On Michael Bloomberg: A Contrarian View of his Legacy

Dec 31, 2013 15:57

As we wind down these last few hours of 2013 there’s something I’d like to get off my chest, especially in light of the endless encomia to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tenure, and the relentless anointment of him as perhaps the greatest mayor in the history of New York City. Well, I sure don’t see it that way. To my mind, Mayor Bloomberg’s reign has been, not quite a disaster, but a blight, a disappointment, a catalogue of deliberate violations of everything that makes New York City great. Virtually everything he has accomplished - the stop-and-frisk policing, the rush to development, the damnable bike lanes, the planned gutting of the New York Public Library, the decimation of public buses, the cruel botch he has made of the city’s schools, the ruthless elimination of public housing-has been designed to make the city better for tourists and rich people and worse off for everyone else. It’s become a truism that NYC now has a wider income gap than ever before, but this abstract formulation barely touches the ways that this simple economic pressure alters the fundamental fabric of the city and dilutes its gritty, swirling, democratic vigor. Bloomberg’s policies seem, too, to be a natural extension of the man himself in their bloodlessness and unapologetic embrace of greed; as with a villain out of Dickens, the man’s very aspect seems to reflect some deep inner soullessness. Rudy Giuliani was a fascist thug, but at least he seemed like a New Yorker; you could hate him with gusto, but you felt like he at least loved the place, albeit for different reasons that you did. Everything about Bloomberg, his prissy little smile, his private-jet getaways to Bermuda, his willful ignorance of the outer boroughs, seems small and petty and sterile and creepy. When the long lens of historical perspective brings Bloomberg into view decades hence, he will be regarded as the man who finally killed New York City, who turned it into a giant mall-ified version of Atlanta or Dallas or Charlotte, who managed to bleed it of its vitality and make it into just another American city.

nyc, bloomberg

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