Ashley Dawson

There's a lot of interesting information and case studies here, but Dawson gets too bogged down in Marxist analysis. Capitalism is never irrelevant when discussing climate change, but he has a tendency to go off from the direct topic at hand. At times, it feels less connected to the topic of the book and more to his own personal hobbyhorse, such as his lengthy digression on New York's housing and development plans. It also has the effect of flattening things to fit into his predetermined thesis of anticapitalism. For example, if the New York waterfront had been developed in a better way, there would still have been many more housing units; they would simply not be empty, overpriced condos.

It's a shame because the case studies of what cities actually do, and why they do or don't work, are worth reading, but I wish he'd spent more time on that and less on explaining his own theories of why. He's also particularly reliant on some favorite sources, such as Mike Davis (enough for me to notice it) and I knew I was going to get a lot of Naomi Klein (and I did).… (more)