Conceptually, this is pretty much part two of one of the most clicked articles of the last few weeks, about the ‘pencil towers’ of New York’s super-rich. Nothing much to add, it’s a well written piece about some crazy money creating a horrible place growing like a neoliberal tumour on the side of NYC.
[I]n a city that is desperately trying to maintain the illusion that we are all something more than props in a metropolis-sized variety show put on for the benefit of bored hedge fund employees. […]
As urban planning visions go, it is a familiar one: an ultracapitalist equivalent of the Forbidden City, a Chichen Itza with a better mall and slightly better-concealed human sacrifice. […]
Hudson Yards is notable for having the worst of everything. […]
It is always a little sad to see what the people rich enough to have everything actually want. They do not want to participate in the world at all; they want to build their own simulacrum of it and float away forever, secure in the knowledge that none of the lesser people or things that populate the earth will ever be allowed to intrude.”