It is interesting to analyze how ideologies, which fluctuate according to the times, influence urban spatial logistics. In one sense, New York City is often thought of as a place for perpetual urban modernization and development, as it is a city where people go to realize grand ambitions. In other words, collectively, New York City might have the dream of always being the most modern city of the world. However, like any city, the dominant ideology of a given moment determines the shape and character of the place. We see time in structures, but we also see the structures according to the time. During much of the Robert Moses era of the twentieth century, the city was focused on radical modernization for the automobile at the same time that the country was promoting suburbanization. This ideology caused the city to look outward to the suburbs, to the surrounding nation, no matter how much local neighborhoods and its people were uprooted. The resulting protests that occurred because of Moses’s overreach ushered in an ideology of preservation and a focus on a city’s community of the sort advocated by Jane Jacobs. Today, corporations and politicians control the development of major urban projects that often are conceived in public / private partnerships without a meaningful public debate. These elite decision makers operate according to the
ideology of globalization, and local problems are pushed aside for concerns about the city’s place in the world market. The current ideology dictates that it is best for the city to make decisions about its urban spaces in relationship to how other cities in the world make theirs. Consider how the Bloomberg administration has ushered this as support for the need to rezone Midtown, the idea being that we need to compete with other cities with grand architectural transformations. In response, Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic of the New York Times points out that “New York can surely never win a skyscraper race with Shanghai or Singapore.” Rather the author points out, New York City should focus on what already makes the city great: “mass transit, pedestrian friendly streets, social diversity, neighborhoods that don’t shut down after 5 p.m., parks and landmarks like the Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building.” In other words, perhaps, the way to make New York City great