Jeremiah Moss talks Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul

Today’s guest on the show is Jeremiah Moss, author of Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul. We met up in Tompkins Square park to talk about the suburbanization of New York, the importance of policy, monoculture, Jane Jacobs, eminent domain, the impact of the High Line, Coney Island, neoliberalism, poor doors, colonial myopia and hyper-gentrification. I think it is safe to say that you should listen to this episode, twice. Enjoy.

Learn More

1. Jeremiah Moss Author of Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul(publisher Harper Collins)
2. Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul
3. Vanishing New York Blog by Jeremiah Moss

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Show Notes

• Twitter: @jeremoss
• Facebook
• How did we get here?
• How did NYC lose it Soul?
• What is NY Soul?
• The Secret Movie
• Al Diaz New York Said Episode
• The Museum of the City of New York
• New York is feeling less like New York.
• What do you miss about New York?
• Do you want to be a New Yorker?
• The suburbanization of New York
• Why do you want to change New York?
• Chain stores are not home or soul?
• East Village, Manhattan
• Tompkins Square Park
• Tompkins Square Park riot (1988)
• Streets of New York – North Tompkins- Just another NYU Journalism Projects Sites site
  Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988
• What is left to love about New York?
• Affordable Rent
• Police State
• Mayor Rudy Giuliani
• Missing the local places
• Random acts of violence
• “Anything can happen…” old New York
• Guardian Angels
• Who is Mad Max?
• African American Migration from Jim Crow South
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – by Isabel Wilkerson(A TED Talk by the Author)
• Community is absent
• Let’s take care of each other; there is a personal responsibility to each other when you are a New Yorker
• The Sidewalk Experience
• The Importance of Policy
• The city is always changing, let’s evaluate that assumption and not be lazy as to why
• Bushwick, Brooklyn
• The G-word: Gentrification gen·tri·fi·ca·tion (noun)
• 1. the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class  taste.
• 2. the process of making a person or activity more refined or polite.
• The monoculture
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities – by Jane Jacobs
• 5 Things in NYC We Can Blame on Robert Moses by Phillipe Martin Chatelain
• What makes a healthy City?
• Business Improvement Districts (BID)
• Property Owners Spend on Quality of Life (But Is That Fair?) NYTimes Article on BIDs
• What is ‘Eminent Domain’
  Eminent domain is the power the United States government, states and municipalities to take private property for public use, following the payment of just compensation.
• The Iron Triangle ( A documentary)
• Willets Point, Queens (aka The Iron Triangle)
• Atlantic Yards
• State looks to seize properties in the path of Pacific Park
• Brooklyn’s Barclays Center is an Eminent Domain-Created Failure Hit & Run Blog by Anthony Fisher
• The High Line
• 1999 Friends of the High Line is founded by Joshua David and Robert Hammond, residents of the High Line neighborhood, to advocate for the High Line’s preservation and reuse as public open space.
• What are catalysts for hyper-gentrification?
• Air Rights Transfers
• Special West Chelsea Rezoning District
• Columbus Circle
• Sanitized Vertical Suburbia
• “We need cities where difference can co-exist with difference.” Jeremiah Moss Quote
• “You need dirt for things to grow.” Jeremiah Moss Quote
• Manufactured Experience – GMO Experience
• Demolition Man (film)
• Coney Island
• Fred Trump Real Estate Developer
• Horace Bullard Real Estate Developer
• “The mugging of a city, this city is being robbed by greed… at the expense of culture.” Amon Focus
• Nostalgie De La Boue – Yearning for the mud in French
• Why do we seem to like to destroy things in the middle of the night?
• Harlem’s legendary Lenox Lounge is being demolished: The site is rumored to give way to a massive Sephora By Ameena Walker
• Big bank takes little bank
• Progressive
• Neoliberalism
• Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world The Guardian.com by Stephen Metcalf
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Historic Win and the Future of the Democratic Party
  Come November, Ocasio-Cortez is almost certain to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Will her democratic-socialist identity push the Party to the left? The New Yorker ByDavid Remnick
• The important fight
• Change that needs to happen on a global scale
• What can we do?
• a. Become conscious
• b. Talk to each other and challenge ignorance of issues
• c. Elect politicians that are not taking money from corporations and real estate developers
• d. Support policies like the Small Business Jobs Survival Act
• e. Commercial Rent Control
• f. Affordable housing not tied to big development
• g. Support Vacancy Tax
• What the heck are poor doors? (you don’t even want to know)
• Whenever there is a discussion on Urban Development ask yourself 3 questions:
• 1. Who is it for?
• 2. Who does it attract?
• 3. Who does it displace?
• Trees, bikes, and Wi-Fi
• What is your intention?
• Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
• Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
• Colonial Myopia
• A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and The Search for Authenticity by Japonica Brown-Saracino
• Madison Square Park
• Cultural Capital vs. Financial Capital
• Anywhere USA
• Mon-culture wants to turn everything into itself
• Good place to get a meal in New York:
• 1. Julius Restaurant
• 2. Donohue’s Steak House
• 3. Margon New York

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This episode is sponsored by Gorilla Coffee.