There is no hope for NYC on defeating the NIBMY crowed. If I thought there was, I'd personally go around raising money to fight the preservationists.[1]
As corrupt as Chicago is, I do love one thing about it: the corruption sometimes works in peoples' favor. Recently, Northwestern University wanted to tear down its hideous old womens' hospital to put up a new medical facility: http://d22r54gnmuhwmk.cloudfront.net/photos/1/zg/re/MTzGREji.... The usual suspects bitched about architecture blah blah. Rahm was like "STFU" and Northwestern got a permit to tear that shit down. The funny thing was that they basically abandoned it during the scuffle with the preservationists (like 3-4 years). I'm convinced the plan was to basically be like "oops, looks like it's not safe to occupy anymore!" (buildings break down surprisingly quickly during periods of no occupancy).
[1] I secretly dream of doing a non-profit specializing in litigation against preservationist groups.
It's not that preservation is bad, it's that it's rarely subject to any rational cost-benefit analysis. If the EPA promulgates a new regulation, the resulting flood of litigation forces intense scrutiny of the costs and benefits. But nobody has a concentrated interest to stand up to preservationists. An individual developer might oppose it, but existing land-owners as a whole benefit both from the slimmest of historical significance and from keeping down the total supply of office space, housing, etc. So you don't see cities buried in lawsuits over trying to promulgate those sorts of ordinances.
As corrupt as Chicago is, I do love one thing about it: the corruption sometimes works in peoples' favor. Recently, Northwestern University wanted to tear down its hideous old womens' hospital to put up a new medical facility: http://d22r54gnmuhwmk.cloudfront.net/photos/1/zg/re/MTzGREji.... The usual suspects bitched about architecture blah blah. Rahm was like "STFU" and Northwestern got a permit to tear that shit down. The funny thing was that they basically abandoned it during the scuffle with the preservationists (like 3-4 years). I'm convinced the plan was to basically be like "oops, looks like it's not safe to occupy anymore!" (buildings break down surprisingly quickly during periods of no occupancy).
[1] I secretly dream of doing a non-profit specializing in litigation against preservationist groups.