Thursday, May 17, 2012

I Support This

 
Unfortunately, I doubt many other New Yorkers, particularly those with money, do.
 
In gentrification, we've destroyed neighborhood after neighborhood. Keeping Harlem at the scale it presently exists would help preserve the single most important cultural neighborhood in the city. Think about it: you can mention any other neighborhood, and you'll get different opinions as to what they represent (even Times Square) but Harlem evokes a passion and majesty that remains consistent across generations.
 
That's not to say the neighborhood won't change. It will. It has to. It's one of the few affordable inner city neighborhoods left and that means there's pressure on landlords to find new tenants and gain increased rents. But there's no reason to destroy a neighborhood to enrich a few.