Garment District
Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of the clothing trade. In Bicycle Diaries it is David Byrne’s own neighborhood, being rezoned out of its small industries.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bicycle Diaries | David Byrne | subject | Rezoning lets condos push out button and zipper wholesalers and pattern cutters: “You can’t e-mail a button.” |
Bicycle Diaries — David Byrne (2009)
Source: Original · Readwise highlight
The Garment District—where I live now—is going through a radical transformation as a result of legal changes of this latter type.
- Role: subject
- In the book: Byrne explains that until about five years earlier big apartment buildings were forbidden there to protect light manufacturing: designers, button and zipper wholesalers, pattern cutters and fabric dealers clustered together. Rezoning for residential towers is now pushing those trades out, and on Ninth Avenue fishmongers and butchers are closing as condos rise.
- Why it matters: It is his local proof of Jane Jacobs’s argument that density and mixed use make a neighborhood work, and of how invisible legal decisions reshape a city.