“It’s been a disaster. It is one of these massive computer projects that very seldom ever is successful,” said Bloomberg, who made his fortune with financial data systems.

Now imagine that sentence applied to congestion pricing had that been implemented (kind of amazing, by the way, that Bloomberg has kept plugging congestion pricing now that the MTA is having money trouble).

Now there are two aspects to CityTime — one is a paperless timekeeping system and the other is the aforementioned punch clock doodad. It would be interesting to know where the problem is. A paperless timekeeping system theoretically has some positive benefits: it is “green” in the sense that there are no more paper timecards and automating the timekeeping system theoretically means the city needs fewer timekeepers. On the other hand, the biometric punch clocks that unnecessarily agitated desk workers always seemed like a huge waste of money. You only need punch clocks if you’re worried workers are leaving early — instead of babysitting them why not just make sure there is enough actual work to do?

Another awesome tidbit about the punch clocks is that instead of using the actual time an employee punches in and out, the machines instead round up and down to the nearest fifteen-minute increment. So that, say, an employee punches in at 9:07 and leaves at 4:53, that employee will have “worked” a full seven-hour day. Over the course of a work week, that’s 70 minutes free. Brilliant! (And if the employee punches in at 8:52 and punches out at 4:53 the machine will give him or her fifteen minutes of comp time — love it!) The other unintended consequence is that employees are less likely to hang out after five to work on projects. We’ve heard of both scenarios occurring.

[Brooklyn College sociology professor Sharon] Zukin — whose own book, “Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places,” was published in December — peered through the window at rows of glass candleholders. “Tchotchkes!” she said. “Oh, the sheer ignominy.”

Ms. Jacobs’s continuing influence on the city is clear. As Amanda M. Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, wrote a few years back, “Projects may fail to live up to Jane Jacobs’s standards, but they are still judged by her rules.”

But if Ms. Jacobs is much hailed as an urban prophet, Ms. Zukin is a heretic on her canonization. She views Ms. Jacobs as a passionate and prescient writer, but also one who failed to reckon with steroidal gentrification and the pervasive hunger of the upper middle class for ever more homogenous neighborhoods.

The pattern in places like Williamsburg and Atlantic Yards, Ms. Zukin said, is dreary and inexorable: Middle-class “pioneers” buy brownstones and row houses. City officials rezone to allow luxury towers, which swell the value of the brownstones. And banks and real estate companies unleash a river of capital, flushing out the people who gave the neighborhoods character.

Ms. Jacobs viewed cities as self-regulating organisms, and placed her faith in local residents. But Ms. Zukin argues that without more aggressive government regulation of rents and zoning, neighborhoods will keep getting more stratified.

“Jacobs’s values — the small blocks, the cobblestone streets, the sense of local identity in old neighborhoods — became the gentrifiers’ ideal,” Ms. Zukin said. “But Jacobs’s social goals, the preservation of classes, have been lost.”

Observers also love — love! — irony, and any story about Jane Jacobs now carries with it requisite colorful there-goes-the-neighborhood details:

Ms. Jacobs, who died in 2006, waged heroic war against planners who dreamed of paving the Village’s cobblestone streets, demolishing its tenements and creating sterile superblocks. Her victory in that fight was complete, if freighted with unanticipated consequences. The cobblestone remains, but the high bourgeoisie has taken over; not many tailors can afford to live there anymore. Ms. Jacobs’s old home recently sold for more than $3 million, and the ground floor harbors a boutique glass store.

. . .

Ms. Zukin recently acted as tour guide on a stroll through Ms. Jacobs’s urban village, where Irish and Italian grandmothers once watched from windows as children played on the streets, and milkmen delivered bottles as chain-smoking playwrights typed in grotty flats. It began just north of Christopher and Bleecker Streets in the West Village, once a working-class haven, then the black-leather heart of Queerdom, and now something like the back lot in a Paramount Studios version of New York.

There’s the Magnolia Bakery, where perpetual lines snake out the door not so much because of its excellent cupcakes as because of its appearance on “Sex and the City.” There’s Marc Jacobs, where the lines are no less endless. A Ralph Lauren, a Madden, and a children’s store with the most adorable petite $250 pants. Ms. Zukin sighed.

“It’s another Madison Avenue, or the Short Hills mall,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Really, did we need that?”

Dog lovers across the borough remain on high alert after a creepy Craigslist post threatened to poison pooches with deadly dog treats.

“Too many dogs!” read the post, which has since been taken down by the Web site. “Too many pissing and s–ting everywhere. Kill them! Cull the herd! I am leaving poison in bits of meat and gravy dog food. Poison the dogs!!”

Three and a half years after Mayor Bloomberg closed huge portions of Mullaly and Macombs Dam parks to make way for the Yankees new $1.5 billion stadium, the replacement ballfields the city promised are nowhere to be seen.

. . .

Shea Stadium, in case anyone has forgotten, came tumbling down in fewer than eight months. It was leveled quickly because the Mets needed the land for parking.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

A con man trying to impersonate Paul Simon was arrested for trying to take money out of the singer’s bank account — because the teller realized the 6-foot-1 crook looked absolutely nothing like the diminutive rock legend, police sources told The Post.

The city is keeping its data under tight lock and key. But two officials briefed on the data characterized the results as disappointing, and one said that traffic flow did not meet the department’s goals. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the data had not been made public.

Those goals were outlined in February, when the program was announced. The city hoped that its changes would allow drivers to travel down Seventh Avenue, from 59th to 23rd Street, up to 17 percent faster than before. A comparable northbound trip up Avenue of the Americas was expected to take up to 37 percent less time. The idea, according to Mr. Bloomberg, was that eliminating the congestion where Broadway crosses the two avenues would smooth the way for cars, allowing them to spend less time at stoplights.

. . .

The stakes are high for the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, who has gained worldwide attention for the plan. Ms. Sadik-Khan has taken an aggressive approach toward remaking the New York streetscape to roll back the car-centric policies stemming from the Robert Moses era and create a metropolis more friendly to pedestrians and bicycles. Her actions have earned her accolades and anger in equal measure.

Traffic data will not be the only factor in Mr. Bloomberg’s assessment of whether to continue the program, which barred vehicular traffic from Broadway between 47th and 42nd Streets, and from 35th Street to 33rd Street, creating pedestrian plazas through the heart of Times and Herald Squares. Besides the extension of green lights to expedite traffic flow, other small modifications to lanes and the street grid were made and furniture was set up to accommodate tired and hungry tourists.

Grand schemes seldom seem to provide the results politicians promise — especially flashy schemes rolled out six months before an election. So when in doubt, back down:

“Does it solve all of the problems in the city?” he added. “No.”

In other words, what do you think we’re going to do with all that new lawn furniture?

Location Scout: Times Square Pedestrian Mall.

Developer Joe Sitt sent shockwaves through a monthly gathering of real estate executives on Tuesday by sharing news that he hoped to convert his waterfront land between the Ikea superstore and the Fairway supermarket into a student housing complex.

“Ask any university, they’re starving for student housing,” Sitt, the CEO of Thor Equities, told the development big wigs at the Real Estate Roundtable at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

“[It could be] quasi-residential student housing if we can tempt a nearby university.”

Location Scout: Revere Sugar Refinery.

While he made $250,000 a year from the city to devise the payroll system, CityTime, Salamone was running a full-fledged lobbying business.

During the past four years alone, he was paid another $1.4million by firms such as Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Keane Inc. and Intergraph to lobby the Bloomberg administration for additional computer contracts, city records show.

And since he is a retired city employee, Salamone, 69, also collected more than $50,000 annually in a city pension.

So how did he find all that extra moonlighting time?

A spokesman for the city’s Office of Payroll Administration, when notified of the consulting business, said Salamone never disclosed his other interests to agency chief Joel Bondy.

“While Mr. Salamone was not a city employee and did not recommend any purchases or consultant hires for [the] project, we will be reviewing the matter,” the spokesman said.

The CityTime project has ballooned from an initial price tag of $63 million in 1998 to nearly $700 million today and has fallen years behind schedule, with only about 45,000 city workers using it.

Michael Terry, 40, said he invited three neighborhood drug dealers to his Belmont Ave. apartment to smoke pot, drink beer and watch the Giants beat the Patriots on Feb. 3, 2008.

The Giants won, the four toasted the victory, and his guests refused to leave. They stayed for three days and began selling drugs out of his living room, Terry told a Bronx Supreme Court jury.

Cops are hunting for a suspect, possibly fed up over parking tickets, who may fancy himself a rubber Robin Hood.

He slashed the tires of three NYPD Parking Enforcement cars in broad daylight on Monday.

. . .

Westchester Square has gained an infamous reputation for ticket blitzes against shoppers.

Struggling merchants also complain the agents hog precious metered spots with both official vehicles and their personal ones, which never seem to get ticketed.

“I’m not surprised that frustration would run that high, and that people would attempt to lash back out at enforcement in an improper manner,” said John Bonizio, president of the Association of the Merchants and Business Professionals of Westchester Square.

“Parking violation issues are the No. 1 complaint across New York City that people have about enforcement. It’s fraud.”

Merchants said the constant ticketing is hurting their business.

“It’s killing us,” said Marco Rossetti, 33, co-owner of Frank and Joe’s Deli in Westchester Square. “It’s wrong, but I can understand his frustration.

“Truthfully, we’re not given a chance. Their office is located directly above us. The agents come down 10, 15 at a time, stand in front of my store. People that pull over don’t get a second to stop.”

Location Scout: Westchester Square.