From New York Magazine:The Bloomberg administration has encouraged development with an enthusiasm that has frequently had even the mayor’s admirers fuming. But just as often, it has protected the status quo. The Department of City Planning has marched through all five boroughs, rezoning 100 neighborhoods since 2001 and regularly drawing fire for opening up areas like 125th Street, the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront, and Hudson Yards to high-rises. But the great majority of changes to the zoning code have involved keeping streets quiet and leafy, buildings low, and development at bay. Currently, the department is studying ways to preserve Astoria’s … Astorianess. Controlling development is also the business of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which has designated 170 historic districts and 25 individual buildings since 2002. These actions don’t stop time, but they do prevent the wholesale erasure of our brick-and-brownstone history. Preservation recognizes that people live in New York because they like it here and that keeping it that way is a good investment.
Much of the recent metamorphosis has actually rolled back transformations of previous decades. The renovated Grand Concourse today resembles the airy boulevard of the forties more than it does the devastated artery of the seventies. For all the glass towers and gentrification, this is still largely a city of houses, stoops, and tenements. Rooflines are still crowned with cylindrical water towers. The bodega still thrives—or at least struggles along as it always did.
New York is an aging city in a culture transfixed by youth. Ten years of manic construction were balanced by an outpouring of conservative energy that expressed itself in restoration, retrofitting, protest, and hunkering down. So the next time you pass a block that looks pretty much the way it did a generation ago, remember: The status quo doesn’t happen by itself. Preserving even a part of it is a major urban accomplishment.
9 comments:
And work is freedom too I suppose.
Now the preservation community will stand around and accept this drival?
Of course.
Tell this to the people in Dutch Kills.
How in the hell is that person's life the same when a building vastly larger than his is now blocking out the sunlight, an alley with perhaps a mom-daughter next door now as a changeing cast of characters contributing to the din (to say nothing of chicken bones from the barbeques flying off the hanging junkyards into the backyard thus adding to "ripe" texture of the community), and parking on the street ... is exactly as before.
So the next time you pass a block that looks pretty much the way it did a generation ago, remember: The status quo doesn’t happen by itself. Preserving even a part of it is a major urban accomplishment.
No, it just means that this is a big city with many neighborhoods. The powers that be just haven't hit this one yet. Be patient and they will knock it down in due time.
Hilarious. It takes an act of arson to get anything landmarked/preserved here.
Miss Heather, Greenpoint resident and documentor of north Brooklyn Bloomblight:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/missheather/sets/72157624021046894/show/
"New York is an aging city in a culture transfixed by youth. Ten years of manic construction were balanced by an outpouring of conservative energy that expressed itself in restoration, retrofitting, protest, and hunkering down."
NYC is mainly "transfixed" by profit motives.
"So the next time you pass a block that looks pretty much the way it did a generation ago, remember: The status quo doesn’t happen by itself."
...And take a look at many of the people living there, that tells a different story. Many of those status-quo neighborhoods are now populated by immigrants and not the next generation of young white Americans.
Why? Well many of those young whites either prefer to be nearest the city in apartments or, want newer homes.
I've had business in Astoria for exactly 20 years and in that time the area's population has changed near-completely.
The young whites and some of the poorer immigrants live in the buildings nearest the N train and most of the classically "Astoria" one/two's are now owned by arabs-pakis and a smattering of other immigrants.
Most of our white clientele are old hangers-on whose number fall on a monthly basis.
Neighborhoods where preservation is successful tend to be either high-end with large floorplans or in areas of distinguished architecture...Neither being generally associated with Astoria.
As for those "finger" apt buildings, look, in the early 90's I was offered single fam brk houses near Astoria Blvd for$125-140K, this was 1993-4. When I looked at the local offerings in 2007 those same types of buildings were asking $700-800+
What, or who would you expect to be willing to pay anywhere near that for this area?
Answer: Someone intending to build a multiunit of some sort.
As I have said before, the only way to deal with this is to change the zoning and NOT ALLOW VARIANCES...be prepared for a fight from your neighbors who think they'll get rich by selling at top dollar.
Good luck.
Hilarious. It takes an act of arson to get anything landmarked/preserved here.
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No, it takes removal of the self styled preservationist leaders. They are the noose around our necks, and LPC knowing that, gets away with murder.
But I think we can agree on two points:
1. the article is bullshit.
2. no "expert" in preservation will say a word that it is.
"Neighborhoods where preservation is successful tend to be either high-end with large floorplans or in areas of distinguished architecture...Neither being generally associated with Astoria."
Old Astoria was the latter. Unfortunately the Manhattan asshole that runs the LPC didn't think so.
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