Quote from monistat7:
while i generally dont like eminent domain because it opens the door for corruption and abuse, i completely trust bloomberg with it. i would never trust someone like dick cheney with it. without eminent domain, time square would still be the nasty craphole that it was before the mid-90's. for those of you who have never seen old times square, you have no idea what it was like compared to now.
bloomberg's point about eminent domain is that he wants to use it to revitalize poverty stricken areas. this is not about demolishing middle class neighborhoods to make high rise condos for the elite. i would not call old alphabet city or prospect heights "middle class" by any means. but if you visit harlem, the lower east side, prospect heights, long island city and many other up and coming neighborhoods in NYC, you will see alot of economic activity and the areas are quite clean and safe to live now. all this progress is because of eminent domain.
on the flipside, you can argue that the poor get screwed and are forced to live elsewhere. basically the NYC economy is expanding and middle and upper class residents are reaping the benefits at the expense of the poor.
in all fairness, there is no one right choice on this issue. do you want to keep the ghettos and stunt economic growth (no one wins but no one gets screwed) or do you want to tear down the ghettos and revitalize the economy (poor ppl lose, everyone else wins)? do you prefer old times square with the sleaze and drugs (old school NYC culture) or do you want new times square, which is clean and safe but looks like disney world. i personally prefer the new times square but both sides can be argued.
Eminent domain - my bad. I'm sorry, but it's not correct that Bloomberg has limited the focus of eminent domain to impoverished neighborhoods.
As an example: Harlem. As new colonists have pushed through old boundaries, namely 96th street, in search of more affordable housing, the culture of the community has changed. Residents are displaced because of rent increases and the conversion of buildings from rentals to condos. If you really think about it, the same kind of opportunism by developers that are being utilized in New Orleans to prevent the mostly African American population to reclaim their homes and land, is inspired by the same flawed reasoning for Bloomberg to use the same type of methods for the same intended result.
Poor neighborhoods always were, and always will be, dangerous, that's what poverty breeds. If you want to do something about the danger, do something about that which breeds it. Moving impoverished minorities out of one area, forcing them to flee to another, solves nothing but to make more room and money for rich white guys.
Let's not pretend otherwise.
I for one, prefer the old Times Square. The area still has it's share of dangers, just less interesting thugs, drug dealers, and panhandlers. That said, what makes the area safer today, than it was prior to the gentrification, is that as our population has multiplied, businesses grown, traffic and mass transit has increased, as well as tourism, the sheer numbers of people on the street provide safety in numbers.
It's a leap to conclude that the Disnification can be thanked for that.
The old times square may have been ugly and smelly and sketch, but at least it was real. It was an aspect of New York, a particular thing unto itself. It had it's own culture, unique and alive though nothing someone in love with clean or safe would appreciate.
Now it's nothing, it's dead. A street that could easily be slipped onto the urban landscape of any number of other large cities without seeming out of place, or missed.
To my mind, real life in the form of sagging buildings that have histories, and people who are up to living lives I wouldn't know anything about, lives that were exotic or strange, are better than a sanitized nothing that's meant to look like something.
Progress is a relative concept.
