He Built This City
AM New York’s piece this morning assessing Mike Bloomberg’s legacy is one of the first of many, many articles that are sure to come as the mayor enters the twilight of his term. The article positions Mayor Mike as a great post-9/11 rebuilder who’s played a big role in luring tourists, spurring development and making…
AM New York’s piece this morning assessing Mike Bloomberg’s legacy is one of the first of many, many articles that are sure to come as the mayor enters the twilight of his term. The article positions Mayor Mike as a great post-9/11 rebuilder who’s played a big role in luring tourists, spurring development and making formerly undesirable neighborhoods hot. “Places like Red Hook that were once a no-man’s land are hipster havens, and Brooklyn is now a center for culture and art for the whole country,” says Mitchell Moss, a professor of history at New York University and adviser to the mayor’s first campaign. “Whoever thought people would want to live on the Gowanus.” The article notes that the Bloomberg administration’s aggressive rezoning agenda (“one out of every six square feet in the city” has been rezoned) and drive to incentivize development on NYC’s waterfront has altered the lay of the land, and New York has much more of a “luxury” sheen than it did six years ago. The cost of all this is high, according to critics who say the city has become too expensive for the working- and middle-class and resulted in inorganic changes. “There has been a pinching of people’s sense of place, and a destruction of community identity,” says Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development. “They have accelerated the transformation of this place from a manufacturing city to a condo and office tower city, but a lot of people don’t feel invested in that growth.”
Bloomberg Reshapes City, Despite High-Profile Setbacks [AM New York]
Photo by CarbonNYC.
Too bad he couldn’t ban you 12:14. Are you an overweight smoker??
Besides banning smoking and transfats, what has Bloomberg actually accomplished?
Nothing.
Having smug hipsters running around Red Hook is not a good thing. They are the worst neighbors in the world! Bring back the crack dealers and mafia.
Please not again with the teachers and cops meme. After five years the average cop in NYC makes over of 75k with over time. Teachers make more hourly than your average architect, certain engineers, and other professionals. Both of these important professions are well compensated compared to their private sector peers.
toxic thread
Brenda;
I don’t agree with you, in several ways. There are still plenty of places in this city that are within reach of the mythical cops and teachers. They are just located further away from Manhattan (which shouldn’t really be an issue for many cops and teachers, as most do not work there). I’ll give but one example that I’m familiar with. If you go to Gravesend and Bensonhurst, there are bucketfuls of condos being built that are reasonably priced. The fact is, many of these condos are so reasonably priced that they are being snapped up by many Russian immigrants who have been here for about 20 years and are climbing up the economic ladder.
Moreover, I don’t buy the argument that cops and teachers haven’t benefitted from this boom, and I state this based upon my first-hand experience from when I used to live in Bensonhurst. Twenty years ago Bensonhurst was chock full of the type of folks you speak of. Many of them cashed out during this boom: selling their homes for great prices, and then they moved to Staten Island or Jersey. They could have stayed put: it was their decision to cash out and reap the benfits of the boom. That’s capitalism, in its glory.
Benson
Brenda,
Your “good old days” were the 2 decades in the history of this city since the revolutionary war where the population of New York City declined. That is simply not sustainable for the future.
The only reason prices are high is because there aren’t enough homes. The only solution is to build more housing. It’s very simple really. Talk to your local city councilperson, tell them you want the zoning code revised such that it encourages high density multifamily development.
There is very little vacant land today. The only place to build is UP.
A rich man has turned New York into a rich man’s city–no surprises there. As folks who bought into a dodgy area in the 80s and enjoyed the perks of the Dinkins years (choppers over Crown Heights, crack house down the street, homeless in every subway stop, and a rampant sense that the city was truly and permanently ungovernable), you will not see us sniveling with nostalgia for the good old “gritty” New York. But why must everything go to extremes? When we bought our crappy old house, it was still remotely possible to get a toehold in the market without being a millionaire or going into doomed and impossible debt. I would trade half the inflated value of our still-half-crappy house to get back a city where cops and schoolteachers could save and get a place for themselves without depending on an inheritance or a lottery ticket or a balloon mortgage programmed to destroy them. And that shouldn’t mean “asking to have the bad old days back.” A safe city and a clean one shouldn’t also have to be, by extension, a rich man’s city.
Did you see in the Friday Links that “Pratt To Host Angela Davis?” Maybe Brad lander gets replaced. Do you know what “a pratt” refers to in England????