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

by Rebecca Solnit, Susan Schwartzenberg (Photographer)

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Urbanism, Urban Planning, Politics, History, Cities, Architecture

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 2001

About the author

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering  and walking, hope and disaster, including Call Them By Their True Names (Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction), Cinderella Liberator, Men Explain Things to Me, The Mother of All Questions, and Hope in the Dark, and co-creator of the City of Women map, all published by Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). Her forthcoming memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence, is scheduled to release in March, 2020. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at the Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub.

Reviews

[Spiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca Solnit's clear-eyed account of the ravages of the dot.com boom of the late '90's is every bit as relevant now as it was twenty years ago; I now live in a City in which teachers, nurses, police officers, and fire fighters not only can't afford to raise families within the City, they increasingly can't afford to do so within commuting distance of the City. This is not a tenable state of affairs, and the very many people on this site who characterize Solnit's writing as "whiny" should probably just keep reading Ayn Rand and leave the discussion to the grownups.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was only recently, after a friend who lived in San Francisco for decades had to move to Oakland because he could no longer afford San Francisco, did I think to ask what was happening. This work is now 15 years out of date but nonetheless on point as it addresses the way San Francisco changed as it underwent a wave of redevelopment in the late 1990s.

To me, the core of the author's story is that redevelopment of a city drives out the poor, the artists, and the social activists while attracting the affluent with their suburban minds. That is, the city goes from an active public space with people walking and meeting randomly on the streets to a place where pedestrians are replaced by SUVs, the then ultimate form of isolated individualism.

I wonder what the author thinks of cell phones and the impact they are having on our culture and society?

From the author, page 121: A city is a place where people have, as a rule, less private space and fewer private amenities because they share public goods . . . and in the course of sharing them become part of a community, become citizens. In the ideal city, people regard the entire city as their home, so that the place they rent or own doesn't have to be fully equipped like a space capsule or a suburban home. Living in the city at large means coexisting with strangers, and not everyone seems to understand or value the social contracts by which one does so.

So, what does this have to do with we who do NOT live in San Francisco? One of the points the author makes is that San Francisco has been a driver of American culture showing how tolerance, diversity, and active engagement in ones local society functions and benefits the larger society of the country. Without affordable housing for the artists, the workers, the activists, and the poor this function cannot survive and we all suffer for it.

Another point being made is the drive toward a corporate homogenization of our culture in the cities. We've seen this all over the country with the effect Wal Mart, Amazon, and Starbucks has on local businesses. Diversity drops as standardization rises. Just as in mono-cropping thousands of acres of land leads to diminishing returns and need for more and more intervention to maintain a viable ecosystem, so too does such corporate standardization drive a culture downward.

If you are interested in urban design and evolution I'd highly recommend reading this work as a fine example of the changes wrought in on place that can, and do, affect us all. It may also be happening in your place.

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Despite the utopian rhetoric of Silicone Valley boosters…it’s clear that Silicon Valley is developing into a two-tier society: those who have caught the technological wave and those who are being left behind. This is not simply a phenomenon of class or race or age or the distribution of wealth-although those are important factors.”

The term ‘gentrification’ was coined by the German born, British sociologist, Ruth Glass back in 1964, but of course it is a process that has been going on for centuries. Solnit examines the devastation that gentrification is having on San Francisco, and also the possible further consequences that this will have in the future for people living or wanting to live in the city.

Today there are precious few towns and cities where it isn’t happening, but at least some mayors and councillors are beginning to take a meaningful and lasting stance against avaricious property speculators, creating rules and laws to minimise or extinguish it altogether, like developers having to build certain amounts of affordable housing or rent controls being put in place. As Solnit herself explains at one point, “Rent control is why I can afford to write this book.”

I am a fan of Solnit’s work and this book is another compelling example of what she is all about. This was initially published away back in 2000 and so it’s interesting to see how much things have not only changed in the city, but accelerated, in the nearly twenty years since. Schwartzenberg’s photography compliments the text well enough, but for me it’s the historical photos and many posters, adverts and other ephemera that really add spice and colour to this book. Solnit also references some of the work done by the likes of Ira Nowinski, Janet Delaney and Connie Hatch.

Solnit shows how various personal and commercial interests can come into conflict, like in the many cases of certain wealthy landlords refusing to sponsor specific events at institutions which plan to show artists who dare to raise awareness of the horrendous treatment many have endured from those same greedy landlords. Solnit gives us a nice historical and political background into the city of San Francisco. We see that for well over a century it has proved to be a haven and hotbed for multi-culturalism, diversity, homosexuals, subverts and various musical, artistic and political movements ensuring its name is always at the forefront of so many diverse movements, from the online tech boom to many other artistic and cultural areas.

We hear much about the dark and dubious politics at play in the city, people like Mayor Willie Brown, whose treatment of the homeless is genuinely shocking. But of course so much of this is about the landlords and generations of them hiking prices up, time and time again until they drive out the poor, working class and create the perfect environment for a certain kind of tenant with a certain kind of income, but of course as we see this creates a whole new set of unforeseen problems of its own and Solnit proves the many ways in which wealth can actually damage cities in more devastating ways than poverty can.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a newcomer to San Francisco, I thought this book was very insightful and brought me to a new understanding about this fair city. I think everyone who lives here should read the history of gentrification here. Solnit writes about aspects of dot com culture that I've noticed, but never been able to articulate as the problem. At the same time, she acknowledges that we can't simply indict this industry; landlords and other people who benefit from dot commers' salaries are more than willing to turn the city. Likewise, businesses and "lofts" that cater to those with expendable incomes are forcing out places like non-profits and actual live-work spaces, which arguably have created the progressive and bohemian cultures that make SF such a desirable place to land. The book was written 8 years ago, and it's interesting to compare the reality she experienced with what's going on today.

A side note- Solnit made a particularly astute observation when she wrote about the newcomers clogging up the streets with their SUVs, living in the city like it's a suburb, driving everywhere, etc...as a big bad car owner, this really resonated with me. I think the thing has got to go. So if Solnit can make a couple of San Franciscans get rid of their car, I guess the book is well worth the effort.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must-read for all San Franciscans and everyone else who's interested in urban life. This tells the story of the urban planning and gentrification of San Francisco, mostly from the point of view of artists, up to 2000. Of course it's gotten worse since then. Definitely a biased book, so if you work in the dot com industry, be warned that it hates you. Just kidding. Not really. In the end, the author shows that she has an open mind and lists the benefits of the internet, yet she follows it with ", but..." I still loved the book, though. Lots of cool, ironic, sad, funny, beautiful, historic pictures. The writing is good too. It makes me wanna seek out the author's other work.

The quote that stood out for me, really summing up the book: "I am not sure that artists should be held responsible for gentrification; it is not necessarily their fault that the wealthy professionals follow their lead." Tru dat.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sorry, Rebecca Solnit, but Romeo Void was not a punk band and burritos are in fact Mexican food.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure why I bought this book, it was probably the half-price sticker on it as the local independent book store was going out of business. But I bought it and have finally read it and it is a tad whiny and the author could have said what she said in half the pages and I get the point. But that is how things are in post-Reagan Amerika. Everything has been commodified; we might as well learn to live with it because it is not going to change. It has been close to 30 years since I visited SF and the city by the bay has gone through tremendous change and I dare say I would not recognize it. The point is to the whole thing, in Amerika writ large, that all decisions are made by a cost-benefit analysis, just as Jane Jacobs predicted in her prescient tome "Dark Age Ahead."

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book lost its appeal early on when authors ran out of ways to say "gentrification is bad; monocultures are bad." The book would have worked better as a magazine piece. One of the authors mentioned she lives in a rent controlled unit, and I wish they offered more solutions about how to ease the impacts of gentrification. It also would have benefited from more stories about the displaced residents.

I did appreciate the sections about the history of gentrification and its roots in 19th century Paris.

[cory · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty interesting read, but I was majorly annoyed at the author's whiny tone and the pretentiousness she seemed to have. Photographs were pretty good, too.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's still interesting to read this book ~15 years after its publication, as many of the issues are pretty similar now as then. However, the tone of the book is that change is bad, which is fine, but there is a nostalgic yearning for some time that SF was perfect (perhaps during the author's childhood), when I am sure there were still similar concerns as well.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“San Francisco used to be the great anomaly.” In Hollow City, a photojournalistic collaboration combining Rebecca Solnit’s insights with Susan Schwartzenberg’s captivating and characterful photos of Solnit’s recurring subject-city. This book is a history of San Francisco and of American and western gentrification more generally, a book which recounts the city’s geography and topography as much as its culture and society, considering how all these facets of what gives a place its essence are tied up in questions of wealth and power and self-interest. In defence of the poor and vulnerable and displaced, defiant against self-interest and espousing Solnit’s signature views of cohesion and togetherness, this book is a rallying cry for the city and its people, and against the powerful bodies and insidious forces trying relentlessly to push past, over, through.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was the first book by Solnit that I found a little disappointing. She admits at the start of the book that she rushed it, and it shows in some aspects of the writing.

There is no general flow to the proceedings. Solnit randomly covers ground, jumping from one topic to another but keeps returning to similar points but stated in a slightly different manner. Then sometimes arguments made are contradictory. Artists are and aren't responsible for gentrification in low rent/income areas, grassroots community endeavours are and aren't beneficial to some areas.

Meh, I just felt that this was all over the place, and the book served no real purpose other than to jump on the bandwagon of "urban architecture/human place" writing.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure why I started reading this, as San Francisco is not a city I have visited and One I probably never will.

Gentrification caused by the dot.com boom and nothing else? Mmm - doesn't explain this phenomenon in other cities in America and across the globe, unless San Francisco is somehow unique in this regard

[Rand Quinn]

A thoughtful consideration, through essays and images, of the impact of redevelopment and gentrification on creativity in San Francisco. The book came out just ahead of the dotcom crash. Two decades hence, it reads as both artifact and augur. The frontline reportage should appeal to those who lived in the city during that time.

[Hibou le Literature Supporter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book. Wish there were more books like this. A vibrant, class-conscious, historical account of how SF, like other cities, has traded its diversity/arts culture/working and middle classes for luxury real estate development and consumer products for those who can afford to live there. I don't mind her polemics because I agree with them.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully exposes the high cost of excessive wealth into a city, and its disastrous effect on the vibrancy and diversity of city life. San Francisco is the canary in the coal mine for people who love cities.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“San Francisco could become a hollow city, a Disneyland of urbanism in which its varicolored Victorian houses and diversity of skin colors and cuisines covers up the absence of the poor, the subversive, the creative, the elderly, the free.”

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a little bit to get hooked but then boy did I get hooked. I started recording the particularly intriguing passages a little over halfway-through.
- "Dozens of Haight-Ashbury households paid no rent at all - and this confirmed what I, born on the baby-boom/Generation X cusp had always suspected: that the widespread revolutionary spirit of the sixties was made possible by an economy so expansive that its bounty spilled over onto the middle-class kids who didn't participate in it, that freedom was, so to speak, more affordable then, the margins far wider and more inviting than ever before or since." (98)
- "redevelopment is like an oil spill, with a single cause and a responsible party; gentrification is like air pollution, a lot of unlinked individuals make contributions whose effect is only cumulatively disastrous." (100)
- "Those who can afford to make art in the center will come with their advantages in place, and though much good work may be produced, work critiquing and subverting the status quo may become rarer just as we need it most." (109)
- "If true gentrification includes this kind of refusal to coexist [with existing industry, ppl, etc.], then bohemians are indeed a distinct and separate phenomenon, since they generally coexist enthusiastically." (121)
- A city is a place where people have, as a rule, less private space and fewer private amenities because they share public goods - public parks, libraries, streets, cafes, plazas, schools, transit - and in the course of sharing them become part of a community, become citizens. In the ideal city, people regard the entire city as their home, so that the place they rent or own doesn't have to be fully equipped like a space capsule or suburban home." (121)
- "the new arrivals [to SF] seem to live in it as though it were a suburb." (123)
- "Such technology may not be responsible for but it is certainly accommodating spatial privatization and speeding up an economic privatization. It postulates the public sphere as a problem to which technology is the solution, whether it saves one from venturing out to buy books or groceries or from asking directions from a stranger." (129)
- "The campaign to exempt multimedia offices from office-space limits is another attempt at evading paying social dues, similar to the aggressive national campaign to prevent Internet commerce from paying any tax at all and is one of the ways the Internet undermines the public sphere." (131)
- "to step inside a Starbucks is to step from the particular to the generic, from memorable location to the limbo of the chain that makes Philadelphia, Seattle, and Albuquerque indistinguishable....Cities were born free but are everywhere in chains....they chain our minds to mere commodities." (141)
- "Researching on the Internet is a little like going to chain store; I won't come home with pomegranates [@ farmers market en route to library], and there seems to be a link between the textureless, amnesiac information the Internet most often brings as it encourages not to go outside and the loss of urban texture and memory." (146)
- "When the Gold Rush came to California, a horde of newcomers came in, and a lot of them didn't plan to stay any longer than it took to get rich." (146) Mexicans & NAs out.
- "What the Internet provides is one thing; what the Internet economy erodes is another." (162)
- "Both wilderness and urban public space are about life that is for other things, for encounter, for experience, the successful navigation of risk and mystery, the knowledge that cannot be bought or sold, for membership in biological and political communities; for the possibility of participation." (163)
* Why do people either go to wilderness or cities for vacation/leisure/pleasure? To discover something unique, new, of distinct place-based character that no suburb can offer. Or to be alone or feel a part of dense hustle-bustle. So why not make the suburbs special too?!
* I go to Safeway because it is comfortable and predictable and less risky than going to Al's Grocery Store, but it's really just self-protection from discovering new places. Something to think about when travelling this summer.
- "The proposed solutions [to gentrification] recall environmentalism long ago, when it was the conservation movement: it sought to preserve wilderness, intact ecosystems, and endangered species within a society that was devouring the landscape for development and resource extraction. These places and creatures became islands risen up above the tide of greed. When it became clear that creating exceptions to the rules was no longer an adequate solution, conservationists began asking larger questions about those rules and became environmentalists: they recognized that only profound changes in priorities and practices would sustain the ecosystems we depend on. In the best of save-San-Francisco scenarios outlined above, nonprofits, artists, and activists would also become protected preserves and species in a system that no longer willingly accommodates their survival; they will have been conserved, but as islands in a hostile sea." (171)

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is mostly about artist displacement, but the bigger themes of homogenization of urban spaces and privatization of public spaces have now infected most cities in the country.

[Utrillo Kushner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would love to read an updated edition.

[Susannah Champlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps even more timely and relevant than when it was published nearly 20 years ago.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

at first i was like “i can’t believe this was written in 2002” and then she started talking about starbucks and yuppies and dot coms

[Rae]

Gentrification. Affordable housing. Urban planning. San Francisco artists. Photography.

[esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

would love to see an updated version after so many years :)

[hello nurse · Rating 3 out of 5]

this one is for the haters and losers

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Documenting gentrification in real time.

Nothing has changed.

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book at the end of 2016, every type of gentrification and displacement Solnit describes is still happening (presumably fewer/different places, 14 years later). Helped me to understand what has been lost (I have arrived too late to appreciate some unique San Francisco things that are now harder to see), become familiar with some local artists and SF history. I really enjoyed the mixture of prose and photography.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, I thought this book was going to be a whiny diatribe about how artists are some of the victims of gentrification. Although the book did share a number of complaints, it emphasized what we lose with gentrification. Gentrification isn't just about race and poverty; it's about vitality of thought. Creativity matters. It prevents environments from being sterile. I do not know a lot about San Francisco, but I do feel the city is falling off the map on the arts front. The "brand" of SF is that it's artsy and diverse, but when will the brand wear off? (A quick look at Census figures will really tell you something...)

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

The issue of gentrification in San Francisco is an ongoing topic and one that requires quite a bit of balancing a wide variety of interests. But I honestly believe that this author does not have a realistic nor a healthy attitude towards gentrification. As oppressive as increasing rents can be, even more oppressive are others who think they can tell everyone else how much less they think they *should* pay for rents, all the while completely ignoring any and all economic, business, and political considerations.

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really incredible book. If you love cities, you should read it. If you ponder the role artists have or don't have in gentrification, you should read it. If you wonder how government policy, sometimes even at the federal level, creates local neighborhood wars, you should read it. If you're interested in materialist critiques of art, you should read it. If you live in San Francisco, you must read it. It is the history of how San Francisco got to be a bohemian mecca, and how the destruction of the bohemian mecca in the two tech booms actually began a long time ago.