New York — Winter has arrived, but the weather is moderate enough for walking and registering the city’s constant change. The relentless construction — demolition crews, cranes, foundations — that I see going on in almost every Manhattan neighborhood. At the moment I can see no way to stop the onslaught of the big money. We can nibble around the edges — build some affordable housing here and there, and strengthen rent stabilization and control — but we can’t stem the tide.
And though some elegantly conceived buildings might add life to a dreary, seedy block, others are outsized, ugly and sterile and only serve to undermine the neighborhood’s scale and fabric. The need for extending the land-marking of historic districts and contextual zoning (regulating the height and bulk of new buildings so they are consistent with existing neighborhood character) becomes clearer with each passing month. Otherwise, any building or area unprotected by law is fair game for rapacious developers.
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During the last Republican debate, the intellectually sharp, malevolently reactionary Senator Cruz attacked the quick-witted, blustering demagogic Donald Trump for ”embodying New York values.” He explained what he meant was that the city is “socially liberal” and “focuses around money and media.” He was obviously appealing to voters in the mythic hinterland, who I assume still find New York an alien, repellent place, dominated by moneyed and intellectual elites, and minorities — a world where “real people” don’t live.
I have no use for either of the leading Republican candidates, and care little about their empty barbed exchanges, but I am totally committed to the city. For me New York’s urban character consists of much more than the sum of its world-class museums, theaters, restaurants, hotels, glittering shops, and the sums of money and grand ambitions that can be realized here. A great part of the city’s appeal for me lies in the crowds that throng Manhattan’s streets, and always provide one with a visceral rush. For the street, according the late writer on urban life, William H. Whyte, “is the river of life of the city, the place where we come together, the pathway to the center.” These crowds also offer consolation, however dark one’s personal mood. Seeing people out strolling in public, shopping, heading to some destination provides at least the illusion that life is being embraced.
Great cities are also all about the variety and intricacy of ethnicities, ideologies, sensibilities, and styles of life that inhabit them. In addition, one lives with the feeling in New York that the unexpected can always arise. For on every corner unscripted surreal and naturalistic dramas may spontaneously erupt. In New York it’s hard to become complacent, and see the world as a comfortable, secure place. For there is nothing permanent in this city of flux; the multiplicity of social classes, ethnic groups, races, and subcultures that characterize the city suggests that life both has the possibility of infinite success and profound loss. I feel that failure may bind every success, and each moment of pleasure may be entwined with despair. My way of seeing was shaped by the literary hero of my college years, Albert Camus, who wrote in The Stranger: “There is not love of life without despair about life.” The city has always elicited both these feelings from me.