Abstract
Capital City portrays city planning as essentially a captive of the “real estate state” and the malevolent predations of market capitalism. All too frequently, it argues, urban planners are manipulated in a game with rules written by developers and investors. Planners, the reader learns, have become habituated to practicing their profession within the constraints imposed by the neoliberal era. Through extensive studies of New York City, the author offers an exhaustive critique of government’s failure to protect the public interest writ large. The book is part of a series published by Jacobin magazine and Verso Press on socialist thought and radical politics. Thus, private property zealots, market capitalists, and home rule mavens should be forewarned. If you’re predisposed to bypassing radical expositions, you’ll miss what amounts to a challenging and heartfelt read.
Stein argues that the real estate sector has assumed an even greater role in New York’s economy than was the case before deindustrialization accelerated capital flight and the loss of thousands of blue-collar jobs. Instead of corporate industrialists, he opines, it is developers, investors, and financiers who now hold sway over New York’s built environment. Contrasting the administrations of “neoliberal” Mayor Michael Bloomberg and “progressive” Mayor Bill DeBlasio, Stein argues that despite their putative ideological dissimilarities, both men proved to be cohorts of the real estate state. As he points out, both were recipients of political campaign contributions from developers and investors and both cadged charitable donations from them for special community-serving projects and programs.
Too often in books of this nature, authors limit themselves to criticism of the status quo. Stein, however, has the temerity to resist the easy way out. He intones that, “we need to articulate not just what we are against, but what we’re fighting for” (p. 158). Stein includes a lengthy manifesto, listing reforms such as enhancements to inclusionary zoning, rent regulations, community land trusts, and right-of-first-refusal laws for rental tenants. He also recommends higher minimum wage laws, public collectivization of private property, and a re-commitment to building public housing.
Curiously, though, the book’s indictment of capitalism and private property resists the seeming inevitability of investigating other nations where the collectivization of private property has long existed. While a single paragraph is devoted to Cuba, other nations, such as China, Russia, and North Korea, for example, are conspicuous for their absence in this book. Moreover, although Capital City calls for the decommodification of land, it elides exploration of the hazards inherent in abridging private property rights as articulated in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment—understandably a formidable challenge for any scholar.
Notwithstanding the book’s manifest attributes, there are certain liabilities of which potential readers should be aware. First, to my mind, singling out “planners” as the fulcrum of local land use decision-making is tantamount to delusions of grandeur—a depiction entirely disproportionate to their true influence. In fact, most policies affecting municipal land use are shaped by land use attorneys, public works engineers, economists, public finance specialists, public housing personnel, and architects, as well as planners. Moreover, municipal planners are not infrequently overruled by the politically appointed members of planning and zoning commissions or boards, who seldom possess professional credentials in city planning.
Finally, further marginalizing planners’ influence are members of local legislative bodies, whose political power protects special interests in their own districts. (An extreme example is the practice of aldermanic prerogative that has parochialized land use politics in Chicago for decades.) Although Stein aptly portrays the power exerted by private sector interests in land use, his representation of urban planners is wide of the mark, setting them up as hapless, albeit convenient, strawpeople to decry. While they are definitely co-conspirators in the real estate state, planners are rarely more than a cog in a much more complex decision environment. (Full disclosure: I offer this insight as a recovering former city planner.)
Readers seeking a broad understanding of power relationships in American urban development may agree with my second concern. While Capital City displays Stein’s voluminous knowledge of New York’s land use politics, the book is a critique of that city’s real estate state and not a more inclusive interrogation of such matters at a broader geographical scale. In this regard, it explores ground already traversed to varying degrees in copious studies of New York such as Peter Moskowitz’s (2017) How to Kill a City. For several reasons, though, the Big Apple’s planning and real estate development realm is only tangentially comparable with the warp and woof of those in other large cities nationally.
First, New York is a globalized playground for transnational capitalism to a degree only imagined in most other American cities. Second, it remains the American “capital” of finance, fashion, publishing, broadcasting, advertising, and art and culture, again differentiating itself from the nation’s other cities. Third, New York is even structurally unique. I would argue that with five borough presidents and multiple layers of governance, and with approximately 8.4 million people, New York more closely resembles a city-state than a typical American municipality. Thus, as a learning laboratory, it is more distinctive for its exceptionalism than for its representativeness.
My third concern will be familiar to many urbanists. Like so many critics, the author lambastes something he calls “gentrification” without defining it. Instead, the term appears as a euphemism for any land use process Stein wishes to discredit. One can only surmise that he refers to public policy or private actions in land use that result in people of higher socioeconomic circumstances supplanting those of lesser circumstances. Since the British expression “gentrification” entered the American lexicon in the late 1970s, it has undergone a substantial definitional “drift” (Lees, Slater, and Wiley 2008). Thus, one is never sure with which windmill Stein is jousting. The problem here is that historically, real estate development has nearly always been associated with progressively more lucrative land uses which rarely advantage poor and working class people and instead favor the middle- and upper classes. For better or worse, the very nature of capital markets in real estate and finance is posited on this scenario. Thus, readers are left to ponder what new insights are gained by employment of the neologism “gentrification.” In Stein’s defense, however, he is hardly alone among authors who have employed the G-word absent a clarification of its intended meaning.
Finally, I was nonplussed to discover that Capital City does not contain any tables or charts, nor any maps or illustrations, to clarify and reinforce the author’s narrative. Such routine forms of empirical evidence would have been a welcome complement to the book’s rather wordy composition. Although footnotes help, its lack of an index and a bibliography further detract from the book’s utility to scholars and students who wish to pursue specific subareas of inquiry.
Despite these matters, Capital City is an admirably affordable text for classroom use. So absorbed is the author in his indictment of the real estate state, he manages to reify its many ragged edges, presenting a conceptual framework of value to courses in the social sciences, urban studies, city planning, and public policy. Stein deftly tames a ferociously complex subject in terms that render it accessible to readers not necessarily schooled (nor indoctrinated) in neo-Marxist dialectics. Thus, the book could be positioned in a course on housing policy or planning, for example, as a counterpoise to others evincing a somewhat more conventional perspective. Thankfully, Stein writes in an engaging manner, thereby avoiding the convoluted jargon favored by some authors of a more doctrinaire bent. Having studied urban planning, he shares insights about his own disillusionment which, doubtless, will be of interest to students.
Stein’s decision to devote 39 pages (pp. 116–155) to an intensive account of the Trump family’s multigenerational dealings in New York real estate will likely please some readers and puzzle others. On one hand, mere mention of the Trump name invites ardent contestation and consequently plays to a wide readership. On the other hand, one could argue that the Trump family empire is about as characteristic of the New York real estate state as Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was typical of the practices of New York investment advisors. While informative, even entertaining in parts, this section of the book appeared somewhat orphaned from the main intentions of Stein’s analysis.
Occasionally, the author’s zeal in assessing blame for planning failures leads to oversights. For example, he mischaracterizes the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Standard State Zoning Enabling Act and the Standard City Planning Enabling Act, both of which were propounded in the late 1920s. Stein refers to them as “laws” which “gave every city in the United States the power to enact such programs” (pp. 20–21). Oops! As Stein must be aware, in our federated system, the feds are not empowered to legislate local government land use laws. In this case, the Commerce Department merely provided model language for state governments to consider in drafting enabling legislation for local governments to employ in writing their own planning and zoning ordinances. Readers unfamiliar with the Tenth Amendment to the Bill of Rights may be misinformed by such errors.