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New York City, specifically the island of Manhattan, is famously afflicted by a chronic condition known as construction-situs. Evidenced by steel skeletons above, rubble and blockages at cruising level, and the telltale chaos of subterranean mining (to nurture the musical allusion that “everyone rides in a hole in the ground”), we took it for granted, as O. Henry did in his time, that the Big Apple would be … well, you know … once it was finished. The thing that’s troubling is, with the exception of a handful of projects, including the World Trade Center sequel and extension of the Q Line moving uptown beneath Second Avenue, there isn’t much left to be completed at the present moment. Is it possible that we’re almost finished?
The economy, of course, can be blamed for the lack of visible activity. Any new construction, in any part of our country, is viewed as a weak gamble to the banking community. Sparkling condominiums, in South Beach as well as the West Village, smelling of new paint and fresh lacquer, are on the block for the cash equivalent of a Kobe steer, with few takers. Commercial real estate brokers attempt to lease sand in the desert, their footprints engulfed in the vastness of available square footage as they caravan from one office building to another. Corporations require fewer bodies in order to maintain a presence and, with fewer worlds left to conquer, a presence is all that is necessary right now. “Corner offices for everyone” is a distinct possibility, with the middle of the floor available for sublet to swarthy people hawking fake Coach purses and falafel.
Lewis Mumford bemoaned the concept of impermanence in urban culture, but even he would find our present situation desperate. This, rather than Mumford’s theory regarding the danger of unchecked sprawl, could be how an urban civilization crumbles, in a slow, throbbing nod to eventuality – the settling of the last of the plaster dust announcing the beginning of the beginning of the end. In the Law of Diminishing Returns, there must be a sub-clause that describes the point at which progress becomes impossible to justify financially. However the text reads, it cannot convey the dull effect of the mortal wounds to our spirit that have left us breathing, barely, in the place where we were felled. Rome died from within – when the center stopped spinning, everything else stopped in concordance. The world reverted to its natural, unpredictable state. Life did not end, as much as lives in abundance. Thinking did not end, as much as thought’s role as the trigger to discovery. The known social order succumbed to the rule of barbarians and priests. There are no barbarians at our gate, and no true priests within. We are the barbarians and we built the gate.
How long does it take before the process of “hunkering down” leaves us permanently bowed from industrial atrophy? Are we prepared to face the uncertainty of a gimping aftermath? We had better be, since the gross product of stasis is the gradual introduction of disorder into our daily existence. Soon forced to fight for individual survival, hand-to-hand if necessary, many will fall victim to the altered definition of “fittest” as it applies to a wilder environment and the few surviving will have little opportunity to notice them missing. The natural order of things demands a certain balance that we conveniently forgot about around four thousand years ago. Since then, we have sought to impose our own sense of order upon a dangerous planet and managed to succeed to an unimaginable degree. The catch is we cannot stop. We can never stop.
In one sense, I admit enjoying walks around Midtown free of the byproducts of major construction. In another, deeper, sense I am intimidated by the thought (and that everyone else is intimidated by the same thought) that the continual external evolution we’ve come to expect from our city has finally reached its zenith and will progress no further. “Ominous” does not begin to describe the feather tickling the inside of my gut. We all know that something is wrong, at least more than usual. Does the feeling translate into a form that’s solid and appreciable, like an emerging skyscraper, bridge or tunnel? I’ll ask the question one more time – Is it possible that we’re almost finished?
