they don’t like change

Those of us who have been living in New York for decades associate our beloved city with a certain amount of grime, grit, and neglect. That’s what makes the city feel familiar, and thus authentic.

Some of us have started to take photographs of our favorite neighborhoods, so that in the decades to come we will remember what they once looked like.

Others remonstrate: [that they've "paved paradise and put up a parking lot"? ---ed]

It was a drowsy neighborhood where one could smell the harbor, a close-knit community where people signed for one another’s mail. Ms. Carson tended a small garden on the sidewalk near her building.

Today, the graving dock and many of the cobblestones are paved over, and from her garden, Ms. Carson sees something else: an enormous blue and yellow Ikea superstore, all 346,000 square feet of it, rising along the waterfront. The old warehouse is now a Fairway supermarket, with luxury rentals above.

Still others demonstrate … against “yuppie scum”:

Friday night signified the opening of the East Village summer social season as 100 people gathered on East First Street to protest what they said was the sterilization and overdevelopment of the Bowery and the nearby streets, once one of the seedier districts in the city.

Others fight back:

Mr. Boyd and Mr. Economakis live in a building at war, a century-old five-story tenement torn by the peculiarities of New York real estate. Mr. Economakis is the landlord, and since 2003 has been trying to convert the building’s 15 rent-stabilized apartments into an 11,000-square-foot home for himself, his wife, their two children and a British bulldog named Leo. Mr. Boyd is one of nine remaining tenants, who pay $675 to $1,200 per month for one-bedroom apartments; his is on the third floor, sandwiched between spaces that the Economakis family currently occupies. …

But these dreams have turned into a five-year nightmare including three court rulings, the most recent from the State Court of Appeals this month; countless letters written by lawyers; dueling Web sites; and dozens of skirmishes over the use of air-conditioners and the positioning of flowerpots. The Economakises reached financial settlements with six of the original occupants, turning those units into a three-story space for themselves and a duplex for guests. Now that the Court of Appeals has sent the case back to housing court, lawyers estimate a resolution could still be two years away.

New York, New York—it’s a hell of a town.