City of Strangers has moved!
14 years ago
Refusing to accept that all change is good and all progress necessary, we dedicate this blog to the vanishing but treasured discreet charms of New York City.
In the mid-1940s, something happened to American cities. Thought to be cancerous to the rapidly suburbanized American landscape, urban "slum" areas were "cleaned up."
The result was largely disastrous. Millions of dollars were spent knocking down tenement neighborhoods, some of which were considered safe, friendly and pretty by its residents, but as waste land by government and developers.
After these large-scale demolitions, thousands of middle to lower-income people were left homeless and with no other option but to migrate to other slums, usually further outside the city centers. In replacement, luxury condominiums, corporate skyscrapers and more often than not, empty lots, began to dot the cityscape.
Coupled with the expansion of the Federal Housing Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, and the GI Bill, which allowed for more white Americans than ever to move out of the cities and into the increasingly popular burbs, cities suffered from heightened racial tensions, severely limited affordable housing, and witnessed the destruction of countless landmarks.
The City Beautiful movement peaked in the 1890s and early 1900s, to combat changing patterns of urban planning, patterns that destroyed old but gorgeous urban structures.
Beautiful old structures are still being torn down. Neighborhoods are still over developed, and middle to lower-income residents are forced to reconsider moving out of their once-cherished neighborhoods.
We are in need of another such movement today for New York City. Astronomical housing prices and the oppressive wave of gentrification in Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan, not to mention the recent plethora of super luxury all-glass buildings, are once again destroying that which makes New York great: diversity, integrity, history, and affordability.
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