The news that New York City has not grown as fast since 2000 as was expected has produced consternation and disbelief among a number of prominent New Yorkers, including Chuck Schumer, Marty Markowitz, and (of course) Mayor Bloomberg. The reaction is interesting for a couple of reasons.
First, it's clear that much of the sputtering is driven by a specific sort of New York City chauvinism: the idea that New York is the biggest, the best, and the most grand (if not grandiose), city in the country if not the world. That is to say, that New York City's identity rests on its larger-than-life characteristics.
There's something to this. Clearly, it's New York City's size and diversity that gives it many of its distinctive characteristics and which makes it a draw for people of all sorts from around the country and the world. But is the growth of New York City's population beyond its already large size necessarily a good thing?
There's a bunch of things to think about here. Granted, the Bloomberg administration's PlaNYC 2030 is an attempt, no matter how flawed, to at least grapple with population growth. But is there any evidence that the region's political elite can do what's necessary to maintain and create the infrastructure necessary to support growth in the future? The fate of ARC and the Second Avenue Subway would suggest not. Moreover, New York City, thanks to economic and financial crisis, along with the bipartisan national embrace of austerity and upward redistribution of wealth, is facing years of fiscal crisis. Without major new sources of revenue, it's not at all obvious how the city will be able to do anything other than watch its physical and social infrastructure rot--despite the (as of now, unmet) promises that the Bloomberg Way would set the city on the path to fiscal stability.
But what I want to highlight here is one simple juxtaposition. On the one hand, it is fairly well-established (pdfs in links) that city size is correlated with inequality: basically, the larger a city's population, the more likely it is that it will attract "global city" economic functions, which tend to bifurcate into very high and very low paying jobs.
On the other hand, as I have documented in earlier posts, the Bloomberg administration has vigorously pursued a development strategy that has exacerbated inequality in the city, by privileging the attraction and retention of high-end professionals and business executives. As perhaps is too obvious to even be worth saying, the Luxury City is an unequal city.
On the other hand, as I have documented in earlier posts, the Bloomberg administration has vigorously pursued a development strategy that has exacerbated inequality in the city, by privileging the attraction and retention of high-end professionals and business executives. As perhaps is too obvious to even be worth saying, the Luxury City is an unequal city.
Barring the unlikely event of a drastic shift in development policy, one that makes major strides towards ameliorating, if not reversing inequality, the bigger New York City that Chuck Schumer, Marty Markowitz, and Michael Bloomberg long to see will also be a less equal New York City.
0 Yorumlar