Rick Wakeman Quotes

Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there.

We should concentrate our work not only to a separated housing problem but housing involved in our daily work and all the other functions of the city.

It is sad that the more 'successful' a neighborhood becomes, the more it gradually takes on a recognizable, common look, as the same banks, drugstore chains and national brands move in.

It's still possible to find pockets of old Dublin - but its becoming more and more rarified.

Gentrification is a form of immigration, though almost nobody calls it that.

London changes because of money. It's real estate. If they can build some offices or expensive apartments they will, it's money that changes everything in a city.

Sometimes, I feel that Manhattan in particular has gotten really tame and gentrified or something.

People who gentrify are usually new transplants to a city, changing it to suit their particular cultural needs and whims.

I love Columbus Circle. I rebelled against the construction for a while because I go back to the '70s. There was no Time Warner building. Now I've started to really like it.

Our cultural capital has changed tremendously on its way into the twenty-first century. Manhattan has been secured and sanitized; it's smoke- and trans-fat-free. In the boroughs, many of the old jungles have been cleared as well.

In other words, New York has gone all suburban and bourgeois on us.

Exciting cities stay exciting, and boring cities stay boring.

Gentrification is what brings in all the money to the cities, but it also pushes some people out.

I used to walk in the Bowery in the early 1980s, and it was not safe. It went from this to Disneyland under Giuliani and Bloomberg. This is now one of the best-run big cities in the world.

I think Giuliani started a trend that Bloomberg continued with rampant gentrification, and I think it's tough because why would any city choose not to do that?

I have lived in this city my whole life and have seen the way gentrification has changed it. I'm not necessarily against transplants, as 75 percent of my good friends, roommate, and boyfriend are not native New Yorkers.

I've been sort of gentrification-obsessed. Right before I left Oakland in 2012, I was feeling it. Now I go back sporadically, and the change is drastic.

I have great memories of the old Times Square - wouldn't have missed being here to see that place for the world - but I can also deal with the new Times Square in the overall scheme of N.Y. City 2010.

That's the beauty of Mumbai. While some parts have grown rapidly, there are places like Churchgate that have retained their character.

When we were doing shows in the mid-'90s, the audiences were 95% black. What's happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now 'cause it's the same crowd that goes to rock shows.

An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.

I'm not one of these people who thinks everything in the past is great and everything modern is terrible. But I do think cities should be a mix of old things and new things.

I'm not dismissing prostitutes, but a lot has changed. This so-called gentrification, it can never be stopped.

I kind of miss the old sleazy Times Square, in a way. And yet I don't mind not being accosted by all sorts of strange people.

It's not just NYU. There are days when I feel like I'm stranded in some upscale mall in Pasadena. Don't even get me started on the insidious transformation of Bleecker Street!