There goes the neighbourhood...

The largest real estate deal in American history was agreed this week when Met Life sold its stretch of rent-controlled housing in lower New York City for $5.4 billion. Built for returning WWII-vets, Stuvyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village remained for the rest of the century as one of Manhattan's lower-middle/middle class redoubts. But as property prices in the city continue to skyrocket, their demise - however improbable before - became inevitable. As lamented previously, the eradication of socio-economic diversity in NYC threatens to convert a once lively, bubbling world city into a vaccuous playground for the denizens of finance.