The Rentier City

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How did Manchester became the poster-child of neoliberal urbanisation, and what can the people that live there do about it?

In cities across the world, gentrification and the housing crisis are facts of life. But how did we get to this point? And is there any way we can fight back?

A good place to begin answering these questions is Manchester, England. Over the last thirty years, corporate developers, rentier capitalists and boosterist politicians have reshaped Manchester in their image, replacing its working-class communities, public spaces and affordable housing with skyscrapers, luxury developments and a private rental market that creates wealth for rentiers and impoverishes everybody else.

The Rentier City traces this story, showing how it fits within the longer history of Manchester. In doing so unveils a larger story of the relationship between capital and our cities, between rentier and rentee, and gives us a blueprint of how fight back against rentier capitalism and take back control of the cities we live in.“Rose’s compelling evocation of Manchester as a symptomatic ‘rentier city’ will provide a crucial reference point for all those seeking a less exploitative and socially polarised urban future.”
— Neil Gray, editor of Rent and its Discontents: A Century of Housing Struggle

“A remarkable achievement…. The Rentier City is destined to become the definitive account of how and why Manchester has neoliberalised, while also suggesting how a different city trajectory can be realised.”
— Paul Watt, Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics

“A compassionate account of how Manchester’s traditions of ruthless capitalism and contempt for the urban working class got revived and rebranded, demonstrating how local government, property developers and the culture industry have worked together to create a landlord’s paradise.”
— Owen Hatherley, author of Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London

“As a born and bred Mancunian I’ve been waiting for a book like this for some time! A wonderful, rich, yet accessible, account of the rise, fall and neoliberal resurrection of rentierism in Manchester over the longue durée. A must read for anyone interested in the past, and concerned about the present and future of this paradigmatic city.”
— Loretta Lees, international urbanist and scholar-activist, co-author of Gentrification and Planetary Gentrification

“Since the eighties, Manchester’s public housing and sites of social communing, including the Haçienda, have been decimated by private developers working in tandem with city boosters. Has any other city ever lost so much of its soul in such a short space of time? Isaac Rose has provided us with a searing account of this history.”
— Tim Lawrence, author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture

“In this sharp, impassioned study, Isaac Rose shines a light on the endlessly nuanced, utterly venal yet irrepressibly soulful northern metropolis that is modern-day Manchester. This is an essential, searing and vital piece of writing.”
— Alex Niven, author of The North Will Rise Again

“An important and hopeful book, written in the spirit of resistance against the wreckage of rentier extraction, and an indispensable contribution to our understanding of neoliberal urbanism.”
— Tom Slater, Professor of Urban Studies, Columbia University

“Written by an author grounded in the struggles of his adopted city, The Rentier City is much more than a cautionary tale about “Manc-hatten”; it is a dystopian window into the global urban age in construction and a call to arms to rebel before it’s too late.”
— Stuart Hodkinson, author of Safe as Houses: Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy after Grenfell

“Isaac Rose, like Engels before him, takes us behind the shiny façade of the creative city to reveal the mechanisms of capital accumulation and population displacement that drive the city. The Rentier City gives the lie to the heroic Manchester story and helps us talk about reclaiming the city for the common good.”
— Justin O’Connor, author of Culture is not an Industry

“The Rentier City takes an unflinching look at the city Manchester has become; assessing and analysing the costs of gentrification, the power of the developer lobby and the weaknesses of the urban left. This is a landmark study of the social and political processes that have made turned Britain into a country ruled by and for landlords.”
— Jeremy Gilbert, Professor of Cultural and Political Theory, University of East London

“A detailed, eye-opening investigation and analysis of the state of Manchester’s housing, economy, and everyday experience, with a refreshing focus on the grassroots, providing a welcome dose of reality to relentless Manchester boosterism.”
— Dave Haslam, author of Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Cult City

“This is a gripping, un-put-down-able story of the UK’s most shocking city. Stripping bare the relationship between capital, property and the organisation of space, it never loses its focus on the power of resistance as well as the pain of defeat.”
— Vron Ware, author of Return of a Native

“Those who fight against a system are the ones who get to really understand how it works. Isaac Rose is a leading activist against the rentier version of Manchester. His book is more than just a history of one city, it’s a forensic dissection of the whole rentier city system and how it came to be.”
— Keir Milburn, author of Generation LeftIsaac Rose is a writer and tenant organiser who lives in Manchester. He has been a tenant organiser with Greater Manchester Tenants Union for three years, and has been involved with Greater Manchester Housing Action for over five years. He was the chair of Manchester Momentum 2018-20, and his writing on housing has been published in Tribune.GB

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