One thing that caught my eye in Grim's post yesterday about what Northerners secretly think was the idea that New Yorkers don't have to go anywhere, because everyone comes to them eventually. That was probably fairly true for a long time, when New York was still on the make. After a while, it becomes an attitude of decay; the rest of the world does eventually start building alternatives when you act like you can sit around waiting for them to come acknowledge your awesomeness.
Google links if that's a paywall: South Carolina boost from Panama Canal expansion; New York not ready. Too busy working on those sugary drinks and salty restaurant offerings.
New York also lost a lot of its centrality on 9/11, when the destruction of the World Trade Center took down so much of the communications and finance infrastructure. It all got rebuilt, but spread out across the country so that couldn't happen again.
ReplyDeleteWell, not as easily. There are still threats from a nuclear war or a major solar event.
There was some regulatory guerrilla warfare between SC and Georgia a few years ago; ports of Savannah and Charleston were each trying to prevent the other from dredging to the New Panamax requirements by claiming Environmental Badness on the other's part...guess Charleston won.
ReplyDeleteLooks like Georgia hasn't given up
ReplyDeletehttps://www.georgiapol.com/2016/04/25/georgia-lawmakers-work-fund-savannah-harbor-expansion/
It'll probably mean the end of Old Fort Jackson, as its wooden pylons are exposed to rotting by the dredging (the mud protects them). It's named for James Jackson, hero of the Revolution, not Andrew.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Georgia's Ports Authority and the US Army Corps of Engineers are pretty devoted to the idea of getting down to 49 feet.
I will be sad if the old fort falls because of the port's expansion. I really like that fort, and the annual Highland Games there have a special place in my memory.
Actually, it's just gotten too expensive. Because believe me, if you live around New York, you hate it every bit as much as anywhere else in the country. And Grim makes a very good point about decentralization--that was coming anyway because of technology, but it got a real good push.
ReplyDeleteNow people are looking at other places, like Philadelphia--I've never seen so much building going on--and I've been here 20 years now. And what used to be complete holes like Hoboken are not hipster and yuppie havens.
I don't know, Eric, I think it's more of a re-centralization- a lot of city centers that had been in a down swing from about the early seventies till the nineties are now in full bloom again. Downtown Los Angeles and several nearby communities are the place to be for young hipsters, and the city planners have fully embraced the European model of lots of increased density in centers or transit hub areas, with lots of new 5-6 story residential over commercial mixed use buildings springing up like weeds. To me it' just feels like my beloved horizontal city has died and it's being buried in hipsters.
ReplyDelete