Right, so that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't know anything specific about Astoria Village, but if rich people want to live there (and presumabl

Right, so that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I don't know anything specific about Astoria Village, but if rich people want to live there (and presumably they do, or else the real estate developers who wanted to build there were incompetent), then they'll move in one way or another. And with historic Astoria being relatively low-density, they'll displace the existing residents by bidding up rent prices. Unless there's a bunch of new construction. I have no doubt that there are buildings that are of enough historical importance that they shouldn't be demolished to build high rises (i.e. that marginal bit of rent pressure is worth it). I also don't know if in this particular case -- especially given that they weren't completed due to a housing crash -- building high rises ended up being wise; sometimes developers are foolish or shit just happens. And perhaps those things really are all that happened in Astoria; I couldn't say. My point, though, still holds in the general case and certainly holds for something the size of NYC as a whole: preserving historical buildings is fundamentally in tension with preventing gentrification. It's a tradeoff. (And it's a bit of an odd one too: the people who care and should care the most about the historic value of a neighborhood are the people who actually live there. But if constrained housing supply forces them to move, they won't be around to enjoy it anyway.) This is a big issue for me because this exact conversation is happening in my neighborhood in Cambridge, MA, which keeps very strong control over new construction. Rent is skyrocketing with people like me moving in to a poorer minority neighborhood because it's nice and we like it. Developers see that as a market opportunity and the city should see it as a signal to allow more construction to reduce rents. But many (most?) of the residents oppose new construction on the grounds that it will change the neighborhood's feel and, incorrectly, that it will cause gentrification. It will certainly do the former, but it will help prevent the latter.