I think those words should not be ever strung together, and as they are it kinds of says way too many things about a culture that would use them as such.
Not to condemn all of New York, but the implications of that sentence is way beyond kitsch.
Maybe this is the way NY has always been: it changes, it hustles, it moves. It's never been about a quaint kind of perfection. Maybe it's always been a kind of a rugged, slightly aggressive New World place that maybe should offend the senses of anyone expecting a more refined serenity?
So maybe that's just NYC.
I'm sure a guy like Trump and his tastes is not some random outlier ...
I was disgusted the last time I went there. I was there with someone who lost a family member in 9/11. They were clearly still emotionally burdened by their loss, even in 2017. Yet just a few feet away people were taking smiling selfies next to a literal memorial! I've been to many public memorials, and they are somber places. The 9/11 memorial feels like an almost fitting monument to crass 21st century capitalism.
So what's the problem with that? If you look to malls as a source of transcendence, you're bound to be disappointed.
> who needs it?
If nobody needed it, it would be a ghost town. Your objection is not that it's not needed, it's that you don't like it.
The fact that a lot of people visit it is just a factor of Manhattan being an ever-expanding series of tourist traps. Along with the 9/11 Memorial Shopping Mall the island is looking more and more like Mall of America. Madame Tussaud's is popular, yet it is generally reviled among residents and frequent visitors along with the knock-off Broadway characters at Times Square that will kick your teeth in if you take a selfie with them without paying (yet they remain a popular attraction). New Yorkers will tolerate crappiness if it is at least convenient and will tolerate opulence if it is at least nice to look at. Hudson Yards is neither.
If you have a dire case of FOMO then it might seem like a nice addition but it's just a shinier version of the malls that you see at every highway exit in the country. The city's venerable institutions have not changed and still quietly offer arts and music and there was certainly no shortage of world-class dining before Hudson Yards went up. Unless you've been pining for Thomas Keller's latest take on a thousand-dollar bowl of bong water[2], who needs it?
1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/14/arts/design/h...
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/dining/pete-wells-per-se-...