The Re-Purposing of NYC

It's a cliche to say that NYC is always re-inventing itself. 

Just walk around any neighborhood and you'll see old buildings being torn down and new ones being built, you'll see old businesses vanishing and new ones opening, you'll see old people and young people walking around -- the past receding, the future proceding.

But the city also recycles itself. It takes the old and, instead of replacing it, re-purposes it to make it new while also preserving it perennial qualities. The past remains and the future remakes it.

Take, for example, the turrets of old buildings and houses -- once decorative rooms for the wealthy, now they're apartments.

Or the old coffee houses of Greenwich Village -- they remain but either they've become more upscale and restaurant-like or they've become living shrines to the past.

Even the media gets re-purposed -- the hyper-local newspapers Gothamist and DNA Info closed a few months ago due to a union-busting owner but, thanks to the benevolence of WNYC Radio, they've re-emerged as non-profit news sites.

So while it's easy to mourn the lost, vanishing NYC, it's also important to remember that the city isn't always erasing its past -- it's simply re-working it.