Lifeless Glitz

Although safer and sounder economically these days, Manhattan begins to look like every other America city (although taller!). Glitzy popular shopping malls and big-box retailers have carved their way into the heart of soul of many neighborhoods, repelling local residents by siphoning customers away from street-level small shops and draining the life out of once vibrant areas.

The quaint neighborhood coffee shop has succumbed to a Starbucks around every corner where over-priced coffee choices carry fancy and illogical names for sizes (why isn't a Grande the biggest size? ridiculous B.S!).  Getting your caffeine fix at the ubiquitous Starbucks carries with it the aura of "a high class lifestyle" and an invidious push of uniformity in a prepackaged formula of self- authentication.

The proliferation of cell phones and tech gadgets have duplicated the disconnected suburban “car” mentality as young professionals move among crowded streets in a self-wrapped bubble, talking on cellphones, listening to iPods and refusing to interact with or take interest in the world around them.

If there is a growing reciprocity between suburban and urban patterns and behaviors, it is clearly mediated by the great equalizers of mass electronic media and the commercial universalism of the all-important Brand. As rampant gentrification and the elevation of shopping and mass entertainment move to the center of our cultural activity and the triumph of branding and multinational economic arrangements became all persuasive; the specific character of the city—with its ability to multiply and magnify differences—risks being reduced to an empty shell, a decorative experience that frames life all too uniform and all too generic.

Based on the writings of Michael Sorkin in the book “The Suburbaniztion of New York” editors: Jerilou Hammett and Kingsley Hammett Fair Use Notice

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