Over the last 15 years, New York City has changed in ways that are at the same time shocking and merciless. For the billionaire CEOs, CFOs, and Wall Street managers, and the elite of super-wealthy investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and traders employed in the financial sector, whose earnings can reach highs unheard of in the rest of the country, New York is more than ever the global capital of multimillion-dollar deals and record fortunes. In the gilded towers of New York City, Wall Street moguls, Eastern European oligarchs, and Hollywood celebrities have created their own fantasylands of outrageous luxury, with apartments providing perks beyond one’s wildest dreams: private spas, sculpture gardens, outdoor pools, art galleries, meditation rooms, recording studios, wine cellars, and private elevators. For this privileged group of billionaires, New York satisfies all kinds of frivolous consumption fantasies, such as a $100-million duplex on Billionaire’s Row or a world-record-smashing $250-million four-floor apartment in a Robert A. M. Stern–designed tower at 220 Central Park South.1
For those other few with the means to enjoy it, New York is, more than any other global city, a glamorous haven of work, leisure, luxury shopping, and world-class entertainment. These are the new urban classes made up of employees in the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) industries, highly mobile professionals, and urban residents with higher-than-average incomes and strong purchasing power. Together, they compose a new affluent urban class whose presence is revolutionizing the social landscape of global cities such as London, Tokyo, Singapore, New York, Hong Kong, and Paris. In New York, they may be found drinking coffee in the cafes of the Village, snooping around at gallery openings in NoHo, or boutique shopping in trendy areas like the Meatpacking District.
For ordinary people, however, living in the city has become more and more of a challenge, and for those at the lower end of the social and economic ladder, surviving in today’s New York can be a living hell. These are the broke college students in Astoria and the starving artists in Bushwick, the teachers and the firefighters, the small business owners, the shoemakers and the dry cleaners, the minimum-wage clerks at the Duane Reade and Starbucks, the Mexican runners and janitors in the trendy restaurants of the Village. But even those able to make a middle-class income—salespeople, nurses, managers, executive assistants, graphic designers, copywriters, and other professionals—are being priced out of the city. During the years of Bloomberg, New Yorkers on middle incomes have struggled to survive in the least affordable American city because of the constant pressure of exorbitant rents in their neighborhoods. Before Bloomberg took office, the percentage of apartments that were unaffordable to median-income households was at around 20%. By 2010, almost 40% of all rental units had become unaffordable to average New Yorkers. While the city was being relentlessly remodeled for the wealthy, middle- and low-income residents became accustomed to never-ending cycles of instability and housing insecurity.
This is the result of the most aggressive urban development agenda ever adopted in the history of New York City. Even more aggressive than that of Robert Moses, the infamous “Power Broker” of post–World War II New York, Bloomberg’s agenda has rezoned immense swaths of the city’s working-class, manufacturing, and waterfront areas into a wonderland for lavish real estate. The speculative fever prompted by the presence of super-wealthy consumers, and encouraged by a political agenda all too prone to subsidize luxury development, has resulted in the widespread multiplication of overpriced, exclusive condominium buildings that are unaffordable but to the wealthiest. This is what “gentrification” has come to be in today’s New York: whereas in the past the reach of gentrification strategies was to rehabilitate working-class neighborhoods to middle-class standards, today’s super-gentrification is “upgrading” the city to standards that are unaffordable but to the very wealthy, pushing out even those who had been accused of gentrification in the past: New York’s middle class.
Welcome to the shadow side of Bloomberg’s “luxury city”: a segregated New York with the elites employed in the high-end sectors of the economy residing in the opulent enclaves of Manhattan and the Brooklyn/Queens waterfronts, and the low-wage and middle-income earners pushed farther and farther away from the city center—a dysfunctional city in which the low-wage service workers from Jamaica, Astoria, and Bed-Stuy suffer the most exhausting commute times in the country to get to their workplace, often as runners, dishwashers, and cleaners in the gleaming hotels, condos, restaurants, and cafes in Manhattan.
Enter de Blasio. New York City’s public advocate until 2013, Bill de Blasio was a fervent social activist in the 1980s and 1990s. His “tale of two cities” mayoral campaign, which placed the issue of inequality at the center of the political agenda, galvanized progressive urban activists, trade union leaders, and middle-class New Yorkers. Some media even depicted him as a dangerous socialist who would make a radical U-turn not only from the “luxury city” agenda of his billionaire predecessor, but also from the capitalist consensus on a neoliberal, free-market approach to city building. A parade of prominent liberal New Yorkers and Hollywood stars gave de Blasio their public endorsement. This buzz was reminiscent of the halo the media created around the figure of Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential elections. But the city’s real estate lobbies knew better, and lined up in support of the new mayor. And just as with Obama, radical change has yet to be seen.
The Bloomberg legacy was a city plagued with the most severe dearth of affordable housing for its middle- and low-income citizens seen in recent times. Yet de Blasio’s approach to solving this crisis didn’t differ much from that of Michael Bloomberg. Just like Bloomberg did before him, de Blasio hired a Goldman Sachs executive to be his deputy mayor for housing and economic development, the top position in New York’s urban development machine. One year later, he appointed the vice president of development for Forest City Ratner, one of the largest realtors in the city and fundraiser of his mayoral campaign, to join the Rent Guidelines Board—the panel responsible for annual rent adjustments for the over one million apartments that are under the city’s rent stabilization program. And his housing strategy, which he called “the largest, fastest affordable housing plan ever attempted at a local level,” seems to rely almost exclusively on the same strategies that made big real estate so fond of Bloomberg: giving out subsidies and tax exemptions to luxury developers with the condition that they include a percentage of affordable units in the upscale developments that continue to pop up in gentrifying neighborhoods across the city. But will they ever be enough, in a city where affordable housing is consistently lost at a much faster rate than it’s produced? In 2014, almost 60,000 people filed applications for 105 affordable units in Greenpoint. One year later, over 80,000 people found themselves applying for 38 newly built affordable units in Brooklyn.2
City officials’ talks of fostering “social inclusion” through these initiatives may have to be taken with a grain of salt: seven months into de Blasio’s term, the city approved a 33-story luxury tower at Riverside Drive in which the required-affordable-housing tenants must enter through a “poor door” located in the tower’s back alley. As the developer of a similar project in Williamsburg candidly admitted, it’s unfair to expect that the elite buying million-dollar apartments would wish to share their entrance with the likes of the lower or middle class. Such rich-door/poor-door developments, a legacy of Bloomberg’s housing strategy, have become yet another test for de Blasio, who had won based on his promise to bring an end to the “tale of two cities.” Despite the promises of the new mayor, and to the disappointment of many, little is changing in the day-to-day struggles of ordinary New Yorkers. More luxury development is about to come, and with it more rent increases and displacement are on their way.
The truth is that mayors, although powerful, can’t change the rules of a game that was started way before they came to power. And Bloomberg and de Blasio are only the latest chief executive officers of a powerful “urban regime” that was in place before their administrations, and that will continue to reign over the city after they are gone. In this book, I not only tell the story of 15 years of dramatic urban changes in New York, but also identify the powerful, yet unelected regime of city producers and city consumers that covertly rules the city. I describe a governing coalition that includes elected officials, local and extra-local property owners, real estate developers, the business and corporate industry, and the other power players who hold all the cards in the city building game. These city producers existed before Bloomberg and de Blasio, and will outlive their administration. For years, they have been on the front lines of a new kind of corporate-style urban development, one that has actively redesigned, rebranded, and repackaged the city, as if New York were a product targeting the elite or luxury market. Their main goal is to ensure the city is custom-tailored to a global, mobile, and exceptionally affluent population of city consumers. These are the new urban classes of professionals in the higher-paid echelons of the knowledge-based and creative sectors, local and international corporations, property investors and developers, urban tourists and resident-consumers, and an ever-growing elite of super-wealthy individuals. Their presence in the city is strongly encouraged by the regime of city producers, because, so the logic goes, it is through their consumption patterns that they keep the city’s elite markets and high-value industries alive.
In this book, I explain how since the early 1970s, New York’s city producers have worked to reinvent the city as an entertainment and consumption-based playground for this favorite target group of consumers. I tell the story of the once vastly industrial landscapes along the Brooklyn-Queens shoreline, which have been transformed into South Beach–like enclaves of gleaming condos on the waterfront. I talk about the once-shady neighborhoods of Hell’s Kitchen and downtown Brooklyn, and how they are being transfigured into spectacular islands of luxury towers for the well-off.
But I also tell the story of loss—the loss of legendary, iconic neighborhoods that have made New York what it is in the history of popular culture. I chronicle the developments that have radically changed the face of Harlem’s “Main Street,” where today, franchises like Gap, H&M, and Starbucks, coupled with gourmet Italian restaurants or cafes charging $5 for a cup of coffee, dominate a landscape that was once made of cheap bodegas, bookstores, liquor stores, and hair salons. And I describe the limbo of Coney Island, whose turn-of-the-century ballrooms and gritty arcade game parlors have been sacrificed to make room for a new wave of corporate retail. From Hell’s Kitchen to downtown Brooklyn, from Williamsburg to the Meatpacking District, I tell the story of the merciless years that have obliterated innumerable traces of old New York: of the thousands of historical buildings that have disappeared from the city map; of the innumerable diners, drugstores, bookstores, hardware stores, and laundromats that have shut their doors over the last decade; and of the shimmering condos, boutiques, cafes, and chain stores that are taking their place.
My journey starts in Harlem, the legendary African American neighborhood that has been caught in the midst of a development storm over the last two decades. In chapter 1, “The New Face of Harlem’s Main Street,” I visit 125th Street. I tell the story of Harlem’s most iconic boulevard, from its beginnings as a popular commercial thoroughfare in the 1910s and 1920s, through the decay of the neighborhood during the Great Depression and in the post–World War II years, to its real estate renaissance in the late 1990s and 2000s. This chronicle is accompanied by an investigation of the changing media representations of the area through the years, from frightening accounts of a crime-ridden ghetto plagued by poverty and drugs during the late 1960s and 1970s to the image of a vibrant and fashionable community by the late 2000s. In my account, I expose the pivotal role of city producers in the retelling of the story of Harlem’s Main Street to the world and to its own residents. I then examine the rezoning plan for 125th Street, which was approved by the city during the Bloomberg years. I identify the city producers who backed the plan and describe the contentious decision-making process that led to its approval. I investigate its impact on the physical, social, and symbolic space of the neighborhood. Finally, I focus on Harlem’s new consumers, a population of affluent black and white urbanites that are the main drivers of the so-called New Harlem Renaissance, the much-celebrated multicultural and economic transformation of what once was considered nothing but a barren urban ghetto. But beneath this shining surface, I illustrate the crafty dynamics behind the residential and commercial gentrification of 125th Street and its surroundings.
In chapter 2, “How Capital Shapes Our Cities,” I introduce some necessary background that will help readers understand why neighborhoods like Harlem, and cities like New York more generally, are doomed to never-ending cycles of creative destruction. I explain how the physical, social, and symbolic space of our cities is dominated by the imperatives of capital, in its relentless struggle to conquer every corner of our cities and to extract profit from it. I demystify the concept of “urbanization” and explain how urban land creates wealth for developers and land owners, and how this accumulation of wealth is favored by the daily works of elected officials. I offer a brief, compelling history of the evolutions in New York City’s urban policies that, particularly since the 1970s, have contributed to the urbanization we see today, and explain how, through the years, the relentless obliteration of traces of old New York has paved the way for the creation of a brand-new, more profitable city. In this chapter I explain how cities not only are crucial nodes and stages of consumption but also have become commodities in their own right. I argue that the physical fabric of our cities, their social environment, and even their representations in the popular media are manufactured and consumed. I theorize the existence of powerful elites of city producers, coalitions of interest groups that are actively engaged in manufacturing and branding the city. I investigate their activities and explain how they contribute to the production of a specific physical, social, and symbolic space: a repackaged wonderland for affluent city consumers. In turn, city consumers’ demand for specific urban experiences, strongly influenced by the media, leads to the production of a city that is more and more tailored to their demands and desires. I describe a new kind of cost-prohibitive, super-gentrified space as the product of the interlocking practices of city producers and city consumers.
In chapter 3, “The Producers and Consumers of New York City,” I identify several categories of producers that are active in New York City. These include the local government, the local and extra-local real estate industries, the business world, the media and city branding and marketing industry, and a corollary of nongovernmental organizations that operate within the local community and are active in the making of urban policy. Naming names, I investigate their activities and how they contribute to the production of a specific physical, social, and symbolic space that is custom-tailored for the new hordes of city consumers. I then identify these new consumers—individuals and groups who play a crucial role in dictating the guidelines of New York City’s urban agenda. These include geographically mobile urban residents, local and international corporations and businesses, local and extra-local property investors and developers, urban tourists, resident-consumers, and the new elites of super-wealthy players. I investigate their consumption patterns and clarify how their consumerist demands play a strategic role in the production of a repackaged, overdesigned, and super-commodified urban space.
In chapter 4, “Rezoning New York City,” I explain the strategies that city producers have adopted since the 1970s to physically transform New York into a consumption- and entertainment-based playground for new consumers. I start by introducing a brief history of zoning in New York City through the years, from the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan through the 1961 zoning resolution, which is still in vigor today, although it has been subjected to innumerable amendments since its adoption. I then investigate the rezoning agenda implemented by the Department of City Planning since the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg. I demonstrate how, compared to comprehensive master plans, site-specific rezonings have proven more flexible and accommodating to the erratic demands of a fluid and globalized real estate industry. I describe in detail the plans for New York City’s 2012 Olympic bid, the operations of the Department of City Planning under rezoning “czar” Amanda Burden, and PlaNYC 2030, Bloomberg’s plan for a postindustrial, ecologically friendly city unveiled in 2007. I examine two among the largest and most contested rezoning plans adopted by the city during Bloomberg’s first two terms in office, the Atlantic Yards and the Hudson Yards development plans, respectively in Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Far West Side. Both plans, I argue, epitomize a top-down approach to planning that has eschewed formal public review procedures, using state and city government powers to push development forward in spite of local opposition, often against the interests of the local communities. I criticize the key arguments that form the discursive framework of the Department of City Planning’s rezoning agenda for New York City, and I challenge official discourses of comprehensiveness, citizen participation, affordable housing, mixed-use development, and contextual development. In so doing, I highlight the many contradictions of the key discourses that have shaped Bloomberg’s, and are shaping de Blasio’s, urban agenda. Whether under Bloomberg or de Blasio, I argue, rezoning has been used as a tool for the physical upgrading of neighborhoods as much as a device for the social re-engineering of existing communities: with its insistence on the production of exclusive housing, high-end retail, and new infrastructures in disadvantaged neighborhoods, rezoning has institutionalized the gentrification of marginalized districts as a government-sponsored development program. This agenda also operates within already-gentrified districts, acting as a form of regentrification or, as urban scholar Loretta Lees calls it, “super-gentrification,” in which new generations of super-wealthy individuals from the corporate and financial industries are revolutionizing middle-class areas whose residents had in turn been responsible for the displacement of former working-class residents years ago.
In chapter 5, “The Rezoning That Almost Killed Coney Island,” I hit the streets once again to explore another iconic working-class neighborhood that has undergone tremendous change over the last 15 years. I tell a brief history of Coney Island’s heyday in the 19th and early 20th centuries and of its long decline after World War II, and I chronicle the popular representations of the neighborhood in the movies and the media from the 1970s to today. I investigate the rezoning plan for Coney Island approved in 2009 and illustrate its troubling impact on Coney’s legendary businesses and on the local amusement industry. I chronicle the property speculations that occurred prior to and immediately after the plan’s approval, and their impact on the neighborhood’s historic buildings, small businesses, and old amusement operators. The city’s ambitious visions of turning Coney Island from one of the city’s poorest residential areas into a luxury year-round seaside destination is still far from reality, but in the meantime, many small businesses, amusement parlors, and historical buildings have been wiped out to make room for a tide of retail chains that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
In chapter 6, “The Power Branders of New York City,” I demonstrate how, since the aftermath of New York’s fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s, city producers have consistently worked on remodeling the image of New York City through concerted marketing and branding efforts. But in recent years, the scope and scale of city branding has reached unprecedented highs. From Bloomberg to de Blasio, a corporate-style, vertically managed branding machine has contributed to the production of a new, hegemonic representation of the city as a commodity, and has dictated the guidelines of a growth-prone, luxury-oriented development agenda. By expanding the scope of branding initiatives across all five neighborhoods, and by incorporating elements of underground and off-culture into the compass of the tourist market, the branding of New York City has hastened a process of commodification of the urban experience that is unprecedented in its pervasiveness, and that is likely to become a prototype for the branding of big cities worldwide in the coming years.
In chapter 7, “A Different Brand of Mayor,” I tell the story of Mayor de Blasio and of his rise to power at a time when New Yorkers were afflicted by skyrocketing housing prices and low- and middle-income households, along with small independent businesses, were being priced out of the city in droves. A crusade against inequality became the central theme of de Blasio’s mayoral campaign, which was widely viewed as a repudiation of Bloomberg’s time in office. But the radical stances of pre-election de Blasio have loosened up quickly once in office. His substantial continuation of Bloomberg’s rezoning and housing agenda and his half-hearted commitment to the cause of small business owners have baffled those New Yorkers who believed in a radical cut with past policies. In opposition to the anti-Bloomberg rhetoric of his campaign, they suggest a choice of continuity with past policies, announcing that more of the same is on its way. Drawing mostly on de Blasio’s rezoning and housing plans, I explain how the new mayor has tried to broker a deal between his electoral promises and the imperatives of the “urban regime” of city producers that rules New York City. The de Blasio experience is showing that a new mayor won’t reverse the course of urban policy: undeterred by changes in leadership, New York’s city producers will strive to ensure that their achievements will be sustained in the years ahead. One thing is sure: in New York City, more years of creative destruction are on their way.