Quote:
Originally Posted by Yesh222
I think your reducing the arguments against you and therefore missing the point. No one's arguing that everything should be preserved and height shouldn't be built. Building skyscrapers is great, and it's tremendous for the city. But there's something to be said for protecting certain views of the most iconic skyscrapers in the history of skyscrapers. The ESB is a New York City and world icon. NYC's not gonna have many skyscrapers like that in the future. Let's be honest, what new building going up in NYC now (or within the next two decades) will compete with the Burj Khalifa, or even the Ping An building in China? The ESB is a large part of NYC's global appeal, and the city will lose a heck of a lot by not preserving that as much as possible. I'm not saying it has to stand out over all of midtown. But it definitely would be a tragedy if it was lost in a cluster of towers.
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Right but now you've opened pandora's box by granting even one sight line, if you grant one, everyone is going to propose one. How many hours after granting that first sight line would pass before a NIMBY group uses an ESB sight line to try and block a new building from going up? Who/what organization is going to determine the significance of sight lines, and approve them or reject them? Is it just the ESB that's getting sight lines? If so, why? If not, what metrics are going to be used to determine if other sight lines are worthy of being granted?
The bolded part though, I hear this argument a lot regarding this topic and the ESB, but what's more a symbol of New York than constantly moving forward, and progressing? And a large part of how those two things are manifested in New York, is skyscraper construction, to me, the ESB loosing it's dominance of south Midtown, is a perfect example of what makes NY so great.