How to Kill a City

Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous work, written about 10 years ago, and very much along the same lines that I've been writing for 20 years now except that when I said hello to people in my building or on the streets, I was told by everyone around me that 'people in the city don't say hi to each other' even though when I was growing up, yes, people in the city at least in my neighborhoods even in the projects did say hello and if you didn't say hello you got cussed out. Maybe that's the Black community, but this author is not Black and he's saying that one of the more radical things you can do is something that I have always done even when I got criticism for it which is say hi to your neighbors. That's one good starting point and he also highlights two women who have excellent points one of whom was Alicia Boyd, and the other was Sarah Schulman. Finally he points out the obvious which is that all of us working for change from racial change to social justice for various types of groups including LGBT and transgender, to the various economic and human rights groups or movements, all need to come together and focus on housing for crying out loud because that's really where it all begins. he mentions joining those Civic organizations those Community boards the local boards , which in DC would be your local ANC for whichever ward you live in, and also he lays out a list of things that can be done to help building because 10 years ago he said we were not in a position to make change but it was one of those periods where as Antonini Gramsci talked about where you have to position yourself by building for the right moment and he talked about heavily regulating housing just as what happened in 1942 to bring back rent control across the country, of course he also calls for a new deal which those of us who have also the members of the Green Party have been calling for a Green New Deal for years, he's saying end protectionism and add more infrastructure and raise taxes on the wealthy, raise minimum wages, and spend on the poor as we did at least in theory during the War on Poverty, and he points out that in the 50s and 60s the top tax rate for the rich was 91% and until 1981 it was 70% and it's been going down to the point where now the rich pay less in taxes than the middle class but that has come at a price to the majority of the country. He cited Jane Jacobs frequently and she was a Pioneer in writing about cities, as I remember reading about her work on cities and how cars had created problems back when I was doing my PhD work in 2010 well I was presenting on my PhD work in 2010 I was writing up my thesis in 2008 and 2009 , and he reiterates a lot of that, which is to protect public lands and make them accessible, drastically increase transparency and local Democratic planning and give people an actual voice in what's happening in their cities. So these are the conclusions, which are completely in line with Project Do Better: Enough for All in Four Phases, and he also mentions that working at various levels at the same time is imperative because you have to work on this at the local level and at the federal level as well as the global level in order for change to happen and to make that change stick.

This book is well worth reading even 10 years after it was written and also even worth keeping as a reference.