The Creative Destruction of New York City

A searching look at how New York changed from a place of affordable (if tiny) walk-ups to a playground for the ultrawealthy. - KIRKUS An important contribution to the growing literature on hyper-gentrification and its destructive effect on urban life in the twenty-first century, this detailed and lucid analysis reveals how power players in the Bloomberg administration commodified and corporatized the city, reshaping it into a luxury product for the global elite, and how Mayor de Blasio has followed suit. New York didn't become a city for the 1% by accident, and this book is essential reading for understanding how it all happened. - Jeremiah Moss, author of Vanishing New York In this lively account of New York City's recent history, Alessandro Busa shows how massive changes in New York's built environment result in the same dismal outcomes for the less advantaged. This is an essential read for anyone concerned with how great cities are becoming increasingly exclusionary even while fostering creativity. - Susan S. Fainstein, Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design Alessandro Busa combines his rich personal encounters with daily life in New York City's neighborhoods with meticulous research and deep historical analysis. The chapters on Harlem and Coney Island are deep and insightful, drawing out the ways that race and class intersect with gentrification and displacement. This is an engaging tale of the ways that capital and its growth machine, driven by real estate and finance, have shaped the city, resulting in a continual cycle of creative destruction that has consequences obscured by the city's branded image. - Tom Angotti, Professor Emeritus, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York A superb account of the frenzied state of what can best be described as 'hyper-gentrification' in New York City. A state and elite led process of repackaging, rebranding and re-engineering that the author argues has heralded the most visceral urban development agenda ever adopted in New York City. The book balances academic rigour with storytelling-the result is a rich, readable and energizing book that makes its arguments persuasively. - Loretta Lees, co-author of Gentrification and Planetary Gentrification