Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism - Softcover

Solnit, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859843638 ISBN 13: 9781859843635

Publisher: Verso, 2002

Synopsis

Reporting from the front lines of gentrification in San Francisco, Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg sound a warning bell to all urban residents. Wealth is just as capable of ravaging cities as poverty.

About this title

About the Author:

Rebecca Solnit is author of, among other books, Wanderlust, A Book of Migrations, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, the NBCC award-winning River of Shadows and A Paradise Built In Hell. A contributing editor to Harper’s, she writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.

Urban archaeologist and artist Susan Schwartzenberg is the author of Market Street, a visual study of San Francisco’s main artery, as well as photo-essays in several books, including Reclaiming San Francisco.

From Publishers Weekly:

"San Francisco has been for most of its 150-year existence both a refuge and an anomaly. Soon it will be neither. Gentrification is transforming the city by driving out the poor... [and] those who have chosen to give their lives over to unlucrative pursuits such as art, activism, social experimentation, and social service." So begins this impassioned cry to save the soul of Baghdad by the Bay (and any American cities under siege by ill-planned overdevelopment). A San Francisco resident who lives in a rent-controlled apartment, Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking) presents a lively mix of research, personal anecdotes, photos and art to show how the industrious development of high-end condos, hotel/office space and dot-com businesses over the past decade has increased the city's economic base at the expense of many of its long-term residents, not to mention its character. Between 1996 and 1997, rental prices went up 37%; last year, some neighborhoods faced a 20% increase within six months. Evictions happen at the rate of five per day, and "70% of those evicted leave the city," leading to the attrition not only of the poor but of the middle class, as well as independent and small businesses. Charting the history of the vibrant San Francisco arts and activist scenesDfrom the early days of literary bohemia in the 1870s to the 1950s beatniks to the famed political theater of the San Francisco Mime TroupeDSolnit methodically shows how difficult it will be for them to remain viable under the city's new managers. Passionate, potent and to the point, Solnit's polemic embodies American political and social writing at its best. Readers who share her outlook will find it richly satisfying. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1859843638
• ISBN 13: 9781859843635
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 188