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Has NYC lost its soul?

By Justin Rocket Silverman, amNewYork Staff Writer | jsilverman@am-ny.com

October 5, 2007

A new Chelsea high-rise will include a special elevator to lift tenants' cars to a parking space right outside their condos, recreating the suburban garage. More than 120 Chase bank branches are in Manhattan, including 23 that have opened in the past three years. And don't forget the borough's two Olive Gardens and eight T.G.I. Friday's.

Is this the same New York City that inspired generations of writers, musicians and artists, from Herman Melville to Billie Holiday to the denizens of Andy Warhol's Factory?

Or is some essential aspect of the city's unique character, perhaps even its very soul, being squashed in the rush to make Manhattan look more like the rest of America?

"It used to be a badge of honor to live in New York City, and we used to laugh at the people in the suburbs," said Jerilou Hammett, co-editor of the book "The Suburbanization of New York."

"Urban areas were all about diversity and the struggle of the creative individuals ... Now, other than little monikers like SoHo and NoHo, where is the uniqueness of most neighborhoods?"

Indeed, with the seemingly epidemic-scale disappearance of the longtime small shops and low-scale residential buildings that give neighborhoods texture, some are wondering whether the feel of New York has forever changed.

The Municipal Art Society is examining these issues with a new exhibit on the legendary city urbanist Jane Jacobs, who successfully blocked a highway from cutting through Greenwich Village in the 1960s and argued that a neighborhood's character is its most valuable asset. The exhibit and accompanying panel discussions look at the numbing qualities of gentrification, chain stores, and an influx of people who move to the city without a sense of its history.

So widespread is the phenomenon that Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) is working with the planning commission on tax and zoning strategies to preserve independent businesses in the city.

"There are hundreds, if not thousands of mom and pops that shut down in recent years. In one instance a new Duane Reade location took over 13 small stores," Brewer said.

In town for a new product launch this week, Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz implied that New Yorkers were wholeheartedly embracing the changing character of their city. Asked just how many Starbucks locations he thinks the city can support, Schultz discussed the many emails he gets requesting new stores.

"I still think our lines are too long," he said.

But the brisk sale of $4 lattes would not necessarily have been emblematic of a healthy city to Jacobs, said Christopher Klemek, the co-curator of the Jacobs exhibit. "

Jacobs thought the city was buffeted by two potentially cataclysmic forces," he said. One came from government, but the other from the success of private businesses, something Jacobs called "oversuccess."

"Even if a place looks like it is doing well, that success can ultimately undermine the foundation of that place's vitality," Klemek said.

"The trick is to make sure that these destructive forces don't become like a fire hose that just wash everything away."