Inauguration Highlights

Top 10 highlights of yesterday's mayoral inauguration (in no particular order):


1. Watching the first family emerge from the subway station--and hearing everyone on the receiving line go crazy declaring their love for the fabulous Chirlane.




2. Bloomberg's unrelenting sourpuss. Without a glimmer of lightness, he never altered his unsmiling pouty face throughout the entire event. He looked like an angry child who just had his favorite toy taken away and who was determined to pout for the duration, no matter how much everyone around him was smiling. In fact, the more they smiled, the more he pouted.


photo: Corey Sipkin, Daily News



These are not the same photo. He just never changed his utterly joyless expression.







Even when shaking Clinton's hand, it was little Pouty McPoutface all the way.




3. The fact that no one thanked Bloomberg until Bill Clinton, nearly an hour into the event. He was barely mentioned at all. Not only that, almost every speaker ripped into his destructive vision of the "luxury city."


4. Public Advocate Letitia James. This woman is future mayor material and her speech pulled no punches--she said it all and then some. It’s time for a city government, she said, “that cares more about a child going hungry than a new stadium or a new tax credit for a luxury development... We live in a gilded age of inequality where decrepit homeless shelters and housing developments stand in the neglected shadow of gleaming, multi-million-dollar condos, where long-term residents are being priced out of their own neighborhoods by rising rents and stagnant incomes... Where hospital closures serve as an existential threat to the health of our community, and library privatization moves are little more than land grabs for more luxury condos.”


5. Dasani Coates, the little girl from the Times' expose on homelessness, held up the Bible for Letitia James' swearing in. After, Letitia and Dasani did a fist bump.


6. Today's New York City is a "plantation," said the Department of Sanitation's Reverend Fred Lucas, Jr.


7. The youth poet laureate Ramya Ramana kicked ass, whipping up the crowd with her indictment of classism (to which Bloomberg responded with a tepid "applause" of fingertips tapping the back of his hand).


8. The guy with the "End of an Error" sign who stood outside City Hall. On the reverse, his sign read "Beaux Riddance!" to Bloomberg.




9. The Bible that de Blasio used for his swearing in was once sworn upon by FDR.


10. And, of course, Bill de Blasio. The anti-Bloomberg. (So far.) The desperately needed breath of fresh air. In his speech, he was unequivocal: “let me be clear. When I said I would take dead aim at the tale of two cities, I meant it. And we will do it.” We will change the city, he said, “so New Yorkers see our city not as the exclusive domain of the 1%, but a place where everyday people can afford to live, work, and raise a family.”

Amen.

Master List: 2001 - 2013

At the end of each year, I usually do a round-up of that year's vanished places. But this year is special. This year means the end to the evil Bloomberg era, so I offer this "Master List" of Vanished New York from 2001 to 2013. It's been 12 merciless years of destruction and loss, from "significant" losses to countless "smaller" ones--neighborhood laundromats, shoe repair shops, drugstores--far more than I have compiled here.

If you look only at this list and add up all the years in business represented, we lost approximately 6,926 years of New York City history in only a dozen years. And we know the real number is much higher than that.

Clearly, we need strong protections for the city's small businesses. Many of the closures were due to the impact of gentrification, either through rising rents, demolition for luxury development, or a decrease in business due to their neighborhood's up-shifting of demographics and values. A few closed for unrelated reasons, like the owner's death or retirement, but I included them all. I'm sure I've missed many--in part because I didn't start the blog until 2007. Please add them in the comments, and include the date and reason for closure if you can. Also, if you see any mistakes, please offer corrections. Thank you.

This list is a living document. I plan to add to it over time. Here's a nice quote about it from Kristin Iverson at Brooklyn Magazine: "For those of us who have lived in New York for a long time, perusing the list was not unlike looking through a high school yearbook, only finding out that practically everyone had died."



2013 (836 years)
Stile's Market: 26 years
Pushed out by landlord, to be demolished for luxury development

5Pointz, formerly Phun Phactory: 20 years
White-washed by owner, to be demolished for luxury condo towers

Famous Roio’s/Ray’s Pizza: 40 years
Building sold

Ray Beauty Supply: 50 years
Property seized by landlord

Vercesi Hardware: 101 years
Building sold to be demolished for luxury condos

D’Auito’s Bakery: 89 years
Unknown

Odessa Restaurant: 48 years
Building sold, gastropub to move in, now for rent

Splash gay bar: 22 years
Lack of business

Paradise Café: 20 years
Rent hike

Big Nick’s Burger and Pizza Joint: 51 years
Rent increase from $42,000 to $60,000 a month

Max Fish: 24 years
Rent increase

Joe’s Dairy: 60 years
Cost of doing business

Bleecker Bob’s Records: 46 years
Rent hike

Blarney Cove: 50+ years
Evicted for new development

Sofia’s Italian restaurant: 35 years
Lost their lease

9th Street Bakery: 87 years
38% rent hike, replaced by juice-cleanse and smoothie shop

Capucine’s Italian restaurant: 33 years
Rent hike

Rawhide gay bar: 34 years
Rent hike, to be turned into a pizza chain from California



2012 (1302 years)
Rocco Ristorante: 90 years
Lost lease to trendy restaurateurs, gutted and upscaled

The Holiday Cocktail Lounge: 47 years
Sold and gutted for a gastropub

Kenny’s Castaway’s: 45 years
Rising cost of business

McCullough’s Kiddie Park, Coney Island: 50 years
Lost their lease

Manganaro's Grosseria: 119 years
Sold and gutted for a more upscale restaurant

A Clean Well-Lighted Place: 36 years
Now an upscale boutique

World of Video: 29 years
Lost its lease

Chelsea Gallery Diner: 30 years
Forced out of Chelsea

Bill's Gay 90s: 88 years
Lost its lease to a trendy restaurateur, gutted and upscaled

Atlas Barber School: 64 years
Lost lease due to hiked rent, now a UPS

Prime Burger: 47 years
Lost lease when building sold

Lascoff Pharmacy: 113 years
Closed and gutted

Colony Records: 60 years
Closed when the new landlord quintupled the rent to $5 million

Movie Star News: 73 years
Rent hiked, turned into a luxury bathroom fixture store

Lafayette French Bakery: 30+ years
Evicted

Partners & Crime Bookshop: 18 years
Closed due to lack of business

University Diner: 60 years
Evicted

El Faro: 85 years
Possibly evicted?

Village Chess Shop: 40 years
Closed due to lack of business

The Stage Deli: 75 years
Rent increase

Lenox Lounge: 63 years
Landlord doubled the rent, given to upscale restaurateur

H&H Bagels: 40 years
Last location evicted



2011 (575 years)
Gansevoort Pumping Station, Premier Veal plant: 105 years
Evicted and demolished for new Whitney Museum and High Line headquarters

Polonia: 22 years
Probable rent hike

Auggie’s Coffee shop: 45 years
Could not afford the rent

The Original Ray's Pizza: 52 years
Legal dispute with landlord

Mars Bar: 26 years
Demolished to build luxury condos, to become a bank

Brownfeld Auto: 120 years
Evicted when landlord decided to sell for luxury High Line development

Chelsea Hotel: 127 years
Sold and closed to guests

Life Café: 30 years
Dispute with landlord over repairs

Elaine’s: 48 years
Death of owner



2010 (886 years)
Skyline Books: 20 years
Probable rent hike, replaced with a body waxing salon

JJ’s Navy Yard bar: 103 years
Evicted, sold, and demolished, replaced by hipster coffee

Telephone Bar and Grill: 22 years
Sold and replaced with a frat bar

Gino: 65 years
Closed when landlord raised rent $8,000 per month, turned into a cupcake bakery chain

Empire Diner: 34 years
Lost their lease

Guss’ Pickles: 100 years
Left the Lower East Side due to rising neighborhood rents

Shore Hotel: 107 years
Coney Island hotel, demolished by Thor Equities to make room for new construction

Fedora: 58 years
Closed by owner in old age, taken over by a trendy restaurateur, gutted and upscaled

Carmine's at the Seaport: 107 years
Closed when landlord raised the rent to $13,000 a month

St. Vincent's Hospital: 161 years
Closed and demolished for a billion-dollar luxury condo project

New York Doll Hospital: 109 years
Death of owner, no successor



2009 (613 years)
Arnold Hatters: 50 years
Unable to make rent after original location taken by eminent domain to build New York Times tower, replaced by 7-Eleven

Joe Jr.'s diner: 35 years
Lost their lease, now upscale coffee

P&G Bar: 67 years
Lost lease, gutted and replaced by upscale cafe

Amato Opera House: 61 years
Closed by the owner in old age, building sold

Love Saves the Day: 43 years
Closed in part due to high rent

Tavern on the Green: 75 years
Bankruptcy

Café Des Artistes: 92 years
Bankruptcy

Manny’s Music: 74 years
Bought out by Sam Ash, also later shuttered

Provincetown Playhouse: 91 years
Demolished by NYU

Biography Bookshop: 25 years
Rent hike, owners relocated as BookBook



2008 (821 years)
Jefferson Market: 79 years
Money trouble, now sales office for billion-dollar luxury condo project at St. Vincent's

Fazil’s Times Square Studio: 73 years
Closed for building demolition

Astroland amusement park: 46 years
Sold to Thor Equities for redevelopment

Donnell Library: 53 years
Closed and demolished for a luxury hotel

The Minetta Tavern: 71 years
Landlord raised the rent, gave lease to upscale restaurateur

Bobby's Happy House: 61 years
Building sold for a big-box chain store

Chez Brigitte: 50 years
Rent doubled, replaced by frozen yogurt chain

Cafe Figaro: 39 years
Lost their lease, became fast-food burrito chain and bank

Yankee Stadium: 85 years
Demolished and replaced with an upscale ballpark

Shea Stadium: 44 years
Demolished and replaced with upscale, corporate-named Citi-Field

Florent: 24 years
Closed due to rent hike, from $6,000 to $50,000 per month

Vesuvio Bakery: 88 years
Sold

M&G Diner: 40 years
Sold and shuttered

Cheyenne Diner: 68 years
Lost its lease, moved away



2007 (783 years)
Limelight: 24 years
Shuttered by police, reopened, eventually closed and converted to luxury shopping mall

The Roxy: 29 years
Shut down for conversion to luxury condos

Dojo’s Restaurant, 33 years
Rent hike

Gertel's Bakery: 93 years old
Sold, demolished for condo development

The Playpen Theater: 100 years
Sold and demolished for luxury hotel tower and Shake Shack chain

Chumley's: 79 years old
Collapsed

Jade Mountain: 76 years old
Death of owner

Moondance Diner: 74 years
Closed for condo development, moved to Wyoming

Kurowycky Meats: 52 years old
Closed due to lack of business

Copeland's: 49 years old
Victim of gentrification

Donuts Coffee Shop: 32 years old
Evicted

Sucelt Coffee: 31 years old
Rent hike

Teresa's Polish restaurant: 22 years old
Rent hike

Rose’s Turn: 56 years
Family sold building for $3.5 million

Coliseum Books: 33 years
Rent too high



2006 (373 years)
Cedar Tavern: 140 years
Demolished for condos, replaced with a body waxing salon

Gotham Book Mart: 86 years
Evicted

McHale's Bar: 62 years
Demolished for luxury condo tower

The Second Avenue Deli: 52 years
Rent increase, replaced with a bank

CBGBs: 33 years
Rent dispute, replaced by John Varvatos upscale boutique


photo via Satan's Laundromat

2005 (278 years)
Variety Photoplays Theater: 108 years
Demolished by the Toll Brothers for a 21-story condo tower

Fulton Fish Market: 170 years
Moved to the Bronx due to “the creeping conversion of Manhattan into a monstrous mall” --NY Times



2004 (319 years)
A. Zito & Sons Bakery: 80 years
Rising cost of business

The Bottom Line: 30 years
NYU raised the rent

The original Kim’s Video: 17 years
?

Jon Vie Bakery: 42 years
“a victim of soaring rents in a neighborhood populated as much by bankers as by bohemians.” --NY Times

Domino Sugar Factory: 150 years
Declining business, to be converted to luxury condos


photo via: Intersection's Flickr

2002 (127 years)
Ratner’s: 97 years
Cost of doing business

Madison Avenue Bookshop: 30 years
Lack of business

2001 (13 years)
Wetlands: 13 years
Building sold for luxury condos

Canning Cathie

This post is guest-blogged by author Julian Brash.


A lot could be said about the recent demise of schools Chancellor Cathie Black, but one point that I make in my book is that Mayor Bloomberg's corporate approach to governing the city has major political weaknesses, as demonstrated by the administration's failure to build the West Side stadium and its inability to pass its congestion-pricing plan passed. One of these weaknesses is what I call the "anti-politics" of the Bloomberg Way: the denial of the legitimacy (and at times the existence) of conflicting interests within the city.

However, as of 2005 or so, in response to the West Side stadium fiasco, the Mayor began tempering his anti-politics and engaging directly with various interest groups using a variety of means (philanthropy, bargaining, city contracts, etc.). By Fall of 2009, Michael Bloomberg's dominance of the city's politics had reached its zenith: the CEO Mayor had become a master politician.

However, it's obvious in retrospect that at the same time, Bloomberg was seriously overplaying his hand. The amount he (over)spent in the 2009 election, his "Wall Street Welfare" plan, his defense of various embattled CEOs, and, of course, his hiring of Cathie Black: all these things were indications that Bloomberg had crossed the line separating political noblesse oblige from class entitlement.

The balance between the upper-class project inherent in the Bloomberg Way and the need to maintain the perception of being dedicated to the good of the city as whole was too difficult to sustain. Black's short and inglorious career as schools chancellor is a reminder of this--and of the fact that the Bloomberg Way is not invulnerable.

Not So Big Apple

This post is guest-blogged by author Julian Brash.


The news that New York City has not grown as fast since 2000 as was expected has produced consternation and disbelief among a number of prominent New Yorkers, including Chuck Schumer, Marty Markowitz, and (of course) Mayor Bloomberg. The reaction is interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, it's clear that much of the sputtering is driven by a specific sort of New York City chauvinism: the idea that New York is the biggest, the best, and the most grand (if not grandiose), city in the country if not the world. That is to say, that New York City's identity rests on its larger-than-life characteristics.

There's something to this. Clearly, it's New York City's size and diversity that gives it many of its distinctive characteristics and which makes it a draw for people of all sorts from around the country and the world. But is the growth of New York City's population beyond its already large size necessarily a good thing?

There's a bunch of things to think about here. Granted, the Bloomberg administration's PlaNYC 2030 is an attempt, no matter how flawed, to at least grapple with population growth. But is there any evidence that the region's political elite can do what's necessary to maintain and create the infrastructure necessary to support growth in the future? The fate of ARC and the Second Avenue Subway would suggest not. Moreover, New York City, thanks to economic and financial crisis, along with the bipartisan national embrace of austerity and upward redistribution of wealth, is facing years of fiscal crisis. Without major new sources of revenue, it's not at all obvious how the city will be able to do anything other than watch its physical and social infrastructure rot--despite the (as of now, unmet) promises that the Bloomberg Way would set the city on the path to fiscal stability.

But what I want to highlight here is one simple juxtaposition. On the one hand, it is fairly well-established (pdfs in links) that city size is correlated with inequality: basically, the larger a city's population, the more likely it is that it will attract "global city" economic functions, which tend to bifurcate into very high and very low paying jobs.

On the other hand, as I have documented in earlier posts, the Bloomberg administration has vigorously pursued a development strategy that has exacerbated inequality in the city, by privileging the attraction and retention of high-end professionals and business executives. As perhaps is too obvious to even be worth saying, the Luxury City is an unequal city.

Barring the unlikely event of a drastic shift in development policy, one that makes major strides towards ameliorating, if not reversing inequality, the bigger New York City that Chuck Schumer, Marty Markowitz, and Michael Bloomberg long to see will also be a less equal New York City.

The Bloomberg Way 3

Welcome to Part 3 of the Bloomberg Way, guest-blogged by author Julian Brash:

In my first two posts, I said that the Bloomberg approach to urban governance is both deeply ideological and about class rather than about one extraordinary individual. If we put those things together, we see a third key aspect of this approach, one that contradicts the conventional wisdom that Bloomberg's mayoralty embodies a rejection of politics.

In fact, the Bloomberg Way is deeply political. It may be non-partisan, in the sense that the mayor and many of his fellow postindustrial elites are neither loyal to nor advancing the interest of a major political party. But the Bloomberg Way is a class project with two clear aims, both of which had profound implications for politics (and life) in New York City.



First, the Bloomberg Way aims to legitimate the leadership of the postindustrial elite, especially those of its members drawn from the highest levels of global business. Essentially, the corporate approach to government I outlined in my last post represents a claim that the experience, skills, and expertise of those who moved from the private sector to City Hall are absolutely necessary to address the city's problems and lead it towards a prosperous future. These people make the post-9/11 claim that "the city needed us."


With Marc Jacobs, Fashion Night Out

Second, the Bloomberg Way sought to transform the city in line with the interests and the desires of the postindustrial elite. The attraction, retention, and satisfaction of high-level white-collar professionals and corporate executives became a central goal of development policy, since, it was argued, it was their entrepreneurialism, smarts, and creativity that could best drive the city's economy.

Whether it was making sure that so-called "black cars" had direct access to midtown office buildings, building mountain bike paths on Staten Island, encouraging cutting-edge architecture, or protecting "neighborhood character" in certain upscale neighborhoods, the Bloomberg administration made "the best and the brightest" the target market of the new New York City brand. This was who the Luxury City was for.


Eataly Grand Opening

These two aims might seem contradictory. The first addresses the needs of the city as a whole, of all the city's residents, while the second addresses the needs of a small sliver of the city's population. But this contradiction is fundamental to the Bloomberg approach to governance and the class project it aims to advance, serving as both its great potential strength and its great potential weakness.

If the Bloomberg approach to urban governance, both by placing the leadership of the city in the hands of the postindustrial elite and by doing everything possible to support their needs and desires, could deliver on its promises to provide benefits to a broad swathe of the city's populace, the postindustrial elite would have taken major steps towards legitimating its dominance of the city's politics and economy. But, if it could not deliver these benefits, the Bloomberg Way would appear as little more than a self-interested ploy to enrich and empower the city's wealthiest residents, an exercise in entitlement rather than what we social scientists call hegemony, a form of class leadership based on the ability to deliver broad-based social and economic benefits.


Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic

Which of these two possibilities will be realized remains to be seen. Right now, it seems like New Yorkers are viewing the Mayor and his mayoralty in terms of entitlement and self-interest rather than of leadership and widespread benefit. Yet just a few short years ago, from about 2005 to 2009, it seemed that the Mayor and his approach to governance had been successful in winning over, by one means or another, a great number of New Yorkers.

Will Bloomberg represent the emergence of a new, sustained form of class leadership in the city? Or will his mayoralty be remembered as a demonstration of the power of money to buy elections and as paradigmatic of the self-indulgence of the city's entitled new wealthy? Whatever the answer, these are the political stakes of the Bloomberg Way.

Previously:
Bloomberg Way 1
Bloomberg Way 2
Interview with Julian Brash

The Bloomberg Way 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the Bloomberg Way, guest-blogged by author Julian Brash:

Central to the political mythology of Michael Bloomberg is his supposed rejection of ideology. The Bloomberg administration, we are told, represents a new and pragmatic approach to urban governance, one that transcends the old ideological nostrums of both the left and the right. In a partial sense, this is true--the Bloomberg Way can't be neatly slotted into the typical categories of liberal and conservative.

Nevertheless, the Bloomberg Way is far from a moderate, pragmatic approach to governance. In fact, it is based on a rather radical set of suppositions that have quite far-reaching and transformative impacts, suppositions that are embedded in the Bloomberg Way's corporate roots.


The CEO Mayor

As I demonstrate in Bloomberg's New York, central to the Bloomberg approach to governance are the ideas that Mayor is a CEO, city government is a business, residents are customers, businesses are clients, and the city is a product--a luxury product, to be specific.

Far from being the corporate window-dressing that previous NYC mayors had used to associate themselves with the supposedly efficient and hardheaded private sector, this ideology formed the DNA of the Bloomberg Way. As such, it had profound implications for several aspects of urban governance--implications that we have seen play out over the past decade, three of which I'll mention here.

Rezonings in NYC, 2002-Present

First, the notion that the city government should be run as a corporation had profound implications for the structure and capacity of city government, especially in regard to those agencies responsible for economic and urban development. Corporate-inspired management and marketing techniques--PowerPoints, strategic plans, retreats, the use of "industry desks" (typically used in investment banks and advertising agencies) in economic development agencies, and the use of branding--helped create a coherent organizational apparatus that in turn regenerated the capability of the local government to guide development in a coherent and strategic way. This was crucially important to the development and implementation of the administration's ambitious citywide development agenda.

Second, the notion that the city was a luxury product had (as readers of this blog are doubtlessly aware) enormous impacts on development policy and thus the city's social, cultural, and physical landscape. In short, the creation of the luxury city required major interventions that aimed to make the city more competitive to the clients that made up its "niche market": businesses in the postindustrial sectors of finance, media, and business services and their elite employees.

The sun shines on the luxury city

Finally, the idea of the CEO Mayor has led to the (attempted, at least) curtailment of the space for democratic decision-making. Businesses are not democracies, and CEOs have the prerogative to act in accordance with their judgements of what will achieve "results"; in turn, they are accountable for those results. When imported into City Hall, this model clashed with norms of democratic decision making, especially those concerning process and citizen input. While the citizenry's judgement of the CEO Mayor could be exercised at electoral "accountability moments," during the time in between, it was an unwelcome incursion on the CEO Mayor's ability to, in Bloomberg's words, be "the ultimate risk taker and decision maker."

Previously:
Bloomberg Way 1
Interview with Julian Brash

The Bloomberg Way I

Welcome to the first guest post by Julian Brash:

Thanks to Jeremiah for allowing me to guest blog for a couple of weeks. In my first three posts, I thought I'd briefly summarize the analysis of the Bloomberg administration's approach to urban governance that I lay out at length in my book, Bloomberg's New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City.

What is this approach to urban governance, which I call "the Bloomberg Way," all about?

Well, it's not really about Michael Bloomberg. Or rather, it's not just about Michael Bloomberg. Often when Bloomberg's mayoralty is discussed, the focus is on the man himself: his experience, his personality, his foibles and eccentricities. But the political emergence of Michael Bloomberg and his approach to urban governance are products of a broad transformation of New York City's social structure over the past several decades: as media, financial, and business services have come to dominate the city's economy, there has emerged a "postindustrial elite," made up of high-level professionals as well as New York-based executives and owners of global businesses.

This postindustrial elite has absorbed the great part of the wealth generated in the city for the past several decades; however, until recently, it had remained largely disengaged from politics and governance. While there was the occasional financier deputy mayor, the postindustrial elite didn't offer up a coherent and sustained political project...until 2001.



As I detail in the book, Bloomberg's 2001 election drew a remarkable number and range of postindustrial elites--financiers, business consultants, academics, corporate managers, marketing executives, and so on--into City Hall. Most of them had never considered "public service" before, and many of the folks of this ilk that I spoke to said that it was the presence of Bloomberg, the CEO Mayor, that had drawn them into government. Moreover, they made it clear that they felt, as one of them put it to me, that "the city needed us." They interpreted the city's post-9/11 problems as problems of management and marketing, as technical problems looking for the "solutions" that their skills, experience, and expertise could solve. Thus, their leadership was key to the city's recovery and its long-term prosperity.

Michael Bloomberg was the most prominent of these postindustrial elites, and the one who provided the impetus for this movement into City Hall. But ultimately, this was a class mobilization, the first time the city’s postindustrial elite directly seized the reins of city government and sought to shape governance--and the city itself--in its own image.

Guest Blogger: Julian Brash

For the next couple of weeks, I'll be featuring posts by guest blogger Julian Brash. You might remember him from an interview here on The Bloomberg Way.



Assistant professor of Anthropology at Montclair State University, Julian is the author of a new book entitled Bloomberg's New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City. In the book, he describes in depth the Bloomberg Way: "a philosophy that holds up the mayor as CEO, government as a private corporation, desirable residents and businesses as customers and clients, and the city itself as a product to be branded and marketed as a luxury good."

As a guest blogger, he'll be tackling topics like bike lanes, High line(s), waterfront development, urban sustainability, and other aspects of life in Bloomberg's city.

The Bloomberg Way

Julian Brash, Ph.D., a Brooklyn-born professor of anthropology and urban studies now at Montclair State University, has written a book entitled “Bloomberg's New York: Class and Governance in the Luxury City.” As our economy crashes and burns, with the City Council set to vote on term limits tomorrow, I talked with Professor Brash about what he calls the Bloomberg Way and its effect on the city.


Doctoroff & Bloomberg

What is the Bloomberg Way?

It’s a notion of governance in which the city is run like a corporation. The mayor is the CEO, the businesses are clients, citizens are consumers, and the city itself is a product that’s branded and marketed. And New York is a luxury product.

This is all about class. Bloomberg and many in his administration are asserting their right to both govern and shape the city into a place for corporate elites and high-level professionals. This is the culmination of a major shift in policy, underway since the 1970s, away from the post-war idea that working-class people are the heart of the city.

Sure, they’re saying, we need people around to fight fires and serve sandwiches, but it’s not their city. It’s really a city for the well-off. Bloomberg realizes this vision through a privatized, top-down, outcome-based notion of government.

What effect does the Bloomberg Way have on the city?

Bloomberg’s administration is corporate, technocratic—and a touch authoritarian. Its development agenda is Robert Moses-type stuff. A complete transformation of the city is underway. Bloomberg’s rezonings are about creating high-end commercial and residential districts. His administration aims to create an urban environment conducive to the people you call “yunnies.”

His development model is a corporate model, in which growth is a good in itself. It’s the fetishization of growth, constantly accumulating more and more and more. This leads to real problems, as the basics—especially infrastructure—have not been maintained and expanded adequately.

Many people will say: What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t we let the Bloomberg Way continue?
The reason we keep having fiscal crises in the city is because we’re so dependant on the unstable industry of finance. Bloomberg has not diversified the city’s economy enough to protect it. In fact, he made it worse. He created a place where only super-profitable companies, namely finance, can buy into the city.

Bloomberg is very good at short-term fiscal management and he might be able to get the city through the next couple of years of fiscal crisis. But in the long term, he isn’t the person who’s going to be able to address the basic problem of New York’s inequitable and unstable pattern of economic development.

Basically, it’s a very bad time to be one of the financial centers of the world. The next few decades are likely to see finance decline as the leading edge of capitalism. New York’s economy will suffer from this.

Which brings us to the term limits issue.

Right. It fits right in with the whole corporate governance model for three reasons:

One, the argument goes: Bloomberg’s an excellent CEO, he’s getting things done, so why shouldn’t he continue? It’s not about making decisions in a democratic way. Democracy doesn’t matter in his model of governance because the CEO makes the decisions.

Two, it’s personalistic. Only Bloomberg, they’re saying, only this corporate superman, a God-like figure with some internal, personalized quality that makes him exceptional, can govern the city. The idea that in a city of 8 million people, Bloomberg’s the only person who can govern the city’s affairs is wrong and alarming.

And three, there’s the class element. Bloomberg helped to solidify the class shift in the city. A coalescence of billionaires around Bloomberg basically asked themselves, Who among us can govern the city? Richard Parsons, the CEO of Time Warner, was a possibility, but then he decided to tend his vineyards in his retirement instead. Bloomberg was the guy interested in the job.


Billionaires for Bloomberg: dnblog1

Most people in New York aren’t billionaires. So why aren’t we seeing a large-scale protest against Bloomberg and his policies?

Nobody’s causing a ruckus because, in Bloomberg’s vision of the city you’re not a citizen, you’re a consumer. Citizens get rowdy. They protest in the streets, they don’t make complaint phone calls. Now we have 311, which provides great customer service, and basic services are being delivered well—no small accomplishment. But the consumer model diminishes political action because it’s so emotionally seductive.

A lot of mid-level professionals--teachers, academics, urban planners, people in publishing and non-profits, people like you and me, basically--identify with Bloomberg because they identify upward. They are so happy to be living in this shiny, elite city, that the fact they’re amassing thousands of dollars in credit card debt or are desperately house-poor to fit into the New York standard of living escapes them. They’re getting screwed. Eventually, these people will just leave.

Marx said about the peasantry that they are “incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own name.” These professionals are the peasants here. They’re allowing themselves to be led by Bloomberg without a sense of their own class interest. These people are the most deluded of all.

Is there any hope?

Don’t overestimate the degree to which the Bloomberg administration has changed the city. New Yorkers are still citizens—not consumers. People are agitating against it. Political action is not dead—it’s just not being articulated in a coherent way on a city-wide level. It’s hard to tell where a coherent alternative would emerge from right now. But it's hard to believe it will not.


Check out the book here.

The following images are from a brochure Brash received at a Doctoroff speech in 2004. The brochure is entitled "Bloomberg Administration Major Economic Development Initiatives." It outlines a massive plan to transform the city. Click to enlarge: