I remember the trolls in the comments at Curbed used to (still do?) claim that you have to either let developers have their way or cede the streets to crackheads.
Unsurprisingly, their hero Mayor Bloomberg comes up with his own false choice of extremes, on whether to allow Wal-Mart to build here: "You should let the marketplace decide," he said. "Anybody who has tried to manage the marketplace, it has not turned out very well. I think the Soviet Union is as good an example as you'd ever need of that."
I love it how people who can afford to escape the negative effects of The Market preach its innate wisdom, no matter how money's made or spent, and see moral superiority and a lesson for others in their singular ability to take as much as possible from the world without choking on it.
But Bloomberg's never seen anything special in NYC anyway, and never cared to find the balance point that could preserve what made NYC special: the humility, and the respect for millions of humble lives lived in proximity, that left enough air for people at the bottom to breathe. Instead he's done everything he can to turn NYC into a gilded catwalk where arrogant aristocrats flaunt their wealth and admire each other.
Searching for the key to maintaining a "healthy" city, I keep coming back to this simple thought: There is nothing noble in poverty, but there is in humility. And the arrogance of wealth is what's destroying NYC, block by block.
