Gowanus Godzilla
Why This Toxic Canal Zone Is a Litmus Test for N.Y.C. Development
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/nyregion/gowanus-canal-brooklyn-development.html
Gowanus Canal is yet another Godzilla versus Kong spectacle that regularly entertains with mock combat an illusion of conflict to advance like World Wrestling Federation a rigged outcome adorned with flashing lights, roaring crowds, prancing contestants, decorative damsels, commanding announcers, docile referees, harmless leaps, punches, body hurls, steroidal displays, pauses for ads, formulaic outcomes, pounding intros to next events.
So goes urban planning racketeering, political sweetmeat donations, newly minted developers just out of government coming out in favor of doing what the old timers have long practiced in ravaging the cityscape into rise and decay swatches of five boros, upstate, close-by states and overseas colonies of finance, design, persuasion, corruption, inequity, winners and losers, don't get left behind in the handing out of perks to phony resisters and authentic supporters.
All around the "greatest city in the world" and other preenings, gobs of internecine warfare are entombed in grotesque architecture and engineering (prepare for more infrastructure savagery a la Biden), celebrated and profaned by million-dollar artists lofts, generously funded skyscraper museums, amply stroked architectural leagues and municipal art societies and rome academies and world monument funds and elite university clubs and uptown institutes of diversity, miles of museums, ethnic memorials, world war lists of the dead.
City Hall's Dept of Buildings OKs Tweed Courthouse.