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. — Harper's Magazine
The story keeps going. "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."
9 Comments
The author has lived in NYC for 40 years - I think they're the one who has gotten boring.
I think this has been covered.
This is the very essence of gentrification. Everything gets "upgraded" to corporate / chi-chi / designer. Ethnic food becomes bland pricey "high style". Pizza goes gourmet - 7" 'personal' pies for $24. Beers are $12-14, wine $16-22 and Tequila $22-42 per glass. Thrift shops are replaced by faddish chain stores. Culture is reduced to mindless consumption of branded goods and services.
Meanwhile real culture - the mixing pot of races and nationalities that provide not just the bedrock on which "high" culture is delivered but more importantly the experience of global multicultural diversity - is all but extinguished, pushed into ever less tenable living and working conditions to service their "betters" in former industrial waste sites and slums that have been transformed into tax-abated luxury condos with water views and car elevators.
This article has some valid points but it gets lost in the sense of a curmudgeon who does not want any thing to get built or changed. This author is a CAVE dweller Citizens Against Virtually Everything, and I find this infuriating that these so called journalist/critics can tell us what they think is wrong because the feel it is wrong and actually skimp on facts and offer no solutions other than making it impossible to change anything. A city is a living thing not an object frozen in amber.
Over and OUT
Peter N
Having spent over many, many decades in NYC, it is heartbraking to have witnessed the removal of it soul by developers with no conscience to its history with a nod and a wink from City Hall politicos. NYC has become a large dorm inhabited by outsiders who watched too much TV fed by very expensive cafeterias, a never ending traffic jam, luxury parking and empowered cyclists that flaunt basic traffic laws.
Hopefully the author can find the time to travel to one of those outer boroughs for the excitement he craves. Me, I'll take the peace and tranquility of a safe and bustling city. This kind of nostalgia is strange.
This is happening everywhere. Maybe it should be unlawful to develop a building without being an owner-user-stakeholder or an architect. Make buildings a part of our heritage, not a commodity.
It’s not about safety vs crime. NYC has gotten so hyper affluent and with that, becomes so much less interesting in what it has to offer. It’s become a cleaner, more beautiful city, and still bustling, but it’s also become strangely high-end suburban in restaurants, shops, entertainment, etc. NYC today is like a city version of Whole Foods.
Haven’t read Harper’s in awhile. After this one, it’s gonna stay that way.
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