Tag moss

I recently read a highly publicized pro-NIMBY book, Vanishing New York.   The author, who goes by the pen name “Jeremiah Moss” tells a simple story: throughout New York, gentrification and chain stores are on the march, making the city rich and boring.  The story has an element of truth: obviously, there are some places that have gentrified, and there are some places (mostly notably Times Square) that have lots and lots of banks and chain stores. But on balance, the book’s relationship with factual reality is a bit uneven.  Much of the book complains about the evils of gentrification. But in fact, even in Manhattan the poverty rate is 17.9 percent, about three times that of most New York suburbs. Moss also claims that the city is getting whiter, but even Manhattan is 40 percent black and Hispanic, and New York City as a whole is 54 percent black and Hispanic. By contrast, in 1980 the city was only 45 percent black/Hispanic, and in 1940 it was over 90 percent white. Moss seems to think that the city is being taken over by chain stores. The last time I walked through the East Village (one of the neighborhoods he writes about) I found about one or two such stores per block, or about 5 or 10 percent of all storefronts.  My guess is that Moss thinks about chain stores the way many racists think about racial minorities: because they assume one is too many, 5 percent seems to them like a takeover. Moss is all for immigration from foreign nations, but constantly complains about newcomers, especially parents; he uses the word “stroller” like anti-Semites use the term “international bankers”- as a code-word for a dreaded enemy.  He has a problem with college students too (complaining about “NYU’s presence… [having] spread […]