Aristocrates Sans Frontières

Nabeel emails the following, a response to "The Motor City and the New New York":

I blame the death of New York on two obnoxious fads:

1. The Saint-Michelization of New York—This is the result of a rapid increase in the ranks of the global middle class, evidently dominated by those with an affinity for being photographed in front of Rockefeller Center wearing MTA-themed T-shirts. This phenomenon probably decimated the East Village, but it brings in serious cash, and it seems to be the inevitable fate of any city worth visiting in the 21st century.

2. The replacement of the landed aristocracy with a nomadic one—For today’s Eloise, home is between TriBeCa, Doha, and Geneva. She’s as comfortable in Mittal’s Mumbai or Sawiris’ Cairo as she is on the Upper East Side, and the similarities between the three have not been lost on her—she still won’t venture north of 96th except to visit Columbia, and if she’s in Brooklyn it’s the Heights. Never have the people who own and run New York been less invested in the city.

The first fad is common knowledge, but I doubt the second has been explored enough. When we talk about population mobility as a consequence of globalization, we tend to conflate a centuries-old trend with a more recent one. The migration economists like to talk about—the more productive our species gets, the cheaper travel gets relative to income, and the more people move around to get to work, live near work, etc.—is old news. It’s been in evidence since New World indentured servitude; it brought the bagel to New York and the Bistro to Paris, and there’s nothing about it that inherently undermines an already cosmopolitan metropolis. But these days, the aristocracy too is exhibiting unprecedented mobility, a phenomenon with grave consequences for 80s babies with fond memories of Aznavour’s Montmartre.

It used to be that rich people had a place to make money (an Antillean plantation, a Wall Street office, whatever), a full-time place to show off their money to other rich people (8ème, Long Island, whatever), and a favourite part-time place to show off their money to other rich people (Monte Carlo, Nantucket, whatever).

But the rich don’t spend their lives confined to six blocks on the Upper East Side anymore, or even to New York and the Hamptons. The city they live in, Newyorklondonparisdubaisingaporehongkongmumbai, is so exclusive that Sex and the City fans didn’t even find out about it until Season 5. And monogamous relationships with vacation homes are fast becoming an anachronism. Rich people these days get claustrophobic spending a summer in a single time zone. Even six hours on a golf course can seem confining—tellingly, at the height of the latest economic boom, golf clubs suffered while yacht prices skyrocketed. Instead, the rich spend weekends in Sharmalsheikhcabolausannemacaoeasthamptonvail but never vacation because—well, either they don’t work so vacation would be redundant, or they work year-round so they can later afford not to work. Even their Ritalin-popping kids don’t have the Zen for long summer getaways—at best they’ll take a week between archery camp and an archeology dig to go scuba diving in Aruba.

So where does that leave New York? It’s been remodelled as a shopping mall and club for part-time residents with the attention span of a two-year-old. In another era, these residents might have gone into politics or found a pet museum or orchestra to patronize. That would have made them look good to the like-minded enclave by Columbus Circle where they chose to raise their kids because they trusted the local doormen to keep an eye on them. Kenneth Cole might have married a Cuomo, Chuck Schumer a commissioner—the movers and shakers didn’t actually move at all; they were ours to keep. They didn’t just stop by for cocktails and Sax. And say what you will about the aristocracy, but I’d rather be lovingly abused than negligently abandoned.

On the bright side, glitz and glamor aside, Miami and LA are still tackier than we’ll ever be.