'The Nature of New York Is Change,' Dissected
Lost City’s well-reasoned and highly entertaining take on preservation is always a treat to read, as with a post a few days ago, an inspired takedown of the lazy, hackneyed phrase so often used to defend the tear-em-down, build-em-up mentality: “The Nature of New York Is Change.” We were particularly struck by these paragraphs: I’ve…
Lost City’s well-reasoned and highly entertaining take on preservation is always a treat to read, as with a post a few days ago, an inspired takedown of the lazy, hackneyed phrase so often used to defend the tear-em-down, build-em-up mentality: “The Nature of New York Is Change.” We were particularly struck by these paragraphs:
I’ve long suspected that when people trot out this retort, the word “change” is used only as a euphemism for “money.” For most of the changes that occur in the City and are argued in the press and on the sidewalks are motivated by money. Developments that will make the builders money. New chain store branches that will make their corporations money. Landlords who jack up the rent, forcing out valuable businesses, so they can make more money. And people don’t like it when you get in the way of their cash flow, whether you be an individual, a neighborhood, a community board, an activist, a mayor or a mere blogger. “You object to my new development? Why, you dunderhead, don’t you know that the Nature of New York is Money, er, Change?”
This phrase needs to be retired for good. The statement does not confer an air of wisdom on the speaker. It is a gigantic and insulting shrug that shows you don’t care a whit for the City, and aren’t willing to lift a finger on its behalf. You’ve got a proposal to change some part of New York? Fine. Change is welcome here. We’re all about change. But tell us why your change is good, why it will profit the City (and not just you). Don’t just tell us it is good because it is change.
“The Nature of New York Is Change” [Lost City]
Photo by the c-side.
Ha! It’s you, Benson! I remember you from your posts about St. George’s Church a while back. You’re always on the developer’s side, always against the preservationists. Why izzat? And why, if that’s your bent, do you hang around real estate blogs, which, by their very nature, put developers and developments under a microscope and expose them to criticism?
And leave Carol alone. She’s nice.
Your socialist pal at Lost City.
5:16 needs to move to texas and get himself a big ole gun. He will need it when he starts whining and moaning down there.
Carol Gardens;
Did your post have a point??? If so, it was lost on me. No one told you to go anywhere, did they?
As to your claim that things are changing at a “rapid” pace: yesterday’s paper reported that something like 31,000 units of housing were built in NYC last year. In a city of 3,000,000 units, that hardly qualifies as “rapid” change. Buy heck, why let the facts get in your way? We understand you “care” about our city, and this entitles you to “speak” on our behalf.
Benson
Um, I fail to see why you are so aggrevated 5:28. I see the usage as completely appropriate in the above postings.
Not in My Back Yard. Duh.
I think people use NIMBY because it is alot easier to type. Just like, OMFG, IMHO, LMFAO, etc.
Who made you the acronym police?
Attention idiots, morons, and cretins: stop calling various people who don’t even come close to fitting the definition of a *Nimby* “NIMBYS”. You don’t sound clever or cute; you sound retarded, because your usage of the term couldn’t be more far off base or illiterate. It’s like you started using the term because you “liked how it sounded”, so now you’re babbling it incessantly, much like a baby babbles a word he just learned, because it’s fun for him to use.
GET IT STRAIGHT: A NIMBY is a hypocrite who doesn’t mind the building of certain structures and developments as long as it isn’t in his neighborhood. In other words, this is a person who sees the value of prisons, mental institutions, highways, homeless shelters, etc., being built– and may even welcome their development– but suddenly cries foul when he learns that it’s going to be built within walking distance rather than another part of town.
Got it? Good! And next time you come across a word that “sounds cool”, at least Google the damned word or look it up in the dictionary so that you know exactly what it means before you add it to your vocabulary, lest you look like an illiterate fool.
I am an “ardent Private property rights advocate” and I think eminent domain is one of the worst abuses of the constitition and individual liberties the government has unleashed on its citizens.
Dont get me wrong, I am not just using it to oppose new development or protest some project because i dont want to lose my home or am a Nimby. I just think the government has no right to interject itself into private real estate matters. If you want my home for a development, you had better pay me. If my request for a price is unreasonable – too bad, everyone has a price and that is part of the beauty and ugliness of private property.
Just curious to know if those posters who are such ardent “PRIVATE” property rights advocates (such as 1:14 and 3:26) are also adamant defenders of those fighting eminent domain abuse.
Another term to be retired forever along with “change”: NIMBY. Bury it deep in the ground. And yes, I do feel “private” developers have to justify their work to the community, because architectural developments are not wholly private, since they effect the people who live around the development. Now, I have to go outside and get some fresh air. Hope there are no losing do a lot of whining out there.
Oh, please. They want COMPLETE CONTROL? How is pointing to buildings, business, and institutions that are being lost at a rapid pace and expressing an opinion about that somehow socialist? You are never going to have a city with no zoning at all and there are some distinctive neighborhoods that will go for landmarking if enough private property owner (and yes, non-owners, who are citizens too, btw) organize and manage to get landmarking for their neighborhood, which is a long and challenging process. Nothing keeps someone who has a more pro-development stance from showing up at a community board meeting. Just as you might tell me to move to Montana I would say that you might like to move to Dubai. But really, no one is going anywhere, are they?