Decolonize this Dystopia! Wealth Pollution on the Hudson River

Abstract

Pier 52 along New York’s Hudson River doesn’t exist. Yet, it has a phantasmic presence in the form of David Hammons’art installation Day’s End—a skeletal recreation of the pier’s former dimensions that haunts the luxuryscape along the river. The piece is hardly noticeable and probably appears to most passersby as an infrastructural relic of an earlier economic regime. The installation contrasts sharply with the ostentatious and hypervisible Little Island a block to the north. Little Island is a cutting-edge futurepark rising out of the river on mushrooming concrete stems—the hallucination of billionaire brand mogul Barry Diller. Little Island exemplifies the contemporary urban economy premised on the ocular capture of pre-designed experiences. This essay frames such architecture as a breed of wealth pollution that has enclosed the city in glossy Instagram panoramas and ushered in a dystopic paralysis of imagination.