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Rise of luxury towers dims de Blasio's shine

Disenchantment with the mayor grows as US$20m apartments crowd out affordable housing and New York neighbourhoods disappear

Published Mon, Nov 9, 2015 · 09:50 PM

    New York

    WHEN Lynn Ellsworth moved to New York in the 1970s, before she went on to get a doctorate in economics, she lived in a boarding house on the Upper West Side, with a dozen or so young women who were students at Barnard and Parsons. The system was vibrant and efficient; this was high-density living in a low-density neighbourhood.

    At some point during more recent years, the buildings on her old block in the West 80s were converted into single-family town houses. In the intervening period, during the 1990s, Ms Ellsworth moved to Tribeca, where the frenetically paced construction of expensive high-rise condominiums - high-density urbanism of a far less romantic kind - has been troublesome and disorienting.

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