De Blasio got himself noticed by hitting Bloomberg the hardest and giving voice to the millions of struggling New Yorkers who looked at the post-9 / 11 gilded - age excess all around them — the stratospheric rents and impossibly high cost of living, the bank branches and
chain stores squeezing out local mom - and - pops, the very skyline remade by gleaming new high - rises catering to hedge - funders and
Chinese and Russian billionaires — and worried it could permanently transform the greatest city in the world into an open - air
luxury mall for the global super-rich.