The Death of a Once Great City: The fall of NY and the urban crisis of affluence

[Via Chicago]

https://harpers.org/archive/2018/07/...entrification/

New York has been my home for more than forty years, from the year after the city’s supposed nadir in 1975, when it nearly went bankrupt. I have seen all the periods of boom and bust since, almost all of them related to the “paper economy” of finance and real estate speculation that took over the city long before it did the rest of the nation. But I have never seen what is going on now: the systematic, wholesale transformation of New York into a reserve of the obscenely wealthy and the barely here—a place increasingly devoid of the idiosyncrasy, the complexity, the opportunity, and the roiling excitement that make a city great.

As New York enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is, well, boring.

This is not some new phenomenon but a cancer that’s been metastasizing on the city for decades now. And what’s happening to New York now—what’s already happened to most of Manhattan, its core—is happening in every affluent American city. San Francisco is overrun by tech conjurers who are rapidly annihilating its remarkable diversity; they swarm in and out of the metropolis in specially chartered buses to work in Silicon Valley, using the city itself as a gigantic bed-and-breakfast. Boston, which used to be a city of a thousand nooks and crannies, back-alley restaurants and shops, dive bars and ice cream parlors hidden under its elevated, is now one long, monotonous wall of modern skyscraper. In Washington, an army of cranes has transformed the city in recent years, smoothing out all that was real and organic into a town of mausoleums for the Trump crowd to revel in.

By trying to improve our cities, we have only succeeded in making them empty simulacra of what was. To bring this about we have signed on to political scams and mindless development schemes that are so exclusive they are more destructive than all they were supposed to improve. The urban crisis of affluence exemplifies our wider crisis: we now live in an America where we believe that we no longer have any ability to control the systems we live under.

[Crawford]

Apparently NYC was founded in the late 1960's. Who knew?

Why is it "boring" to not be a declining shithole? NYC has just reverted to what it was during the first 350-odd years of its existence.

It's become like "everywhere else" in the world in the sense that is no longer that weird American phenomenon of hollowed core. But if that's what the author seeks, 95% of America awaits.

[JManc]

I think the author is lamenting that American cities are becoming more homogeneous and in many ways (culturally) they are since many in this country live in an places hundreds/ thousands of miles from where they grew up.

[xzmattzx]

So rich people can't live in the city now? We can't build new highrises? Neighborhoods are not allowed to change?

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

So rich people can't live in the city now? We can't build new highrises? Neighborhoods are not allowed to change?

did you actually bother to read the article. considering its length, and the time from i which i posted it, im going to assume not (i tried to finish it on a 30 minute train ride and still came up short).

what he is taking issue with the way the city is explicitly catering to the rich, and only the rich. the vast majority of new yorkers do not fall into that category, but their interests are not being represented. he is also lamenting the cultural whitewashing of the city, and the increasing inability of small mom and pop establishments to have a place in a community.

[The North One]

This is gonna be good

[Via Chicago]

i dont agree with all of his points, and his writing style does veer towards rose-tinted nostalgia, but the general gist of what hes getting at i agree with. its not just NYC though, its everywhere. what hes lamenting is the loss of community, the increased privatization of the public sphere, and the notion of what a neighborhood even is in the 21st century.

These are the choices we are left with now. If a movie theater you can duck into in the middle of the day was one of the small raptures of the modern urban landscape, all around us were the same sorts of existential conveniences. Those corner bakeries with the string-wrapped boxes where you could get a respectable layer cake on the way to someone’s dinner party. A kosher butcher where you could pick up the lamb shank you realized you forgot just minutes before the family was due for Passover dinner. Decent Chinese food for a Friday night at home in front of the television.

We worry now in my neighborhood that the cobbler’s shop across Broadway will be the next store priced out of business. The proprietor proudly displays calendar photos of erupting volcanoes from his native Ecuador in his shopwindows alongside pictures of his grandchildren at their confirmations. His grandson used to store his toys and coloring books in the boxes under the unused shoeshine chairs. When you walk in, there is always the sound of classical music on the radio, and the smell of something very elemental and raw, leather and polish, the scent of a real place serving a real purpose.

It is almost the only store around that sells anything of use anymore. There are a few small hardware shops left still, some dry cleaners, a large grocery store, and a couple of bodegas. But otherwise, Jane Jacobs’s “intricate ballet” of the streets is being rapidly eradicated by a predatory monoculture. Everywhere, that which is universal and uniform prevails. Chain stores, of a type once unknown in New York, now abound. On those same ten blocks of my neighborhood where so many stores have been emptied out, I count three pharmacies, six bank branches, seven nail-and-beauty salons, three Starbucks, two Dunkin’ Donuts and three 7-Elevens, five phone-and-cable stores, four eyewear shops. The coming growth industry seems to be in urgent care facilities, of which there are already two, to serve our ridiculously underinsured population.

This is not an anomaly; the problem is pervasive. There are so many empty shops now that the issue has even begun to slip out from under the official doctrine that the city has never been better than it is now. In true samizdat style, an informal but growing network of dissident government officials, journalists, angry and frustrated private citizens, and even real estate developers began to force the problem into 2017’s generally somnolent municipal elections. Last June, the office of Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer found 188 vacant storefronts along Broadway from Battery Park to Inwood—this on a main commercial avenue in an incredibly wealthy city, in the eighth year of an economic expansion.

The prevailing idea that we now live in the best of all possible New Yorks remains a powerful one. A rationalization, perhaps, to compensate for the frustration we experience living in a system that no one really likes but that we feel helpless to alter. In a recent history-memoir titled St. Marks Is Dead, the journalist Ada Calhoun laid on another such coat of Pangloss with her entertaining narrative of one of New York’s most fabled streets and neighborhoods. She concedes that the apartment she grew up in now would cost $5,000 a month but insists, "Who understands the soul of any place? Who deserves to be here? Who is the interloper and who the interloped-upon? Who can say which drunk NYU student stumbling down St. Marks Place will wind up writing the next classic novel or making the next great album?"

Well, it will have to be a drunk NYU student who can afford $5,000 a month in rent. What Calhoun and the other adamant Pollyannas refuse to understand is that a bar is one thing, a dance hall is one thing, and even a Gap or a Starbucks is one thing, but a bank branch is another. It is a carpet and a machine from which one extracts money, then leaves. No one is writing a novel or an album about it. Those things that we do not value, that we do not actively protect, fade away and die.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by JManc

I think the author is lamenting that American cities are becoming more homogeneous and in many ways (culturally) they are since many in this country live in an places hundreds/ thousands of miles from where they grew up.

I read the full article, and I think the author is simply lamenting getting old and glorifying the "good old days".

He's basically detailing all the neighborhood stuff that has closed, and all the people who have left, over his past 40 years and somehow tying it to larger trends in American cities. There's so much that's inaccurate in the article, but it would take forever to go line-by-line.

In short, the author moved to the (far) Upper West Side when it was going to hell, and now he's seeing it revert to where it was before he arrived, and he doesn't like it because it's erasing his youthful memories. He doesn't get that his experience was the outlier.

The UWS should be an incredibly wealthy area, given the housing stock and location. It was a really bizarre temporary situation where sumptuous prewars steps from Central Park were filled with drug addicts and welfare families.

[ThePhun1]

New York has lost some of its core culture. A New York (and New Jersey) accent isn't as common as it used to be, which is hardly saying it's not common.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Why is it "boring" to not be a declining shithole? NYC has just reverted to what it was during the first 350-odd years of its existence.

It's become like "everywhere else" in the world in the sense that is no longer that weird American phenomenon of hollowed core. But if that's what the author seeks, 95% of America awaits.

A healthy, desirable core is one thing, but New York (along with San Francisco and maybe London) is unique in just how exclusive it's become - to the point where it's detrimental to its quality of life.

Bombed-out, crime-infested shithole and gated community for the global elite are not the only possible outcomes for a city - much as that seems to have been the case for New York. At least it had a few good years in the 90s and 00s where it struck a comfortable enough balance between the two.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Apparently NYC was founded in the late 1960's. Who knew?

Why is it "boring" to not be a declining shithole? NYC has just reverted to what it was during the first 350-odd years of its existence.

It's become like "everywhere else" in the world in the sense that is no longer that weird American phenomenon of hollowed core. But if that's what the author seeks, 95% of America awaits.

Lets not stay stupid things.

NYC wasn't the "global capital of blah blah blah", and certainly wasn't an exclusive enclave for the wealthy for 350 years of its existence. It only started to become that by the mid-late 19th century, and even then it was overshadowed by European Capitals. It really only became the supercity that it presently is in the 20th century.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Bombed-out, crime-infested shithole and gated community for the global elite are not the only possible outcomes for a city - much as that seems to have been the case for New York. At least it had a few good years in the 90s and 00s where it struck a comfortable enough balance between the two.

That's where Chicago comes in. It has a bit of every thing:

1. Enclave for wealthy
2. Bombed out "shithole"
3. Middle class areas
4. Ethnic areas

Yay! We have it all

[McBane]

It's a valid point but greatly exaggerated. And the author ignores all the positives. Also, I think London has it worse, from the standpoint of ultra wealthy individuals buying homes/apartments as a means to park money. Admittedly, that's a different problem than what the author is writing about but still, the overall state of NYC today is better than it was 30-40 years ago.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

A healthy, desirable core is one thing, but New York (along with San Francisco and maybe London) is unique in just how exclusive it's become - to the point where it's detrimental to its quality of life.

Bombed-out, crime-infested shithole and gated community for the global elite are not the only possible outcomes for a city - much as that seems to have been the case for New York. At least it had a few good years in the 90s and 00s where it struck a comfortable enough balance between the two.

But none of these cities are "gated communities for the global elite". You're falling into the same trap as the author. He's on the UWS and extrapolating to overall city trends.

The UWS is one of the wealthiest urban neighborhoods on the planet. It isn't remotely indicative of citywide trends. In reality, most New Yorkers are working or middle class, with normal incomes and rents.

The only reason NYC is NYC is because of the concentration of rich. It enables the public and rent-controlled housing, the highest-in-nation school spending, the subsidized everything. The reason NYC declined in past decades is because it lost a significant share of wealth to the suburbs and elsewhere. Once that trend reversed, the city's fortunes reversed.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

NYC wasn't the "global capital of blah blah blah", and certainly wasn't an exclusive enclave for the wealthy for 350 years of its existence. It only started to become that by the mid-late 19th century, and even then it was overshadowed by European Capitals. It really only became the supercity that it presently is in the 20th century.

NYC was never "an exclusive enclave for the wealthy". It isn't East Hampton or Malibu.

It has always, since its founding, been a merchant city with a large proportional concentration of wealth. The only outlier period was from (say) 1965 to 1995 or so, when the city hemorrhaged wealth.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Crawford

NYC was never "an exclusive enclave for the wealthy". It isn't East Hampton or Malibu.

It has always, since its founding, been a merchant city with a large proportional concentration of wealth. The only outlier period was from (say) 1965 to 1995 or so, when the city hemorrhaged wealth.

This isn't true either, at least not for 350 years.

I don't think that New Amsterdam was a particularly wealthy place, as per my reading of New York's history. Even New York in the early years under the British was a trading port among countless others, but nothing noteworthy.

I don't think "large proportional concentration of wealth" can really be said about NYC until after the opening of the Erie Canal.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

did you actually bother to read the article. considering its length, and the time from i which i posted it, im going to assume not (i tried to finish it on a 30 minute train ride and still came up short).

what he is taking issue with the way the city is explicitly catering to the rich, and only the rich. the vast majority of new yorkers do not fall into that category, but their interests are not being represented. he is also lamenting the cultural whitewashing of the city, and the increasing inability of small mom and pop establishments to have a place in a community.

I only read the beginning; I'm at work. I can begin to understand where he is going with everything, which you are corroborating. Manhattan is going to be increasingly for the rich because of increasing land values, reflecting increasing desirability. But aren't there businesses that cater to these rich people? Aren't there even mom and pop businesses that cater to these rich people? Just because the businesses that this guy likes are not in his neighborhood doesn't mean that the city is going downhill. Places like SoHo are not like they were in the 1980s, but that doesn't mean that they are any worse now.

There are plenty of mom and pop businesses in New York City, in places like Queens and the Bronx.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

This isn't true either, at least not for 350 years.

NYC has been the leading city in the U.S. for about 240 years. For the first 100 years of its existence, it was an important port/merchant city, but likely behind Boston for the first 50 and Philly for the next 50.

In any case, ever since there has been any reliable data, NYC has been a city with a large and growing concentration of mercantile wealth, and the only outlier period was the late-20th century era of decline.

[10023]

Originally Posted by McBane

It's a valid point but greatly exaggerated. And the author ignores all the positives. Also, I think London has it worse, from the standpoint of ultra wealthy individuals buying homes/apartments as a means to park money. Admittedly, that's a different problem than what the author is writing about but still, the overall state of NYC today is better than it was 30-40 years ago.

But even that is nonsense. The parts of London that have been emptied out because all the property is owned by billionaires as investment properties are minuscule. I can’t think of anywhere that’s really like this aside from right around Belgravia Square and Eaton Square, and even there there’s retail and restaurants. They’re expensive retail and restaurants, but cities need that too. It’s not really a new phenomenon anyway, because these neighborhoods have been full of embassies (which completely destroy community and street life) for decades.

There are a ton of glass apartment towers being built all over town that are being bought largely by wealthy foreigners, I’m sure. But these weren’t neighborhoods to begin with, they’re places like Long Island City. But if they want to go over here and build the modern equivalent of Roosevelt Island (instead of straightening the river like they probably should have to build a connected urban fabric), they can be my guest:

https://goo.gl/maps/hdkweZGDQ7J2

https://www.londoncityisland.com

I would never live there, but its existence doesn’t harm anyone else...

[JManc]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

New York has lost some of its core culture. A New York (and New Jersey) accent isn't as common as it used to be, which is hardly saying it's not common.

New York's accent is ever changing. New Yorkers didn't sound like Bernie Sanders, James Gandolfini or Joe Pesci in the 30's and 40's, they sounded like Al Smith and FDR...with a very different accent. Today, it's changing to something else, flattening out along with the rest of the country.