Samuel Stein is a housing policy analyst and advocate in New York City, and author of the book Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State.
The documentary Rabble Rousers tells the story of the New York activists who overcame enormous odds to build the Cooper Square community land trust — and points to the limits of movements that don’t contend for broader control over the state and capital.
Legendary socialist writer Mike Davis used to put a prompt to his students: If you had a B-52 with unlimited tonnage, what ugly, antisocial buildings would you bomb? We put the question to urbanist thinkers who have been inspired by Davis’s writing.
Tech firms have been moving into New York since well before the pandemic. But over the course of the last year, that trend has only accelerated, with the biggest companies all significantly expanding their footprints across the city as retail businesses shutter.
Last week, New York tenants overcame the state’s powerful real-estate lobby to win a historic package of renter protections. Next stop: universal rent control.
What we need isn’t exclusionary zoning, inclusionary zoning, upzoning, downzoning, a zoning freeze, or no zoning at all. We need an anticapitalist planning movement.
Capitalists are already using the state to reshape our cities — we need to wield it in a radically different way to serve the interests of working people.
Today should be a day of celebration. Amazon is leaving New York, and we just dealt a blow to urban neoliberalism.
The Trump fortune was built off theft — from workers, from the state, and from the commons.
We need bold new transit projects. But Bill de Blasio’s streetcar plan shows we won’t get them by catering to private developers.
Bill de Blasio has put forward some progressive policies as New York City mayor. But he’s also primed the pump for real estate and finance.
By embracing inclusionary zoning, Mayor de Blasio gets to put forth a big, bold plan for reducing inequalities without challenging capitalists.