification and urbanism before, this book is a good start. And to be fair, this is the entire point of the Jacobin/Verso line of these books. However if you want more than just a baseline introduction, or something more firmly about socialism, you're better off reading something else. Most books on urban studies already disproportionately zero in on New York City, and it would've been nice if instead it focused on other cities and historical examples.
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Feb 26, 2020 Johnny rated it really liked it

Shelves: format-audiobook, format-ebook

This is a book about the rise of real estate and how it’s taken over as a way to make as much money as possible at the expense of the neighborhoods the homes are located in. Planning is associated with displacement: if you see a nice park going in a poorer neighborhood you rightfully think those residents are going to be priced out of their homes. The only other option given is to never develop in poorer neighborhoods and let them fall apart. ⁣
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This book rejects that binary and takes a look thro ...more

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