Thursday, June 14, 2007

The final frontier

Development of the Rockaways may mean that people who live there may finally be serviced by the city. Or is the correct verb "tweeded?"

Change Reaches the City’s Edge


As the city offers incentives to developers to build housing on some of the last remaining plots of vacant land in the city, George fears great – and what he sees as catastrophic – change in the community...The developers have blocked or built over streets, so getting to the sand or boardwalk can require a long, roundabout walk...“Developers rule the roost….No matter what they do, they win. The city allows developers to build almost anything they want,” Baxter said.

Photo from Gotham Gazette

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So in a way.....by denying the public easy access to the beaches......sand and surf will become slightly "privatized" for landowners whose property is contiguous with, or abuts, the shoreline!

Another form of denying the "lower classes" a quick dip in the ocean.

This racist move is worthy of Robt. Moses who deliberately built (low headroom) vehicle overpasses to Jones Beach so that buses carrying the "common classes" of people couldn't pass beneath them!

Anonymous said...

Well, the same thing for the East River waterfront.

The point here, is that a city that prides itself as a bastion of liberal thought, as a place to embrace the world's humanity, as a shining example of the human condition, is in danger of slipping into a cynical example of the tweeded and the connected.

Every gesture of compassion carefully calculated, but an empty symbol without content.