Hollow City: Gentrification and the Eviction of Urban Culture [Hardcover]

Rebecca Solnit (Author), Susan Schwartzenberg (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 2001 | Series: Haymarket

Hollow City surveys San Francisco's transformation—skyrocketing residential and commercial rents that are driving out artists, activists, nonprofit organizations and the poor; the homogenization of the city's architecture, industries and population; the decay of its public life; and the erasure of its sites of civic memory.

California's Bay Area is home to nearly a third of the venture capital and internet businesses in the United States, generating a boom economy and a massive influx of well-paid workers that has transformed the face of San Francisco. Once the great anomaly among American cities, San Francisco is today only the most dramatically affected among the many urban centers experiencing cultural impoverishment as a result of new forms and distributions of wealth.

A collaboration between writer-hiostorian Rebecca Solnit and photographer Susan Schwartzenberg, Hollow City surveys San Francisco's transformation—skyrocketing residential and commercial rents that are driving out artists, activists, nonprofit organizations and the poor; the homogenization of the city's architecture, industries and population; the decay of its public life; and the erasure of its sites of civic memory.

Written as a tour of the city's distinctive characters and locales, Solnit's text grounds the current evictions in earlier histories of urban renewal and the economic geography of artists, from Haussmann's impact on the Paris of Baudelaire, to the relationship between the Beats and San Francisco's African-American community during 'negro removal' of the 1950s. She investigates the ways wealth is now clear-cutting the cultural richness of American urban life, erasing space for idealism, dissent, memory and vulnerable populations.

Schwartzenberg's photo-essays document the profusion of construction and demolition projects in the city, the imperial spaces of dot-com businesses, the proliferation of retail chains, and the rapid disappearance of areas in which artists can live and create. They feature works by more than a dozen San Francisco artists.

Editorial Reviews

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.

From The New Yorker

The Internet boom transformed San Francisco into a suburb of Silicon Valley, and the resulting housing squeeze and accelerated gentrification of low-income neighborhoods created a cultural crisis. Schwartzenberg's images survey more than thirty years of upheaval in the name of "urban renewal," and Solnit's text brings urgency to the question of whether a place in which artists, activists, and members of diverse races and classes can no longer afford to live is fated to become "a city of presentation without creation."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Verso; First edition. edition (January 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859847943
• ISBN-13: 978-1859847947
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #501,893 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

San Francisco writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of thirteen books about art, landscape, community, ecology, politics, hope, and memory. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she has worked with Native American land rights, antinuclear, human rights, antiwar and other issues as an activist and journalist.

Her new book is a departure from the previous 12 solo projects, a tall book of 22 colorful maps and 19 essays titled Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, made with 27 artists, writers, and cartographers.

She shops regularly at Amazon for books she can't get at her local independent bookstores, but she loves the local independents, frequents them constantly, particularly the Green Arcade and City Lights. She is very grateful to her readers, for writers are nothing without readers and books are dormant treasures that come alive when they're open and read; they live inside your head....

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A mild success, May 30, 2002

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C. Szabla - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollow City: Gentrification and the Eviction of Urban Culture (Hardcover)

Although Rebecca Solnit writes with a deliberate and sometimes myopic agenda, her style is extraordinarily effective in evoking sympathy. It is elegaic in nature and the entire book reads as a eulogy, a fact reinforced by the shuttered structures and funeral processions presented in Schwatzenberg's photo essays. The digressions into such realms as the origins of Bohemia don't seem irrelevant or excessive but merely an extension of the beauty of the writing and presentation.

Although the issue has become less pressing with the collapse of the fervor of the internet economy, it should be noted the type of mass evictions in favour of live/work lofts is still a common occurrence in San Francisco, and that housing is still beyond the means of many ordinary San Franciscans. Despite the less fervent pace of gentrification, those in the funeral procession presented in the opening pages will not be returning to their homes; the character of their neighbourhood will not be restored.

The work is a mild success. Although somewhat obsolescent, it is still relevant, whether because of its still necessary impressions on the hearts of those who read it, or as a presentation of a historical phenomenon. But furthermore, as a literary work, and as a visual work, it is beautiful both in its prose and photography.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating overview of sf history, November 6, 2007

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c. in sf - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism (Paperback)

alas, this is not an outdated book. sf has only become more homogenized since its publication (a topic that is crucial to the book, and covered very well in terms of past creative types who've inhabited sf).

the book's overview of sf history is fascinating, and well-presented. solnit did a thoughful, unbiased job of evaluating the housing crisis in sf and its effect on the creative energy of the city. her metaphors are apt, and overarching points are salient.

a highly recommended read to anyone who cares about san francisco history, or who has bemoaned the exodus of its artistic inhabitants.

10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars this book has its points, but..., September 14, 2004

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Noah "a food lover" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism (Paperback)

This book has an interesting subject and lovely photography. I am sympathetic to the plight of gentrification. However, the tone of this feels as though she were a professional complainer. Neighborhoods change, that is a fact of life. The residents who were displaced in this book were undoubtedly not the same residents from the time it was built. You get the sense that the author feels like everything about every neighborhood is worth saving. It isn't. I'm not going to cry about a neighborhood with less crime. And what solutions are offered? Should one never try to improve a distressed neighborhood, so that no one ever has to move? What sort of building *should* be allowed in a city? Ms. Solnit has some very valid points in this book, but she comes off as anti-change and not really offering anything close to a solution, other than fossilizing San Francisco in the "good old days", whenever that was for her.