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Jeremiah Moss Discusses New York's Hypergentrification
Ten years ago, Jeremiah Moss started a blog, "Vanishing New York" profiling local businesses that were closing. It's the inspiration for his book "Vanishing New York: How A Great City Lost Its Soul." He talks about the policies of hypergentrification and how to find a balance between preserving the old and making way for the new.
TRANSCRIPT
>> Hi, I'm Maddie Orton,
and this is "Author Imprint,"
Today, we're talking to
Jeremiah Moss, the author of
"Vanishing New York:
How a Great City Lost Its Soul."
If the title sounds familiar,
"Vanishing New York" is also
the name of Jeremiah's blog,
where, for the past 10 years,
he's lamented what he calls
a city going extinct.
♪♪
Jeremiah, thanks so much
for joining us.
>> Thank you.
>> So let's start
with the beginning.
You started the blog
10 years ago.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> What made you want
to do that?
I had really been noticing,
for a couple of years,
that the city was changing in
what felt like a different way.
So I've been here since '93,
and of course,
the city is always changing,
as people love to remind me,
but this felt like a different
level of change.
-- for me.
It was a personal sort of labor
of love in the beginning.
I had a lot of photographs from
the past and journal entries,
and so I started sort of, like,
just putting them up online,
>> And so what was the idea
behind the blog, then?
To say it's changing but pay
attention because this is
changing in a fundamental way?
I don't think, at that time,
I had really put together
why the city was changing
the way it was.
It was really more a memorial
at that point.
>> What was the reaction to the
blog?
So I started the blog in July.
By October, I was in
The New York Times.
I was profiled in theTimes,
and people really respond to it,
you know, and I think
it really touched a nerve.
And what I discovered
was that I certainly was not
alone in my feelings.
I just hadn't connected to those
people, but the Internet
enabled me to connect to people
>> You're also a
psychoanalyst, right?
>> Right, yep.
>> So, I mean, that's kind of an
interesting combination, to me,
the idea of putting to words
these feelings that people have
and working with people's
feelings professionally.
Do you find a tie there?
I think a lot
about empathy.
we can empathize
with the people of the city,
but we can also empathize
with the things of the city,
the architecture, the spaces,
the little shops and the little
place because they're human
spaces, you know.
And there's a way in which
I think that there's not a lot
of empathy for these things
in the city today.
>> So let's talk about why that
is.
I mean, so you identify this
as hyper-gentrification
>> What do you think the reason
is for that?
So New York City,
up until the 1970s,
throughout the 20th century,
really started moving towards
becoming a social democracy.
putting its citizens first
rather than outside investors.
And, you know, then we had
this financial crisis
,the financial
crisis, you know, it's
complicated but, in large part,
was caused by white flight
and the movement of industry
also out to the suburbs,
which was socially engineered
itself, right?
So there are all these, like,
racist roots and classist roots.
But then, coming out of the
1970s, you have this shift,
which academics call the
neoliberal shift.
Neoliberalism is a tricky word
for people.
It's not new.
It's not liberal.
It just means basically a
belief, you know, in free-market
economics, that the
market will take care of
everybody, and money and
resources will trickle down.
-- You know,
Bloomberg was sort of like the
ultimate expression of this
New York.
He called the city "a luxury
product," and he thought of
New Yorkers not as citizens at
all but as consumers.
So hyper-gentrification is
largely -- It's basically urban
policy now.
>> The thing that I wonder
about, you know, somewhat waxing
nostalgic about a lost New York,
is, is there a worry of
glorifying maybe some of the not
great parts of New York?
I'm watching "The Deuce" right
now on HBO.
>> Right, mm-hmm.
>> And, you know, I think
a lot of people are.
It's great.
>> Sure.
>> But the idea of a New York
where there's a ton of
corruption and crime and
prostitution is rampant in
Times Square.
>> Right, right.
>> Is there a concern of
glorifying that?
I mean, have things progressed
in a positive way, too?
you know, what I say in my
book is, like, you know, the
city was dirty, and dirt is
fertile, and it is fertile.
there is something about
that time, and I think that's
why we're seeing so much
nostalgia right now for the
1970s, because the city has
become so sterilized.
You know, we're not talking
about balance anymore.
We're talking about the city
has gone out of balance.
Do you think that there is
a compromise that can be reached
where New York is a safer,
cleaner place but still holds
onto its soul?
>> I do think so.
You know, what happens, too,
in this black-and-white way
that people kind of get
their heads around it is you end
up in this false dichotomy,
,right.
And I think that that's just not
true.
But what we do need to do is we
need to reregulate the city,
because the city that we see
today was created by policies.
>> What should people do?
there are a lot of
things we can do.
One thing we can do is we can
pass the Small-Business Job
Survival Act, right?
and it's a progressive
bill that would help businesses
when it comes time to renew
their leases that they get a
fair lease renewal.
I would love to see commercial
rent control come back.
A lot of people don't know
that New York City had
commercial rent control for
almost 20 years after
World War II, and that protected
businesses from these massive
rent hikes that we're seeing.
I think that's great.
You still have the blog going,
right, "Vanishing New York"?
>> I do, yep.
>> Vanishingnewyork.blogspot
.com, right?
>> Yeah, it's an old Blogspot.
>> Jeremiah, thanks so much for
being here.
>> Thank you.
>> I appreciate it.
Check out "Vanishing New York:
How a Great City Lost Its Soul"
wherever books are sold.
It might make you fall in love
with a New York you never knew.
♪♪
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