Cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are in crisis. Chronic housing shortages are driving countless middle-class and working-class households out of high-opportunity areas. Homelessness is skyrocketing. Cars continue to rule city streets, poisoning the climate and putting everyone鈥檚 health and safety at risk. And city governments, instead of rising to meet the challenge, are increasingly dysfunctional and unaccountable. Build or Die traces the history of a disaster a century in the making, detailing how shortsighted and reactionary policy decisions led to the interlocking crisis that threatens America鈥檚 great cities.
Veteran urban policy analyst and journalist Ned Resnikoff cuts through the noise surrounding these issues, revealing exactly how we got here, and describes the work that a generation of urban reformers and activists have already been doing to make their communities more sustainable, egalitarian, and democratic. The crisis facing our cities isn鈥檛 due to rising crime or urban decay. It鈥檚 because of their inability to manage unprecedented economic growth and prosperity.
Drawing on his experience at the forefront of the modern urbanist movement, Resnikoff makes the case for how cities can make that growth work for everyone by building more homes, investing in transit and walkable communities, and restoring democratic accountability to local government.
The health of a nation depends in no small part on the health of its cities. Build or Die charts a path to healthier, more vibrant cities and reveals why saving them must go hand in hand with the revitalization of democracy itself.
Ned Resnikoff is an independent writer and urban policy analyst. His work has appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The New Republic, The Nation, Dissent, and The Atlantic, among other publications. He writes Public Comment, an online newsletter about cities and democracy.
“Ned Resnikoff is one of the heroes of the YIMBY movement. While there have been a number of foundational works on our housing crisis written in the past few years, Resnikoff brings something different to the genre—real work in the trenches of the struggle combined with deep theoretical sophistication and a powerful point of view. Build or Die is a destined to be a classic, a book that those who care about making our cities genuine engines of opportunity will continue to reach for in years to come.”—Steven Teles, professor of government and policy, Johns Hopkins University, and senior fellow, Niskanen Center
“The East Bay district I represent has been rocked by the intertwining crises addressed in Build or Die: soaring housing costs, a strained public transit system, and cities that bear the scars of historic redlining and exclusionary zoning. Our urban centers are in crisis, and our community members suffer the consequences. To understand where we go from here, research like Ned Resnikoff’s is invaluable. With a journalist’s relentless curiosity and a policy analyst’s deep subject matter expertise, Resnikoff has dedicated himself to the betterment of our cities—a defining fight of our times.”—Buffy Wicks, California State assemblymember
“Rarely do you find a prescient journalist, a captivating writer, and a committed activist in the same person, but Ned Resnikoff is all three. In Build or Die, Resnikoff explains how a century of political choices produced today’s housing crisis and how Democratic cities, by failing to make good on the promise of competent government, risk becoming complicit in the far right’s campaign to discredit liberalism itself. This is a bracing diagnosis of the housing crisis from one of the best qualified housing journalists of our time.”—Jerusalem Demsas, editor-in-chief of The Argument
“In prose as vital and engaging as the cities he celebrates, Resnikoff offers a compelling guide to fixing our urban spaces—and our democracy.”—Yoni Appelbaum, deputy executive editor, The Atlantic
“Build or Die is a deeply informed account of why the housing, transportation, and governance challenges facing American cities are not inevitable but the result of policy decisions that we can change. Ned Resnikoff is a trusted expert and wise voice in the burgeoning pro-housing movement and speaks from a place of hard-fought experience, rigorous research, and fundamental care. Build or Die is for anyone who cares about the future of American cities—and the hope and promise of American multiracial democracy itself.”—Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York
