One thing I learned to accept while I was living in NYC is that the built environment is in constant flux. We also have to choose our battles in this regard: not every old building is the gorgeous old Penn Station and not every new building is the crappy new Penn Station.
I do understand how people can become attached to certain familiar buildings in their neighbourhood and can also understand how people take delight in impressively ugly ones (like the building at 2 Columbus Circle before it was turned into the Arts and Design Museum), but while there are exceptions the vast majority of gas stations and old industrial buildings aren’t worth preserving.
That said, the editorial perspective’s bleakness is more about the economic effects of the current change than it is about the aesthetic effects: the poor and powerless being pushed from neighbourhoods and buildings at the whim of developers looking to turn the city into an exclusive preserve of the wealthy. And the aesthetic effects described are valid: there are very few New Yorkers who would have a good word to say about the new supertall condo towers or the facade of the new Cooper Union building.
