Home / Quotes / Quote by Rebecca Solnit

Quote by Rebecca Solnit

“Artmaking has been, at least since bohemia and modernism appeared in 19th century Paris, largely an urban enterprise: the closer to museums, publishers, audiences, patrons, politicians, other enemies, and each other, the better for artists and for art. For if cities have been essential to artists, artists have been essential to cities...Being an artist was one way of being a participant in the debate about meaning and value, and the closer to the center of things is the more one can participate. This is part of what makes urbanity worth celebrating, this braiding together of disparate lives, but the new gentrification threatens to yank out some strands together, diminishing urbanism itself. Perhaps the new urbanism will result in old cities that function like suburbs as those who were suburbia's blandly privileged take them over.”

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

Work

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

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit is an American writer known for her works on environmental, cultural, political, and social issues. Her writing spans a wide range of topics, including nature, travel, gender, and power. Her books include 'Wanderlust', 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost', and 'The Faraway Nearby'. more

“In articulating their theory of growth machines, Logan and Molotch contrast the exchange value of land (its economic worth) with its use value (value as living space) to illustrate the conflicting interests of developer-led growth coalitions focused on exchange value and the interests of city residents on use value. In North America, according to the two authors, exchange regularly trumps use. This fact underlies the development of a growth machine. Growth machines develop in the following manner: place entrepreneurs see the potential for profit from the development and intensification of their property holdings, namely, through the increase in rent. These "rentiers" develop a close relationship with other local business interests. In particular, businesses that rely on the growth of a city to increase their profitability, such as newspapers, are likely to support the interests of developers. Developers and their allies, through constant interaction with government, through ample campaign contributions, and through their ability to organize and mobilize, can co-opt local politicians, effectively coercing their involvement in the growth coalition. They supply politicians with the funds necessary to run effective election campaigns. Politicians, in turn, along with local media and other members of the growth coalition, help to perpetuate a link between civic pride and a city's economic and physical growth. This link undermines interest in the use value of land (specifically the use and maintenance of existing areas) as the city focuses increasingly on growth. Molotch argues in a later article that this coalition of growth interests reflected the most common political coalition in American cities, while acknowledging its limited applicability elsewhere. He argues that Americans' acceptance of developers' actions " as the baseline of urban process, rather than as disruptions," is evidence that Americans take developers' "presence for granted"....Numerous authors, in adopting growth machine theory, also added anti-growth citizen coalitions to the mix. Current analyses adopting the theory now invariably include the neighborhood-association-led anti-growth coalition as the foil of the developer-led growth coalition.”

Urban Planning Gentrification Anti Gentrification

Book:Planning Politics in Toronto: The Ontario Municipal Board and Urban Development

Source: Planning Politics in Toronto: The Ontario Municipal Board and Urban Development

“By itself, gentrification can't explain the new geography of race that has emerged since the turn of the millennium... Gentrification is key to understanding what happened to our cities at the turn of the millennium. But it is only half of the story. It is only the visible side of the larger problem: resegregation.”

Race Race Relations Race And Racism In America Gentrification

Book:We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation

Source: We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation

“I had been sleepin there for a long time hwen the Fort Worth police put up no-loiterin signs all over the place and made me have to move my sleepin spot. I found out later some rich white folks was "revitalizin" downtown. Raggedy black fellas sleepin ont he sidwalks wadn't part of the plan.”

Gentrification Social Inequality

Book:Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together

Source: Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together