The recent architectural development of NYC

Not sure I agree with all of it, but New York magazine’s interesting piece about all the new development that has been going on in NYC for the past few years is certainly worth a read.

In the last 25 years, the city’s population has increased by a million people, and another million will be here 25 years from now. The question is not whether to make room for them but how. We could, in theory, rope off most of Manhattan to new development and push new arrivals to the city’s fringes. Had we done that years ago, we would have created a museum of shabbiness. Even doing so now would keep the city in a state of embalmed picturesqueness and let the cost of scarce space climb to even loonier heights than it already has. In its 43-year existence, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has tucked more than 25,000 buildings under its protective wing, which seems about right. Protect every tenement, and eventually millionaires can no longer afford them.

If you can’t take all the text, read it Playboy-style…there are over fifty great before-and-after photos of various new buildings around town, just keep scrolling down.

• architecture
• cities
• NYC