I haven’t commented up to now on this site on the commentaries of Roger Cohen, which appear on the New York Times website but which are printed only in the International Herald Tribune. Saturday’s column by Cohen, however, cries out for attention because it flies in the face of the libertarian sensibility that dominates so much commentary in the blogosphere.

“I’ve come to love the dull, solid mid-rise brick buildings of the garment district, a universe away from the high-rise glass-and-neon of that other country two blocks away where Planet Hollywood and M&M’s World strut their stuff…. No — miracle of miracles — people here still buy and use sewing machines! A million square feet or so are devoted to garment manufacturing. The jobs have not all vanished to Bangladesh.”

Furthermore: “Speaking of food, the move has also brought deliverance from theme restaurants and chains to a garment-district diversity as wondrous as the ostrich feathers and sequined robes in store windows. Let’s face it: Dives are the last redoubt of genuine fare in New York.”

Cohen believes that New York has done a better job of preserving such neighborhoods than its cosmopolitan rivals, London and Paris. The takeaway: “I’m grateful for my New York journeys and for the zoning laws that make them possible. Wholesale gentrification deadens. There’s an untamed thread that binds button stores and stir-fried intestines with chili: They’re genuine. The fight for the genuine in the world’s great cities is also a fight for jobs, workers and creativity.”