i personally dont think bloomberg will run in 2008. i cant see him abandoning his post as mayor of NYC. i do think he will run in 2012 though. rudy and bloomberg are not that similar. they are both results oriented but rudy does not always have the publics best interest in mind. the only reason why rudy even has any chance of becoming a presidential candidate is because of his "performance" on 9/11/2001. before that day, he was by no means, a popular mayor in NYC. he should have cashed in his chips in 2004 when people still remembered his "heroics" on that fateful day.
Eminent domain - my bad. I'm sorry, but it's not correct that Bloomberg has limited the focus of eminent domain to impoverished neighborhoods. As an example: Harlem. As new colonists have pushed through old boundaries, namely 96th street, in search of more affordable housing, the culture of the community has changed. Residents are displaced because of rent increases and the conversion of buildings from rentals to condos. If you really think about it, the same kind of opportunism by developers that are being utilized in New Orleans to prevent the mostly African American population to reclaim their homes and land, is inspired by the same flawed reasoning for Bloomberg to use the same type of methods for the same intended result. Poor neighborhoods always were, and always will be, dangerous, that's what poverty breeds. If you want to do something about the danger, do something about that which breeds it. Moving impoverished minorities out of one area, forcing them to flee to another, solves nothing but to make more room and money for rich white guys. Let's not pretend otherwise. I for one, prefer the old Times Square. The area still has it's share of dangers, just less interesting thugs, drug dealers, and panhandlers. That said, what makes the area safer today, than it was prior to the gentrification, is that as our population has multiplied, businesses grown, traffic and mass transit has increased, as well as tourism, the sheer numbers of people on the street provide safety in numbers. It's a leap to conclude that the Disnification can be thanked for that. The old times square may have been ugly and smelly and sketch, but at least it was real. It was an aspect of New York, a particular thing unto itself. It had it's own culture, unique and alive though nothing someone in love with clean or safe would appreciate. Now it's nothing, it's dead. A street that could easily be slipped onto the urban landscape of any number of other large cities without seeming out of place, or missed. To my mind, real life in the form of sagging buildings that have histories, and people who are up to living lives I wouldn't know anything about, lives that were exotic or strange, are better than a sanitized nothing that's meant to look like something. Progress is a relative concept.