Does anyone living in America ever read the history of western civilization? The results of wealth concentration and the corruption that flowed from it in every "Empire" that has failed??? It ain't rocket science. The same tactics used by Germany to inflame its citizens against Judaism, certain eastern Europeans, the elderly (non-productive) and the sick and infirm are at play today in NYC and D.C.
Take the time to read the INTERVIEW WITH HERMANN GOERING AT NUREMBERG, APRIL 18, 1946, BY GUSTAVE GILBERT. These same techniques were used to invade Iraq, plus a family grudge. Now we have a total fool being followed because of the tax cuts, by the same type of people and corporations that supported the Third Reich.
In NYC and other American strongholds of wealth one is either inside the moat or outside the moat. Just like the forces that drove countless millions to immigrate from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South and Central America and Asia. More cheap labor living pay check to paycheck for the wealthy and politicians to exploit.
We have about 50 years left with the great American experiment. See you on the other side..................
1
Yes!
The city is not good at building and running housing complexes, so public-private partnerships appear to be a good idea. Yet when De Blasio has actually put forward workable proposals to build more units for low-income New Yorkers on underutilized land around existing housing complexes these projects get torpedoed by local representatives and self-appointed community representatives who are really categorically opposed to ANY new development. But De Blasio has also failed at selling its ideas and identifying additional opportunities to create housing.
That's where transportation comes in. NYC's subway system suffers a major geographical disadvantage to almost any other major subway system in the world, in that it is basically a hub-and-spoke system with Manhattan at its lop-sided center. The center gets all the attention and the further away you travel from it, the more economic opportunity diminishes (Flushing being the exception). In cities like London, Seoul or Tokyo there is a circle line that connects multiple urban centers.
I'm not an urban planner, but to me an instance of thinking big would be to figure out how we can create a circle line (perhaps by connecting the Ozone Park A to the Jamaica E) and create dense work-and-live population centers outside of Manhattan *without* replacing existing populations. Build more parks, community centers and schools while you're at it and make truly affordable housing a centerpiece of the vision.
6
It’s declining because the mayor is beholden to the rich although attempts his appeal to everyone else. He allows prices of rent food etc to rise and dies nothing. He lets the subways and buses crumble. He caters to his own needs and his family only. He gets his gym time , gets $ for his wife’s failed mental health program and got his son into Ivy League.
He’s a clown like the potus he was running against.
4
NYC self-absorb and little else.
Is that surprising?
Yes, it is.
Clearly the vision of the city is far too small for what's needed. However too many of the points Ms. Gay mentions are precisely the reason why we're not tackling bigger problems. That being that the voices for progress are caught up in the current fashion.
Let's take Bike Lanes and Congestion Pricing for starters. Why do we have to tear up the entire city to create protected bike lanes which people only use 6 months out of the year? Are we doing this for a workable solution or simply because current urban fashions dictate: Bike Good, Car Bad? It's a waste of space and a waste of money. Use that money and space instead to install Electric Vehicle charging stations. Now that would be vision. Also saying 69 pedestrians and 19 cyclists have been killed in a city of over 8 Million people is not exactly a convincing point.
But the major thing we're avoiding here is what is sucking the city and all its residents dry: these ridiculous, absurd, rip off Capital Contracts. They are draining billions upon billions of dollars out of the MTA - the most expensive miles of Subway track in the world, by far - and NYC Roads and Bridges and all we can think to do is tax people more via congestion pricing? It is far and away our largest issue. It's why we can't have nice things despite the fact that we make an enormous amount of money. Where is the NYT on this? It's disgraceful what is happening here.
1
The founding of NYC is dubious at best. They stole Manhattan from the Indians for a pitiful price. Karma is kicking in.
2
Mara, run for mayor please!
Even the market day stalls in NY haven't even been thought out and made to look pretty and have buskers and fire eaters and performers on stilts or circus type characters at the market places. No thought or attractiveness whatsoever in market day set ups from what I've seen in photos of market days in NY city. You have to create atmosphere and let people know what's happening in and around the place to draw in the crowds and don't forget to put some up and coming artists name on anything you use in advertising so they might get their lucky break and it lead to full time work.
Check out the Christchurch Arts Centre past and present day events. You need an event centre that is either set up as a trust for the city with some backing from local government, so as to show case 'real' artists and make stuff happen for your city. It's your city and you need to demand that local government give it back its soul.
https://www.artscentre.org.nz/
1
Corrupt NYC went belly up in 1975. It's financial administration became the Municipal Assistance Corporation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_Assistance_Corporation
The failed banksters and casino operators on Wall St. Nearly destroyed America in 2008. The FED introduced a policy of cheap and cheaper money to bail them out. It's a Ponzi scheme. New Yorkers benefited at the expense of millions of other Americans!
3
Bravo. If you simply aspire to be no more than a povritician (like de Blasio) you might as well just run for office in someplace like Camden NJ.
So Socialism doesn't work, is that what you are saying?
Anymore, New York City isn't so much a living, breathing city as it is 'Theme Park-Manhattan!' for the perennially adolescent and the rich. Insufferable, humongous numbers of people roam about the place like crowds at Disneyworld, in search of Rockefeller Center Land! and Times Square Land!. And look, here's Gramercy Park Land!, Greenwich Village Land!, TriBeCa Land! Oooh. Aaah. And I remember when normal, ordinary people used to live there. It was just another charming neighborhood in a city full of them.
To me, New York has become a soulless place, little more than bloodless facades and kitschy trinket charms. Times Square, with Broadway turned into a pedestrian mall, has become nothing more than a Land-of-the-Giants appliance store with jumbotron televisions shining blindingly down on hordes of lobotomized little people staring dumbly at their cellphones. Oh, for the days of the 1970's and '80's, when the area at least had a little grit and viscera to its credit.
Even the theatre district has been reduced to the underdressed overpaying for the overrated. And the last time I was in Rockefeller Center, there were so many people jammed together, shuffling along, that it was like queueing up for Soylent Green Tuesdays. Utterly joyless. The Space Mountain ride at Disney has a better payoff.
And that's just the aesthetics. No wonder young New Yorkers get drunk and throw up on the sidewalk in front of 20-million dollar townhouses. How perfectly symmetrical.
6
NYC has become an enclave dominated by the Trumps, Kushners, and Giulianis of the world. Are you in decline? God, I hope so.
2
The seed that enabled New York City to grow was the government public works program called the Erie Canal, the first of a series of links that connected New York to the vast watersheds of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River and the Mississippi River and beyond. No other city on the east coast was so uniquely positioned to penetrate the barrier of the Appalachian mountains and suck up all the immigrants and trade that otherwise would have flowed through the sleepy town of New Orleans with its inefficient addiction to slave labor. By the time the railroad boom made the canals a seconday transportation system, the Philadelphia stock exchange had already collapsed and only Boston was closer to Europe. So New York attracted people with bold ideas because that's where the money was. Globalization created a more level playing field as the industiral heartland of America was abandoned for cheap labor overseas, especially in China, where labor unions were illegal. Although the investors profited handsomely from this cheap labor, the principal beneficiary was the Communist Party of China, whose intelligent central planning took advantage of the racist blind spot of American and European CEOs, learned the tricks of the trade, and emerged as the latest center of innovation. The short, drawling Ross Perot of Arkansas warned us to be careful about globalization, but there were other taller and more impressive fools who won the debate with the help of the corporate-controlled media.
1
As an avid cyclist, I hold a USA Cycling Cat 3 racing license, I feel protected bike lanes are a horrible idea. The are horrible for cars because the reduce the amount of space to maneuver slowing cars down and increasing traffic jams. They are horrible to anyone wanting to make time on a bicycle because you are funneled into a narrow corridor with too many cyclist going slow and no room to pass (like a crowded high school corridor in-between classes). They are horrible for tax payers because the cost money to install, cost money to maintain, and are hard to keep clear in winter with no tax revenue coming from the cyclists to pay for all this. They create confusion for motorists, and pedestrians trying to figure out how to work around them. Then I question the death count. What was the root cause involved with each one? In how many of those cases would having a protected bike lane be the only way to prevent that? You could spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these lanes to save how many of those 19 lives? I've ridden in these lanes. They suck.
Bill "sandanista" deBlasio is intent on making NYC a third world country.
3
if we turn CUNY back into a world class insitutation and fix the LIRR we are back in business. need space and better education for our kids. the rest will take care of itself.
4
This kinda dumbed down, though technically well produced video, does not do it for me. Hate to see NYT simplifying content like this. More to the point, there is zero reference to impending climate breakdown and how that should make any idea of a six lane highway literally unthinkable.
3
OK Mara! Time for YOU to run for mayor! You might get this NYer-in-exile to return:)
Correction: The city was built on immigrants, but lately the inflow is smaller.
the very idea of NYC getting off the all-development-all-the-time train must give the creeps-and-the-willies to the development-industrial-complex
3
it’s hilarious that many believe that if New York were more Socialist it would be a better place. Caracas on the Hudson.
2
Plutocracy + Tourism do not a vibrant city maketh,
4
If you haven’t already “made it” you can’t afford New York.
1
I honestly wanted to like the video, but found it to be just a another incoherent mishmash of warmed over Debbie Downer groupthink gripes, which I guess is the point. Back even in the bad old days, there was a columnist, Pete Hamill, who despite all the really really bad stuff made New Yorkers feel engaged, optimistic and excited about being a part of the City and its day to day struggles. So that is my gripe, that there aren’t journalists like Pete Hamill anymore. Negativity rules the day.
2
I know this is about New York City, but I would say that the entire nation is in decline. The evidence is: 9/11, Katrina, mass shootings, strongly divided populace, corrupt and ineffective politicians, abandonment of truth, admiration of idiocy, mistrust of the fourth estate, rejection of science, and increased wealth disparity for starters. It's been with us for awhile and is only becoming more apparent but people seldom speak of this elephant.
4
I came here to read, not watch!
5
The loss of imagination is solely due to the loss of affordable housing. This is due to the boundless greed of the world's wealthy elite and oversized corporations. The remedy is an easy one. Make it more expensive for the rich thru property taxes. Someone wants to buy a two bedroom for a million dollars then they must pay 33% more on a property sales tax. Someone wants to rent above 2000 per month then they too must pay a 33% tax. Then when the money comes in transfer that amount to services and subsidies for the working class earning less than 100k per year (for a family of 4). Yes it is time to take back from the rich and give to the less affluent. It is the bottom 80% of New Yorkers that make this the safe wonder of the world, not some kleptocrat from Russia or Chinese billionaire or some Silicon peeping tom privacy pirate. Wake up! If things keep getting worse then more and more of us will be on the street and when the workers lose hope and descend into anger then rebellion is just a question of the ratio of police versus rebels, homeless shelters versus those in line waiting to be sheltered. More and more those on the streets are not just addicted and mentally ill people. I see people living in their cars everywhere. It was not like this when I first came to NYC. There was always a space to start and the means to climb a ladder thru hard work and ambition. Now I see empty luxury apartments and store fronts too expensive to rent to start a business. Do something quick!
1
NYC has never been dirtier, ruder in look and manner than it is
now - From the disgusting tree beds along 1st Avenue in the 50's; to the bicycle lanes that are painted green in front of my building on 55th, between 1st and Sutton, preventing cabs from letting fares off, or just getting a cab in front of the building - those lanes
for bicycles are a ludicrous addition to our street. Buses can barely get through; big trucks block the way - we pedestrians - the people that live here are ignored, discarded like the trash that lines our streets. And forget Sutton Place - it is denigrated and has lost it's cache. We live amid Pizza parlors and rubbish now, I wish I could get out of this area . Yes, and there are no rules for the bicycles that tear down our streets with no regard for pedestrians - are dangerous for the elderly and others - we are living in a total mess now. Filth and rubbish everywhere and no one cares.
3
Statements about a supposed lack of vision without the context and background are useless. Yes, in the past, bold infrastructure projects changed the City. That's because people like Robert Moses controlled most of the planning and the budget and advocates for ordinary residents had no say. Now, it is much more difficult to shepherd ambitious plans and when the few with promise, like the Amazon headquarters, are presented, they are shot down. The High Line, which Ms. Gay admires, was a major change to the landscape from which everyone benefits. It took years to come to fruition and the planned primarily by private citizens.
As for the Specialized High Schools, the problem is not with the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT). In the 1970s and 1980s, there were far more Black and Latinx students admitted to all the schools. Those groups made up over half of the student body at Brooklyn Tech. In the lower grades, students were tracked by ability and there were enriched and accelerated programs called Special Progress classes and later Gifted and Talented programs. The students did better because they were prepared better.
Dropping the test is simply going to lower standards and not help anyone. It is disturbing that the Times keeps plucking this one sour string.
3
To quote Shakespeare, "a City doth not an empire make."
1
WEALTHY HOMEOWNERS ARE PAYING THE PROPERTY TAXES and, of course, they pass that expense on to the renters.
Charging a rental fee that covers taxes, maintenance AND provides a profit is the only logical thing to do. Are property owners supposed to pay for taxes, out of the goodness of their hearts?
What an ignorant thing to say.
Quite a thought-provoking piece, even if I don’t completely agree with anything in it!
Most of New York’s recent history can be broken down into three eras:
1) 1900-1940 Subway era. Open space in the newly-formed greater New York is developed, and the overcrowding in Manhattan comes to an end. City population peaks right around the time the last IND stations are opened up.
2) 1940-1980 Era of Robert Moses. The subways stop expanding in favor of a highway network that connects to the burgeoning Interstate system. Parks and playgrounds appear but so does public housing, which ends up veering away from it’s original mission. City population declines, prominence wanes, and New York goes broke in 1975.
3) 1980-2020 The City rebuilt. Everything done wrong in the 20th century is corrected - as good as possible in a Post-Moses environment. Highways are reconsidered, cars aren’t favored on streets, fiscal sanity re-enters the picture, and even the subways expand again! Population on pace to set an all-time high in the near future...
...if the city can find the vision to expand properly. Building transit lines must become cheaper and the middle class, creative types, and service workers need a voice to speak over the rich and the poor that are increasingly present here. It’s obvious that New York is entering a new era where more must be built and rebuilt, led by someone who believes that all types and typographies will have a chance to make it here!
http://gothamchronicles.net
1
I know this might sound deluded but New Zealand is an empire on the rise! lol! Our government just announced an approximate eight billion dollar surplus and government debt has gone down.
1
New York City used to be about many diverse things: the flower district, the garment center, Tin Pan Alley, universities. People had talents, an ability to DO something: write a song, create beautiful clothing, make floral arrangements, be well-educated with many interests. Among many humble workers, you'd find many who spent their spare time at the opera or a concert, reading good books, gardening, etc. The mind was valued and developed.
New York City today scorns diversity, and looks down on those with a well-rounded intellect.
New York City today is about money, flash/bling and being a tech-head. People who spend their days developing apps are not known for having a diversity of interests, and their interpersonal skills often are vastly lacking. They seem to think that's good.
If NYC is going to be all about technology and money, it HAS utterly lost its soul & lost what made it great. Tech people are among the most tedious, boring people alive, and the techies who work for Facebook, Google, and the similar tech companies here cannot seem to find a better way to enjoy life than sitting a sports bar, screaming at the TV while being over-served. They can't stand to be pried away from their phones, and their interactions with women are somewhat predictably gross. These men - and almost all techies are male - are examples of arrested emotional development. They get praised & well paid for being that.
IMO, NYC has jumped the shark. The "vision" today is now far too narrow!
4
NYC's Department of Education [K-12] has an annual budget of $25.5 billion -- that's larger than a small nations entire economy .. and somehow it isn't enough money to educate the cities children. Something is to be said about this.. Liberalism doesn't work!
I'm not just singling out NYC - Los Angeles has a annual of $23.5 billion and 60% of the students can't read, calculate simple math or barley speak English.
3
My wife and I left NYC in May. I am a born and raised New Yorker and have never lived anywhere else. My wife is an eleven year veteran New Yorker by way of Texas. We now live in vibrant, weird Denver. We left New York for a lot of reasons but none of them consisted of a lack of love for NYC. We couldn’t bear the idea of trying (and likely failing) to purchase real estate in NYC even though our combined income would have been considered wealthy in almost every other city in the USA. We were tired of commuting for over an hour to travel less than ten miles. Tired of self centered politicians chasing away job creators such as Amazon. Tired of corrupt unions and the corrupt politicians they own charging the tax payers $5B for elevators. Tired of politicians running uncontested and guaranteed a life long seat. Tired of police that are not from NYC, that do not live in NYC patrolling our city like an occupying army, saluting a PBA flag rather than the flag of NYC. Tired of paying $180 for brunch at a table for two. Tired of all of the artistic places that we used to go closed down, owners and staff have moved to Philadelphia or Nashville, etc. Tired of watching Brooklyn turn into Soho. Tired of watching babies in bars run amok while their privileged parents look on without a care. Tired of Uber drivers, summer stink, Air B&B people, dangerous mental patients, privileged wealthy, people who have never seen a Spike Lee movie referring to themselves as NYers, just, just tired.
22
I came to NYC from Ohio (hello life, good bye Columbus!) because people here didn't wear stocking and white gloves in the city in the summer. I stayed because I didn't have to drive everywhere. Nos it's a great city to be old in. The buses are great for accommodating the handicapped. OTOH the subways are filthy ??? and expensively and stupidly renovated and then left filthy -- elevators not fixed!! Union And politicians too often don't give a damn.. Always a reason why not possible. BUT ONE GREATTHING on which the city is apparently losing $$ are the new ferries on the East River and I guess on the Hudson. What a blast to take one to the Rockaways and the shuttle bus to beach (obnoxious tourists). Maybe there should be an extra charge for that one. One realizes from the ferry that the city is huge!!! Not enough jobs -- and many overpaid city jobs (taxpayer supported jobs). Distribution of $$ is a major issue (Yang). There are a zillion places where new higher density - six toten stories not two -- could be built... but there is a serious lack of decent design and vision. There is no reason public housing has to be cookie- cutter. Patterns in the brick.. intesting "bases" and crowning elements, creative windows, balconies -- cheap fixes. Think Gaudi. But as we know NYC is very corrupt. read article on how NYCers screwed the taxi system in Chicago as well as in NYC. Too many upper class criminals in Wall Street/Real Estate all supported by the govmt.
I was born and raised in NYC, and now live in the NYC suburbs. For 63 years.
I like it here! It was pretty bad in the late-1960s/70s/80s, like a lot of American cities.
Despite Giuliani’s current craziness, he was actually a very good mayor. Ditto Mike Bloomberg.
A lot of the commenters are former New Yorkers who heap scorn on the metro area. To each his own. It’s their loss. I think NYC is endlessly interesting.
2
I was born in brooklyn, went to high school in the bronx, and worked for most of my career in the bronx and queens. NYC does not equal manhattan. While manhattan may be ruined by development and wealth, there is a huge middle class in the "boroughs" and room to experiment with more progressive approaches to development.
Also, our children are learning that if they want an affordable life, they need to look outside the major urban centers. Iowa City, Milwaukee, Detroit, Bentonville, and many other smaller towns are seeing a revival.
Manhattan folks are myopic, the hudson-yardification of manhattan is not the end of NYC or the nation.
1
Born and raised in NYC, I left in 1982. Every time I go back (which is fairly frequently) I am distressed by the changes I see. This is not just nostalgia. This yearning for the things that used to distinguish NYC from other big cities. The subway system, the economic bloodstream of the city, needs to be seriously upgraded if there is to be any hope of reducing automobiles in Manhattan. Middle class housing options must be closer than an hour and a half commute away. Leadership needs to have aspirations for the city, not for themselves.
4
A car-free city core. In the densent part of NY, infrastructure for zero-e, autonomous traffic is moved underground. Eliminate all polluting and through traffic on the surface. Reclaim the space for people: housing, recreation, transit.
1
It’s only my opinion, but it seems NYC is a looting machine. I read about the subway, and it’s 1930’s era switching machinery, so when I visited last summer, I was wary of the subway, so we UBER Ed everywhere. Yet I read about the multitude of MTA management salaries in the six figures. The police and fire Departments also earn such salaries, and get lifetime pensions. I greatly support labor, but I wonder how the books are balanced. I read about the “three men in a room” who make the decisions, and how 2 of them are in prison and the Governor stopped all the corruption probes into the third man, him. The galloping rents that are driving medium sized businesses out of the city, and gentrification of so many neighborhoods. To be fair, San Francisco is a city of millionaires. I have been aware of the title of this article for years. God bless New York
2
NYC has been affected by the overall economic decline of the middle class throughout the country. It could be argued that NYC is a critical player in that decline, ground zero, as the financial capital. Money has no eyes, and our financial leaders are without souls. Great cities are known for their architecture, a reflection of power and wealth. We see building built from the rewards of decline: sterile towers for the ultra rich blocking the sun for everyone else. NYC could be a laboratory for greatness. Where is the great shopping? The artists district? Bloomberg tried to create something with the Hudson Towers but it is awful. He could have insisted on something that was for the 21st Century. Voters must protest, insist on more, holler like Greta until we stop this decline. Imagine a NYC that was mostly solar powered? All new buildings required to provide open green spaces above and below? Imaginative architecture like Singapore? The best and safest mass transit funded by those developers? Great public housing a fair prices, with huge open, green spaces from tax dollars? Well funded schools? Our leaders are bought and paid for. Do we need another Hurricane Sandy to remind us of our imperative needs?
5
This piece is wonderful, inspiring, full of concrete ideas on how to make the future better, and it is brave. It is why I subscribe to this newspaper as part of my hope for the future and investment in our present. I hope every one of you at the NYT keeps up your excellent and courageous work of journalism. You make every single day of our lives better for your study, reflection, and communication of our present.
1
The whole country is in decline. The British Empire declined, and now America is declining.
Too much corruption, too violent, unsafe, too expensive, horrifying medical system, terrifying public school systems (not all, but too many). etc. Too many people with guns. Politically Correct and cultural appropriation insanity vs freedom.
6
I've lived in NYC and while it is a breathaking city, I would say I could find each element of that city in other cities around the world and at steeply reduced prices, reduced stress, reduced noise, reduced 1%ism, reduced holier than thou "New York Greatest City on Earth" talk. I think it had a moment, maybe a few, but there are so many other places around the world that outshine it with no muss, no fuss.
And as the climate crisis unfolds NYC is not only at ground zero for potential destruction, it also was ONE OF THE KEY CITIES WHICH ACCELERATED ALL THE ACTIVITIES WHICH LED TO A PLANET COMING UNHINGED. CAPITALISM. CONSUMERISM. EMPIRICISM. ANTI-ECOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES.
1
@Bradford Hastreiter - None of these men lived in NYC: John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.
So you gotta' remove Empiricism from your list.
I'll get back to you on your other NYC faults.
1
Our American cities feel like 2nd-3rd world cesspools. Neglect, lack of leadership, selfish greed and general malaise have brought us here. The lack of civic pride and commitment to delivering a viable basic education to all citizens are contributing factors. I returned 2 days ago from a trip to Madrid. On almost every level, it shamed me. As a native New Yorker and longtime center city Philadelphia resident, I'm brokenhearted.
3
The three yearly Government Census should tell you how many apartments or whatever you live in, in New York are empty or are just
'ghost homes', i.e. property investments that are left unoccupied for Capital Gains by property speculators.
3
New York City is simply changing, as it always has and always will.
1
Cool video. I can't say anything about an educational system I don't understand. A few thoughts on real estate and maybe less on transportation:
If residential buildings have empty apartments, can the city bill the owners for having empty units? And at a higher dollar amount than the average rent for that apartment?
So if an apartment is $2500 a month and $500 month maintenance fees, NYC collects $6000 a month for empty units. An odd idea perhaps. Looking at the condition of public housing in NYC its the best I could come up with. Basically lower the rent until it rents or pay up.
Another idea is to limit foreign investment to 10% of units in any residential building, including said building in total. The issue is not one of a phobia of other countries or dislike or nationalism--it is to maintain reasonable cost of living based on being from and experiencing the cost of living actually in our country.
Transportation is tough. Ideally, certain car free roads during daytime hours, trucks in the city only overnight between 1 Am and 5 AM, and some carefully placed east-west monorails. Digging new subway lines in NYC seems like it would take forever. Making Amtrack and NJ transit more modern like the speed and efficiency of trains I have ridden on in Japan ( 25 years ago!) would seem reasonable, but I have read plenty on the hows and whys it can't be done. Just a fantasy.
Good luck guys!
5
You call artists markets flea markets in USA and seems that the Brooklyn market keeps moving around to empty spaces and are only there until some owner wants to build on that space or whatever. It is local governments job to give a Sunday Market day a permanent home and get involved in organising its layout etc. Sounds to be like artists and the like have been chased out of the area because they don't have a permanent space to show their talents and wares. Lots of these small stall holders who make arts and crafts need a permanent home to display their goods and crafts they make as it can lead to permanent jobs because of contacts at the market day.
In NZ I know of lots of talented potters, artists, knitters , candle makers who get permanent orders because of other local businesses that come to markets scouting for people to fill their shelves. lots of tourists like arts and crafts that have been hand made from the country they are visiting.
Tourists don't want to go to a market and find it's just like a flea market in China with made in China on it. Even the Chinese tourists don't want that.
1
When Manhattan and Brooklyn became affordable for writers, painters, sculptors, poets, dancers, actors, filmmakers and other creative people,
that was the end of the greatness of Manhattan.
Gone are the days when an aspiring artist could rent a room with a bathtub in the kitchen on Avenue C.
New York still has a lot of glitz.
But it's soul is long gone.
10
Cities go through times of able leadership and ... the other kind. Hopefully, Gotham will get herself a real Mayor committed to the city with some actual leadership skills at the next election, and the dearth of quality of life people have seen can be changed.
I can't imagine how the rebirth needed will happen with a Democrat in City Hall, however.
Would more bridges - like twice as many - help tie Manhattan to the other boroughs more closely so the rebirth of enthusiasm can spread all over the city?
2
The rich pushing out artists and creative people is happening in big cities around the world. Paris was once the home of icons like Hemingway and Picasso but artists who are on the make, trying to get established and most likely in their most creative stages, could never afford to live in the city now.
I have seen reports that some have moved to suburbs of Paris but when that happens, most likely "the scene" associated with artists disappears. The scene is something important, a place where artists meet other artists, share and steal ideas and make contacts that can lead to, perhaps, careers.
Rents, including those for small stores, cafes and gathering places, drive everyone out. One can walk down the Champs Elysees now and find some of the same stores you would find in Kansas City. I saw a photo of a Paris street not long ago that had a storefront with the huge, wrap around banner of 7-11. Is this what people go to Europe to experience?
The rich like to gather in cities with international reputations, some of which is built on their cultural and artistic vibes. In turn, the rich then drive out the reasons they came to a place originally, destroying that which they arrived to enjoy.
As an outsider who has family and travels frequently travels to New York one of the biggest barriers to change is the fact that New Yorkers have a strong sense that the way things have always been done have to continue, forget the consequences. Must not interfere with "the New York way".
7
@Doug Terry - - You nail the effect of people moving into an area ignoring their own effect on their new home.
Red-state GOPers see the exact same thing happening with economic emigrees from California relocating to financially active Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, and Florida.
People leave CA because their businesses or professions could not continue happily there; sadly, however, most of these relocated people THEN appear to vote for socialism just as they did before, even though they LIVED the devastation that socialism brought to their own lives before.
Go figure.
1
@L osservatore
"Socialism"? This is the new word for communism. I am well aware that many people have moved out of California because of high living costs and what they consider to be excessive regulation. That being the case, why does California continue to prosper?
1
@Doug Terry NYC is a filthy mess. I was just there over the weekend and was treated to seeing two men just stop walking and peeing in the streets. Human feces on 42nd and 9th Ave. Mayor Meatloaf with ears makes Dinkins look like Ronald Reagan. Excessive regulation and Democrat corrupt stronghold is why the city is sinking into an abyss. Disgusting!
I really wonder how many readers are from smaller cities and towns with significant contributions to our modern way of life. I'm from Dayton Ohio where powered flight originated along with many, many innovations and inventions we often take for granted only to see our hometowns forced to take a back seat to big cities who I suppose want us small town folk to cry you a river.
Dayton's rich heritage takes a back seat to no city and yet we witness the inevitable decline just like everyone else.
2
I really wonder how many readers are from smaller cities and towns with significant contributions to our modern way of life. I'm from Dayton Ohio where powered flight originated along with many, many innovations and inventions we often take for granted only to see our hometowns forced to take a back seat to big cities who I suppose want us small town folk to cry you a river.
Dayton's rich heritage takes a back seat to no city and yet we witness the inevitable decline just like everyone else.
3
I really wonder how many readers are from smaller cities and towns with significant contributions to our modern way of life. I'm from Dayton Ohio where powered flight originated along with many, many innovations and inventions we often take for granted only to see our hometowns forced to take a back seat to big cities who I suppose want us small town folk to cry you a river.
Dayton's rich heritage takes a back seat to no city and yet we witness the inevitable decline just like everyone else.
2
I grew up in Dayton Ohio which to most people probably doesn't mean much, but dig into Dayton's rich heritage and you'll find the likes of the Wright brothers and powered flight and a town that was once on the cutting edge of technology and innovation. It's a town that after the devastating floods of 1913 found the money and the will power to build 5 dams and miles upon miles of earthen levies to permanently protect the city and outlying areas from further flooding. Wright Patterson AFB is a location of many very significant aviation accomplishments that changed our modern way of life and many modern conveniences came directly from engineers and even plain townsfolk including the electric starter for automobiles, trucks and so forth not to mention several other innovations. There's really just too much to mention here, but Dayton is far from alone in contributing to our world. Many towns that have contributed have fallen on hard times often discounted to the dustbins of history. NY isn't the only city to have impacted the world in ways we often overlook.
2
I grew up in Dayton Ohio which to most people probably doesn't mean much, but dig into Dayton's rich heritage and you'll find the likes of the Wright brothers and powered flight and a town that was once on the cutting edge of technology and innovation. It's a town that after the devastating floods of 1913 found the money and the will power to build 5 dams and miles upon miles of earthen levies to permanently protect the city and outlying areas from further flooding. Wright Patterson AFB is a location of many very significant aviation accomplishments that changed our modern way of life and many modern conveniences came directly from engineers and even plain townsfolk including the electric starter for automobiles, trucks and so forth not to mention several other innovations. There's really just too much to mention here, but Dayton is far from alone in contributing to our world. Many towns that have contributed have fallen on hard times often discounted to the dustbins of history. NY isn't the only city to have impacted the world in ways we often overlook.
1
The Hudson Yards is exhibit A for what has gone wrong with this city, with the entire world, for that matter.
8
Our NZ government has a 8 billion dollar surplus; and NZ has no Capital Gains tax in NZ; and people who rent get paid 45 cents in the dollar by the government for every dollar they pay in rent if under a certain income limit.
Maybe the government needs to put more money into the economy to grow the economy. Lots of government initiatives and incentives for start up businesses and businesses that want to expand and export, in NZ. You need central government to be involved in growing its nations economy. even our national superannuation investment fund has shares in start up kiwi businesses.
Government is meant to be helping the economy grow and not hindering and stunting its growth. NZ does all this with strict environmental laws to police businesses so they aren't just carpetbaggers and enemies of the people and State.
7
Education has to start at birth. One of the most important, and I might even say critical gifts a parent can give their child is the gift of curiosity.
From birth, even if you don't see an immediate reaction, READ to your child EVERY DAY.
There are so many collateral benefits that come from this, besides the ability for your child to experience the world and learn on their own, once they know how to read.
Don't get your child a smart phone or computer until they are, at least, in high school, no matter how much they beg or complain.
Even if there are educational programs available, these are not what your child will end up utilizing. Most likely, they will end up using the phone or computer to play games that have no value whatsoever, for hours and hours. They just aren't mature enough to make appropriate decisions concerning the use of technology. They're children and they need guidance!
The formative years from birth to preschool or kindergarten are absolutely critical in determining the course of your child's life. READ with them.
Special schools are not necessary, just special teachers, including parents. (Parents ARE teachers, whether they want to be, or not.) A competent teacher can provide appropriate activities for multiple levels of ability.
Teaching axiom:
If you teach them, then they will learn.
Contrapositive:
If they don't learn, then you're not teaching.
7
Don't forget that incoming tourism is export earnings and I'm sure NY city gets lots of tourists who use all the infrastructure, so you need to think about taxing or putting tolls on infrastructure so EVERYONE, including tourists, get to pay some tax for repairs and maintenance of subways, roads, amenities, etc. Homeowners shouldn't have to bear the burden of local taxation as a home is a birthright. Our current PM said that it is every kiwis birthright to have a home to live in, so this government bought in a LAW, similar to Australia's, that says no foreigners can buy existing homes, ( with some nation exceptions), and have to ADD to the existing housing stock and this is how this government is getting down homelessness that used to be unheard of before the last government flooded our nation with immigrants and foreigners and tourists who are using existing homes as Airbnb accommodation, thereby creating a shortage of housing for locals and homelessness.
Airbnb are commercial use of a residential premises and push up rents. Airbnb can get in one night what they would get by renting to locals for a week. Not the owners fault for wanting to make more money but the governments fault for not regulating the housing industry with laws around rentals. (And policing those laws.) More kiwis are buying their own homes now that government bought in that law.
8
Maybe emphasis should be on improving infrastructure then the city wouldn't be in decline.
Lots of new infrastructure in Auckland NZ to make it easy to get around so the government put a petrol tax on Auckland to pay for the new infrastructure. (It's a specific tax for Aucklanders only, and charged at their gas/petrol stations on the petrol they use.) It's a tax on roads and probably could do the same in NY for subway tunnel upgrades. Put a toll or tax on it until the new/upgraded transport system is paid for.
Another way to pay for infrastructure upgrades and improvements is to put a toll on them. I can remember when the Auckland Harbour Bridge was built and EVERYONE who crossed that bridge in a vehicle had to pay a toll to pass over it and when the bridge was paid for the toll booths were ended.
2
New Zealand is doing something right and we have free healthcare and government paid National Superannuation pension scheme for all kiwis rich or poor. AND our government just announced they have a surplus of approximately 8 billion dollars and said they're going on a spending spree to stimulate the economy.
2
I'm not crazy about the phrase "we deserve better" From whom? You want better, work for better, don't complain that "they" are failing us. Meanwhile, The NY Botanical Garden looks better than ever, the Aquarium in Coney Island has a great new shark exhibit, I'm seeing improvements in Van Cortlandt Park, etc. Crime is down and so are police stops. UPK has become a part of life, and the Climate Mobilization Act will make NYC a leader in the existential crisis facing our species. Yes, the subways need work and going east to west in the Bronx is a problem, and one of my biggest complaints is the handouts we give to the money laundering oligarchs with with great views in buildings that ruin everyone else's views. But overall, New York is no more in decline than it has been throughout its existence.
3
@EdBx
EdBx!
Readers have a hard time understanding that progress has 2 elements: Destruction of the old and creation of the new.
I am glad you get it.
WEALTHY HOMEOWNERS ARE PAYING THE PROPERTY TAXES and, of course, they pass that expense on to the renters.
Charging a rental fee that covers taxes, maintenance AND provides a profit is the only logical thing to do. Are property owners supposed to pay for taxes, out of the goodness of their hearts?
5
Yes. The rich people have pushed everyone else out. Manhattan is simply a mall.
8
@Jim
Jim, I understand your limited experience, writing from Atlanta and all, but you must know that there is a difference between your malls and NYC.
Or maybe you need to travel to understand.
2
Just a comment on the Stuyvesant admission process Ms. Gay mentions, that selected a class that included only 1% Black students. It is sinful that the Board of Ed doesn't identify 200 Black second graders every year, and do for them what's done for many of the kids who ultimately gain admission to Stuy-- spend six years grooming them, every day after school, for the Specialized High School Admission Test. 100 would almost certainly get into Stuyvesant. The rest, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, etc.
Would this solve the problem of educational inequality in New York? No. But it would be a realistic way to solve the more manageable problem of getting more Black students into Stuyvesant HS. Not the sort of grand innovation Ms. Gay hopes for perhaps. But an innovation nonetheless.
4
@MikeB26 That's what the Success Academy and other charter schools are doing now. A greater percentage of their students pass state exams than public school students. But in a one-party Democrat town you aren't going to see progress because the system holds the teachers' interest higher than the students. As someone recently said, "It's all about the Benjamins" : )
Big, bold ideas. I agree with Ms. Gay that we need some, but don't agree with her as to what they are.
We don't need to continue the school system's drive to a uniform level of mediocrity or worse for all. We need to protect the few centers of excellence that exist in the system (e.g., Stuyvesant High School) and not destroy them in the name of racial balance -- and enhance and create more of them. We need to recognize that our rent laws and related land use policies stifle the continuing development of better housing stock and that there is no fundamental right to live in a prime neighborhood for less than $900 a month. We need to recognize that the function of the subway system is to provide safe, comfortable and efficient transportation and not to serve as a de facto homeless shelter. We need to recognize that bicycles (particularly electric bikes) are not the perfect transportation solution and that their increase in numbers over the past few years has made the pedestrian experience much worse.
The reality -- Ms. Gay and I are both unlikely to see the realization of our very different big bold ideas.
8
I was eleven and riding on a gondola in Venice with my adored and exquisite Auntie Dolly. Suddenly she leaned over and said in a very personal way, like a revelation for her it was, too: "Money Peter, is the root of all evil." Never forgot that and it was nearly sixty-three years ago. And why was I riding on a gondola on a Venice canal? Because we had money. Groan.
5
For many years, the subway to Rockaway was a 2-fare ride, so Ms. Gay is wrong on that count. And she talks about the vision that built the Flushing Library as if it were ancient, but that library opened just 20 years ago.
I agree with her that our car culture is nuts and I'm a bike rider myself who supports bike lanes and the like, but most New Yorkers do not. They resent the loss of parking spaces and while they're in denial about the bad car drivers, they have a hatred for bike riders who don't follow the rules.
Ms. Gay is correct that there are far too few Black and Hispanics in the city's specialized schools but the solution is absolutely not to eliminate the admissions test. That's just setting the kids up for failure. If you can't do the math and you can't do the reading interpretation, one cannot possibly succeed in those STEM schools even if the reason one can't do those things is because of racism. The educational problems need to be fixed at the elementary, middle and junior high school level. In the 90's, Brooklyn Tech had a majority of Black and Hispanic students. That ended when the City took away enrichment programs in the middle and junior high schools.
An extension of the subway system would be wonderful, but we have no idea how to build subways efficiently. It took over 25 years to build three stations of the 2nd Avenue subway. It's costing $79 million per station just to add elevators. What???!!!! We have to end these contractor rip-offs.
8
Thanks for this energizing piece.
NYC needs visionaries who can bring forth new ideas, and cut through the delay of red tape and the agony of corruption. No need for the 2nd Ave Subway to have taken decades, or for the new WTC area to still be a construction site. No need for Congestion pricing to have taken so long.
Disparity is the result of NYC's success, and unless it gets addressed, all of Manhattan will be a golden ghetto like Paris or London.
The Property Tax system should be overhauled so that Class 1 dwellings are all paying equally. The tax windfall could used to build affordable housing. The current mayor owns two dwellings in park Slope and pays a pittance in RE taxes. Ask him why he hasn't overhauled Property Tax.
NYC is still the greatest city in the world. It needs to be great for all New Yorkers.
3
Thanks for this energizing piece.
NYC needs visionaries who can bring forth new ideas, and cut through the delay of red tape and the agony of corruption. No need for the 2nd Ave Subway to have taken decades, or for the new WTC area to still be a construction site. No need for Congestion pricing to have taken so long.
Disparity is the result of NYC's success, and unless it gets addressed, all of Manhattan will be a golden ghetto like Paris or London.
The Property Tax system should be overhauled so that Class 1 dwellings are all paying equally. The tax windfall could used to build affordable housing. The current mayor owns two dwellings in park Slope and pays a pittance in RE taxes. Ask him why he hasn't overhauled Property Tax.
NYC is still the greatest city in the world. It needs to be great for all New Yorkers.
1
I came to New York City 40 years ago with excitement that I was coming to the center of the universe. Now I feel the city has lost faith in itself and thus doesn't bother to take care of itself. I see dirty, greasy sidewalks (who is responsible for cleaning them, or what city officials should pursue them, or ticket them if they are not taken care of .....or?), cracked, broken sidewalks, broken rutted streets, (oh, lumpy repair patches!) sinking manholes. I despair. It seems that few in city or state government care about the basic maintenance and upkeep of the physical infrastructure, and no one seems to be held accountable. The ones who do care are probably demoralized and ignored. (Yes, Fifth Avenue is still nice) AND, despite this negligent attitude, we pay some of the highest taxes in the country. Something is wrong -- and we can't put all the blame on Republicans, it's a one-party state! After walking around, I come home mad, and probably like many others I think about leaving NYC.
8
Haha! You should've seen it before you got there!
Ambition and a generation of blotter acid will kill anyplace. Wall Street, the world banking, media, and publishing center, political knife fights, entertainment intrigue, all of this toxic mix bodes degeneration among human beings. Even the dogs have left town.
Wasn't NYC insolvent in the 70s?
Wasn't NYC seeing ˜2,000 murders/year in the 80s/90s?
Wasn't housing so bad in NYC throughout its entire history, that numerous rent control, rent regulation laws were continuously passed?
Ms. Gay must be completely unaware of the *real* story of NYC.
NYC was rescued from the abyss by law and order mayors like Giuliani and post-911 increased police resources funded by the federal government.
Life in NYC has never been better. NYC has never been more diverse. The subway has never reached more places.
Not really sure what Ms. May thinks was better in the past.
9
Not mentioned in the video or comments is LGA. There is some kind of Stockholm syndrome present when NYrs don’t notice you are spending $8 billion (current estimate) to renovate LGA and there is still no viable public transport option. A bus to a train? For $8 billion the 7 train or any other line all the way to the airport? London, Paris, Shanghai, Bangkok, Zurich, Frankfurt, San Fran, Sea Tac...the list of major airports with a good public transportation options is long and growing. Where is LGA on this?
29 years in NY followed by 29 years in Chicago
7
@Brian Walls So true. The local bus from Harlem to LGA could take a while too. "Don't notice" must be the coping strategy of the last person you talked to. "Don't get us started" is more like it.
2
As a married 21 year old in the seventies my wife and I could easily afford a one bedroom apartment on 28th between third and lex. Ten story prewar building with a elevator.
I worked in a deli and my wife worked as a aide to a small firm in the garment district.
We had three weeks of checks to ourselves, all bills were paid with one week’s pay, and it wasn’t much.
15
The vision fizzled out when the World Trade Centers were completed. New York retreated from the notion of a stratospheric cosmopolis to something more human scale; it is no accident that bars and restaurants disdain the steel-and-glass atmosphere of the skyscrapers to interiors that are more representative of rural New Hampshire.
1
de Blasio has ruined this city
7
@NYC Dweller deBlasio has ruined himself : )
@NYC Dweller I guess that if this simplistic explanation works for you, hold on to it.
But if you'd prefer to actually understand and address the situation, I think you'll need to revise it.
1
New York City specializes in ignorant immature immoral inarticulate intemperate insecure bloviating buffoons aka Al Sharpton, Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jefferies, Jeffrey Epstein, Rudy Giuliani, Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, Eliot Engel, Nita Lowey, Peter King etc.
8
I have never been to New York City. New Yorkers describe it as the t.v. show Gotham run by the Penguin. A city with high taxes that are constantly scammed by the rich and powerful. People trapped below in gridlock while the same elite flit from building to building by helicopter. Sidewalks filled with pickpockets and criminals of all sorts. International sex traffickers that are allowed to skip monitoring because the police seem too busy.
But you all agree that you used to have some great delis that have closed up due to higher and higher rents.
3
@tom harrison Flying from building to building by helicopter is not a thing here. Otherwise spot on.
Hey, come visit and have some amazing bagels and dollar slices! It ain't all bad, I promise!
2
NY is leaderless and has been ever since Giuliani and then bloomberg. They didn't stop the world's wealthy from parking their money here and leaving tens of thousands of empty apartments. They allowed the Plaza Hotel and even the Waldorf, with thousands of decent paying jobs, to be turned into empty condo developments where no life exists anymore. They turned the city into a place where rich people could come and not be bothered by the riffraff. Meanwhile they killed the very things that made this place great.
13
Rent is absurd, increasingly pricing out everyone who make a city worth living in, as compared to those born into wealth who bring cupcake ATMs and $15 to-go salads in their wake. The subway is still a sputtering mess due to the decades of neglect that let it rot. Countless buildings that people in the rest of the country would laugh at you at if you tried to get them to live in; oh boy, $3K a month for a 4 story walkup with no air conditioning! Where do I sign!? NYC schools are laughably segregated.
Until we start bringing back truly affordable apartments, until we start knocking down these ancient and cruddy buildings and replacing them en masse with modern buildings, and not the kind that charge $4K for a studio, NYC will continue to experience the problems that come with pricing so many people out. When you have an hour commute each way, minimum, to somewhere you can actually live, small wonder you don't have the energy or incentive to contribute to the social fabric of the city.
2
@Sam You can't replace these ancient and cruddy buildings with modern residences in the central city (which I think we should) and suppress rents at the same time. Perhaps we need to recognize that not everyone can afford to live in Manhattan and other prime neighborhoods, and provide decent public transportation for those who can only afford to live further out.
3
The entire country is an empire in decline.
13
@Dylan Seeger
Cheer up
It could be worse.
1
Yes. I had the privilege of living in Manhattan just before the internet...the last, if you will, of old NY. We got up in the morning, got a newspaper, read it on the subway, and went to work. The streets were dirtier, the subways as well. There were niches of artists, of stores, of eateries. There were even still slightly ethnic areas, believe it or not. Now, it's all a bunch of chain stores. While no one is really missing the old 42nd street, the new Disney version of NYC (push all the unsightly stuff away) isn't what NYC is about. The Congestion Pricing idea is literally a wall around the good part of the city...most of the bike lanes, etc are attempts to displace cars more than anything else...the moat is going up and you outsiders will have to pay to cross it. We don't have the public transportation of any European capitol, or Japan. We expend energy on bike lanes for the crazy people who think a bicycle in NYC is a good idea, but not much for the other 99% of people who need to get about...we need to build subways that go over the GWB to NJ....that fill in the many holes of Metro North...or even re run commuter rail through north NJ and Queens where it used to be. Nope, just bike lanes....After this year's trips to Japan and Germany, the answer to your headline, is....YES.
12
@Casey - bike lanes = line bakes - obviously something wrong with all the cooks
"The city was built on big ideas, but lately the vision seems smaller." Ya think??
1
Ha! Not only NY.
The entire United States of América....
4
New York has been a has been for decades. What happens in California is much more important than what happens in New York. For example New York’s economy is puny compared to California’s. Also California doesn’t get a lot of revenue from casinos, like Wall Street. California’s economy is based on building things, not gambling and talking.
2
@Keith Dow
An utterly baseless and counter-productive comment.
1
Getting rid of admissions tests for elite high schools doesn't seem very visionary to me. The results seem very predictable. Families with resources will put their children into private schools, and precocious students without resources will lose one of their only ways to provide proof of their aptitude and work ethic.
Mediocrity in the name of equality isn't progressive. It's short sighted and regressive. In my opinion a progressive vision would be to build more elementary schools for precocious children in low income areas that serve families who live under a certain income level, or providing free admissions training summer school programs for students of color.
15
@nick
I like your comment about mediocrity... :)
Education has to start at birth. One of the most important, and I might even say critical gifts a parent can give their child is the gift of curiosity.
From birth, even if you don't see an immediate reaction, READ to your child EVERY DAY.
There are so many collateral benefits that come from this, besides the ability for your child to experience the world and learn on their own, once they know how to read.
Don't get your child a smart phone or computer until they are, at least, in high school, no matter how much they beg or complain.
Even if there are educational programs available, these are not what your child will end up utilizing. Most likely, they will end up using the phone or computer to play games that have no value whatsoever, for hours and hours. They just aren't mature enough to make appropriate decisions concerning the use of technology. They're children and they need guidance!
The formative years from birth to preschool or kindergarten are absolutely critical in determining the course of your child's life. READ with them.
Special schools are not necessary, just special teachers, including parents. (Parents ARE teachers, whether they want to be, or not.) A competent teacher can provide appropriate activities for multiple levels of ability.
My Teaching axiom:
If you tech them, then they will learn.
Contrapositive:
If they don't learn, then you're not teaching.
6
If you tech them?
It’s not just New York. A large part of the New York taxpaying workforce commutes in every day from New Jersey. Yet the trains into Penn Station run through tunnels over a hundred years old. I’d say that the vision has been missing for quite a few years now, and it’s not just NYC that’s lacking here.
8
@Global Charm
Is there something wrong with building to last?
It's been gutted. There's nothing left.
Problem is pretty much everything had been gutted too.
6
The corporate takeover of the city has a lot to do with it. Gone are the days of indie bookstores, music stores, unique shops, cafes, etc. which have been replaced with endless banks and chain stores. The vibrancy and uniqueness of the city no longer exists as it once did.
27
This is a very good piece of work you have done. However, as a graduate of one of the three original high schools in NYC, I must say that these schools are ELITE because they admit the best students. Yes, when I attended Brooklyn Tech between 1967 and 1971, the racial makeup was more balanced compared to today, but it reflected the student body reflected the best performing students city wide regardless of race. It probably still does. Admitting students who do not test up to par will just reduce these schools to the normal non-elite status. Admitting students who can not compete in the environment will not work.
12
@NDF Just to follow up, these schools are special because the students admitted are special. There is nothing about these schools that will take regular students and magically transform them into special students.
8
In the 1970s we had only ten or so years of subsidizing single mothers. Since then, the percentage of young, undereducated single mothers has climbed steadily and resulted, unhappily, in schools that cannot prepare all its students as they once did.
Learning disabilities, lack of interest in learning, downright scorn for education, and behavioral problems even in elementary grades have only increased in the last 50 years and made it harder for our good kids to concentrate in their classes.
I do not lay all our school system's problems at the feet of unwed mothers, many of whom do try their best and succeed; but teachers, social workers, and cops deal with the troubles that come along with the all too many who cannot succeed.
7
@B.
The poor and uneducated reproduce at much higher rates than the financially sound and educated.
The result is that the imbalance is becoming greater, between those that need help and those that can provide it.
5
I think NYC will rebound. I have been here on and off for more than 80 years and it transcends the worst that can be done to it. The sooner the idea of the art world is replaced by the awareness that art is universal a transformation in awareness will occur. It is already in progress. The tastelessness we associate with the present time will be replaced by a simple but revolutionary ethic based on tolerance, helpfulness and democracy. We will start thinking less in binary terms and more with a view to the truth and beauty of everything. NYC transcends the smallness it often manifests.
6
@Stephen C. Rose
Best comment.
1
New York City is still the same but 3 things have happened that makes the city seem like in decline. Over population, ridiculously high rent and subway system that needs to be improved. Maybe a new mayor might help too. New York will see an exodus of middle class. If one is not wealthy, New York may be hard to survive in.
8
Travel to China and you will know why the USA is in a decline. We are stuck to our exceptionalism narrative and have done very little to be exceptional. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our schools are struggling and sports continues to be where parents and kids spend the most time.
Our freedom of speech is the only thing working for us right now but under the current administration we don’t know how long that will be.,
14
New York doesn't lack for 'vision' but America does.
Ms. Gay's complaints are generally valid (with the exception of making schools like Stuyvesant somehow 'open admissions.) But as someone who grew up in the NYC of the 1960s and 70s. NYC looks like a paradise by comparison. Construction is everywhere, buildings and streets are clean and safe. The subway, while perennially slow and maddening, moves a phenomenal number of people 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year to where they need to be.
The city could be better or more to Ms. Gay's liking I suppose. But wealth has always made this city run and the city has always managed to balance the needs of those with average incomes with the the needs of the wealthy. The fact that NYC arguably doesn't strike the same egalitarian balance today is far more likely a national problem too big for even a city our size to buffer any longer.
American problems have generally showed up on our doorstep first and have consequently more often than not been solved here as well. However those national problems have become intractable and a malignant force controls much of the national debate. Now matter how big our heart, it isn't fair to ask NYC to right the wrongs of those who are intent upon inflicting their shrivelled views and unravelling our social fabric on a federal level.
In the end, despite the dark forces arrayed nationally, we live in a place that we can still be proud to call home.
We are doing as best we can.
3
@Lkf I love NYC, I love living here and I agree with the sentiment of your comment. There's a lot of good to be said about NYC in 2019. But that doesn't mean we can't do much, much better!
1
We need a land value tax + zoning reform.
Land value tax = tax on the location but not the building. This incentivizes more upward building so we have more units built. This also reduces rents because it discourages vacancies (the tax makes it expensive to have vacancies) and encourages a greater supply of housing. Also by reducing rents, it increases people's real incomes as well. We'll just have more and more units built (a lot more!) so housing becomes incredibly affordable.
Zoning reform = allows more upward building.
Then we can take the revenues from the land value tax to help people who are still too poor to afford housing.
It's a total win for everyone...except landlords and wealthy condo owners who leave their condos empty and foreign corrupt government officials and oligarchs who park their money in NY real estate, which drives up prices and makes housing unaffordable for people who actually live here.
Land value tax + zoning reform = cheap rents and cheap housing for everyone + lower inequality + higher real incomes + economic stimulus + more vitality / diversity in the city.
1
Hubris on two-wheels in NYC maybe, but in Portland OR, NOT stopping is the law: "Oregon passes version of 'Idaho Stop' law that allows bike riders to treat stop signs as yields."
Except it's the automobile driver who does the yielding! The police do not enforce the law as they are petrified by the righteous bike lobby aka pedal-Antifa. Besides, chasing a biker on two-wheels is a zero-sum game for the cops, so why bother?
2
NYC apparently is so popular no one lives there anymore. The prices are high because of high demand. Build more housing to fulfill the demand. Also has Ms. Grey been to the outer boroughs which are filled with millions of immigrants? Immigrants still pour into NY like they always have. Except now they are from India, Eastern Europe and Thailand. Also just admitting students who are can't hack it academically to hard classes is dumb. We should be asking ourselves why do only 1% of African American kids qualify. Put all answers on the table. Chinese immigrants who look pretty different from white people and where English is a second language can get in but a native born African American can't. NYC is one of the least racist places in the world. I think the issue is deeper than just racism. Also I just spoke to some people in their 70s about NYC public schools in the 50s. They said the schools were not great then. If you wanted a quality education their parents enrolled them in Catholic school. They tried to go back to public school at one point but they were 2 years a head of public schools by 10th grade.
Though the central point though is NYC needs a vision. It needs to think big and make the quality of life better for the average New Yorker. The current mayor is terrible. NYC could use a inspiring mayor again. Someone who can push past the bureaucracy and get things done. Someone who will rezone so New York can get the housing it needs needs. Then improved the transportion.
9
This is how it will be until Americans realize that Republicrooks and Corporate Democrats (Neo-Liberals) will only act in their own interests and the interests of the wealthy and business, to the detriment of the majority of citizens. Review your beliefs, and vote for Progressives, whenever possible, who will only serve YOU.
4
@ChesBay -- This includes PRIMARYING corporate Democrats like Nancy Pelosi. She hasn't served her constituents, much less the American public, in many , many years. She raises money for herself. Big Whoop.
People who live in cities mistakenly think that is real living on Earth. This planet clearly shows us how to live here if only we would take our minds off everything human and consider the biosphere of this the only planet known to support life. We have insisted on vanquishing nature and cities are the result of that fixation. Until we (including you "New Yorkers") can learn to see beyond our own concerns we will continue to destroy life to satisfy our petty desires. As for the issue of your "empire" please refer to the historical record of all empires.
11
@Craig Millett
I guess you don't like to live among people and all they create.
I guess that's another way.
1
How can a city be great that allows its citizens to urinate against houses and in vestibules, toss garbage out of cars, stink up neighborhoods with marijuana smoke, jump turnstiles, run red lights, and shout and lunge at passers-by -- all in front of police officers who are told to turn a blind eye? No wonder arrests are down.
Such a city is chaotic and foul, not great.
My grandparents were dirt-poor immigrants, but they worked at whatever crumby jobs they could get and kept their dignity and good manners which, I guess, they learned in their poverty-stricken mountain villages.
13
Are you in decline? Relative to sea level, in equilibrium (translation: wait for it, about a century), you're underwater.
2
@Phil
I sure wish I could live in Las Vegas.
1
Capitalism gone rogue.
5
Regarding transit woes, that's all on Cuomo, who controls the MTA budget. The fact that Albany controls the MTA is bananas. Yes, I'm aware the city once controlled and nothing changed.
However, in everything else, NYC is a terribly run city. It has been for decades. The 2nd Avenue Subway took 100 years just to get started. Zoning is a mess, with NIMBYs having way too much control. Poverty is rampant, yet the poor are frequently ignored.
And to pass more blame, the US has neglected its megacities, unlike Europe and Asia. It's a multifactorial problem and while DeBlasio remains an entertaining scapegoat, the issues we are dealing with have been festering for a long time.
4
New York City is awesome. The only other place I would think about living is the old Amsterdam. We live and let live.*
NY has a dark side and a fun side and it has enormous creativity and drive, and the ability to pack millions of people together with remarkably few problems and amazing success.
And now you can DANCE IN BARS AGAIN, since De Blasio overruled Giuliani's ban!
New York has freedom of thought, and even King Trump couldn't take that away, with all the kings horses and all the king's men.
No place is better than NYC.
(*Except of course for the hoodlums who believe in "survival of the fittest" economics, that bullying people out of the money from their productivity is a useful way to spend your time, because "suckers shouldn't have money to lose." Do unto others because they'll do worse to you, the ends justify the means, and that when a president says the opposite of what the Constitution says, its just comedy. The Constitution is not a joke. It represents the blood and toil of ALL Americans, including the troops that died to protect it.)
Rock and Roll and New York City!
3
@McGloin - "No place is better than NYC."
My best giggle of the day. NYC always looks to me like the t.v. show Gotham and is always run by the Penguin. People have complained about rents and traffic all of my life. The subway is so deplorable that a presidential candidate made a big point of being seen on one. The most threatening thing I have encountered with our underground transit system is a group of Jehovah's Witnesses silently standing outside dressed to the nines holding a brochure that says, "Are Angels Real?"
When you get dedicated bicycle lanes downtown, decent coffee, and cannabis shops on every corner call me and we can talk about civilization:) Oh, and get rid of all of the crime families and sex traffickers who skip monitoring while the police look the other way.
1
@McGloin
Yes!
1
The author of the article offers up the many problems of the city I grew up in...... fair enough. Where are the solutions? More bike lanes and pedestrian mall Are you kidding me? They are trying that in Paris with not so good results, so far.
And shutting out black students from elite high schools?
Uh huh, blacks need to achieve more to become part of elite schools. Look at what Asians have done. You don’t lower the bar to appease those not achieving, those not achieving, of any race, need to rise up, stop whining about being “shut Out” if you are smart enough and work hard enough you are not shut out.
11
Great Miss Gay, how about you run for office and show some vision? Oh right, easier to make a video and complain.
2
@Benny
Hey Benny we're talking here.
My friends in Brooklyn love talking.
You different?
1
To start all homes/condos/coops need to be owned by individuals and not corporations or shell companies. Foreigners should no longer be able to park money in condos. There needs to be a residency requirement. I agree with Matt concerning creating new or extending existing transit lines to areas of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. There needs to be more connection points to the NJ, LI, and Westchester. All roofs should be painted white and Solar panels installed.
8
I agree, absolutely, the empires and in decline, and it's been the case for many years and across the board with respect to many large urban environments.
Taxes increase along with the cost of services, but the quality of services worsens.
Why? Corruption? Waste?
Then there is the worsening the quality of life. Are social services unable to solve intractable problems like poverty and crime?
Whatever the causes might be, it's easy to see that there is a persistent malaise.
Smaller cities should study the reasons why major cities decline and avoid the policies that led to the declension.
Any historian of cities will tell you about their resilence. How about Berlin or Tokyo cities utterly destroyed during WWII? Warsaw was virtually erased. Jerusalem has survived invasions and of course its destruction at the hands of the Romans half a century after the death of Jesus.
San Francisco was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. For its part, New York survived the American Revolution. It also survived the fiscal crisis of the 1970s when the city was rapidly depopulating from the loss of half a million manufacturing jobs and the burning down of rent controlled apartment buildings. New York was a pretty desolate place in the late 1970s. Trump, of all people, was one of the few who believed in the city and made his mark with several major architectural projects including the Trump Tower, the renovation of the Plaza Hotel, the beginning of the refurbishment of Central Park and the saving of Grand Central Station on 42nd Street.
Today, the city is truly massive and rich although it supports a low income or poverty population that is larger by itself than the total population of any other American city. The threat to New York's dynamism is affordability and liveability. But that is nothing new. In the late 19th and early 20th century residents lived under conditions unimaginable today, with large families crammed into small airless apartments with nothing but a coal fired stove and water closet in the hallway. That was the New York of my ancestors.
7
Lovely piece. Thank you.
1
I always laugh to myself when I (re)watch the film Serpico, with Pacino playing a young cop who can afford to (and does) move to the Village on his salary alone. That was when a life in Manhattan was within rather beyond the reach of most people. How times have changed.
13
We're mostly mirroring the US as a whole.
Once "undisputed heavyweight champions" - both NYC and USA - a combination of things have all but eliminated that.
Undisputed? Nobody rational or serious would plunk down on that one!
Other cities are bigger, more livable, better on any scale one might select. Why isn't everybody leaving NYC to go "there?" ... Because there still ARE lots of good jobs that haven't yet moved to suburbs, a foreign country, another part of the US, etc.
But I think we're definitely losing even that edge. Fast growth (FUTURE!) companies & sectors mostly consider NYC and decide that somewhere else makes more sense.
As with the US as a whole, the pressures on the "middle class" and anyone early in their career are ENORMOUS, ... and given the cost of living in NYC, lots of folks are "washed out" every year - retail operations that can't handle a doubled rent, people who didn't get the raise or bonus or gig that they thought was "in the bag," etc.
A lot of this is hidden by things like tourism, world class hospitals, as good as anywhere and always "cultural" scene, etc.
But this is like real estate back in 2007. While "liar loans" let some people keep playing musical chairs until the music stopped a year or 2 later, ... the SMART MONEY was betting against a balloon about to deflate.
Ditto, NYC.
And having a veritable hack for a Mayor turns a somewhat risky bet (against NYC, that is) into a nearly sure thing! If the US "recesses," NYC will implode!
1
The Tammany machine has had more than two hundred years to perfect its approach for draining the resources of New York City and funneling them into the pockets of Tammany loyalists.
The only diufference between now and thirty years ago is that what is being diverted away from intended recipients has exceeded what is being paid into the system.
It is now an unrecoverable decline.
3
New York City is absolutely an empire in decline. Apparently the last people to hear about this are New Yorkers. It makes sense though--the entire city has been resting on its laurels for years. It hasn't been special in about 30-40 years.
11
The difficulty that NY and the US have is that information is easy to get now. The wealthy people of the US and NY can control the message they want to put out but they cannot control the message of others. The idea that NYC was some kind of great city has always been false. Many people know this now and they know more about other places as well.
You can get folks in the entertainment industry to work their propaganda as well, but people don't really believe entertainers any more either. They are all simply sell outs and most are extremely shallow.
So what supposedly was ever great about New York? It has always been dirty and filled with scam artist like Trump, who is a very typical New Yorker.
2
New York City, or any US city for that matter, will never be the pie-in-the-sky place she wishes for until America has the big crucial idea of a fair, just and equitable tax system.
How many Manhattan co-ops and homes are owned by the wealthy who don't even live in NY but use it them just for vacation visits or as tax write-offs, especially the globalized foreign elite? How many old New Yorkers are paying a ridiculous pittance in rent since they've been in their homes since the 1970s?
If you don't have the guts and will to tax the wealthy (and that means many rich NYT readers), and distribute it to rebuild America, forget the utopian daydreams.
6
New York was over in 1999. Everybody knows that.
8
@Mexico Mike ... how so? why 1999?
I've lived in all 5 boroughs, but I left NYC in the late 80s. I still go back once in a while, because I still have family on the outskirts. I have seen it gradually change, and I've seen many good things (like putting a little island park at 23rd and 5th, the same place I was hit by a car when I was a bike messenger because it was just a crummy painted triangle and when a driver cut through it, he hit me). And oh the High Line. But I have also seen the character dissolve slowly but surely. I think every city has a problem now revitalizing just for the sake of the current residents and not the speculative richer residents. I see it where I live now, which is out of state. The shiny new developments get the special beauty treatments, but if you walk a couple of blocks away, it's disrepair by the yard.
I am glad that Ms. Gay mentioned that the renters end up paying the property taxes for the landowners---this is overlooked much of the time. From what I understand, the developers and landlords of billionaire properties pay nowhere near what they should pay in real estate taxes, therefore placing the load on the lower tiers of property owners. The rent therefore must be raised to carry that burden.
The ultra poor have NYCHA, but the working middle poor are being pushed and pushed outside of the city where it is so expensive to commute to. Again, the same where I live.
And one of the things I miss most about NY? The subway to the big, beautiful, glorious, ocean.
5
One of the reasons, Duvcu, that many of us remain: the ocean, a train or quick drive away.
Then there's the most beautiful harbor in the world. The view from Fairway in Red Hook (and other spots) is splendid.
And museums everywhere.
Now if we can only get the murderous gun-thugs and urinators off the streets.
I would almost be willing to vote Republican if I thought a modicum of civilized public behavior would be the result.
No doubt some City Council member, a confederation of dunces and panderers if ever there was one, will get the mayoralty next.
3
This videoped (new term :)) shares nothing new other than a recap of the four to five big public policy disasters. Nothing to do with vision; everything to do with lack knowledge. Vision was R. Moses building highways through the city, though the results of that are disastrous. Don't conflate the two. This op-ed could also be better if it actually discussed both sides of the issues, not just one. I know it's an op-ed, but for intellectual honesty, at least touch on the other side of the issue. This was a poorly conceived article/video, whatever you want to call it.
3
Come on New Yorkers !!!
You were worse off in the 1970's and New York came out near bankruptcy .
1
SIMPLISTIC HAND-WRINGING
Visionary investments of yesteryear were financed by exploitation of poor immigrant workers paid little and working without healthcare for a pittance.
Today, the problem is financing those visions in the face of city pension bankruptcy. And not repeating the destruction of our best educational institutions with faulty affirmative actions, as was done to the great City University system recently.
De Blasio's investment, however imperfect, in pre-school and child care is the right way of handling imbalance at Stuyvesant, not quotas. And Bloomberg's Cornell Tech is the right way to build the economy so more can afford the higher rentals warranted by the greatest city on earth.
And getting rid of rent control would see a job-creating , poverty-reducing building boom that would bring down future rents while revitalizing older neighborhoods.
Please go beyond hand-wringing to offer realistic ways toward the goals you, and all New Yorkers, wish to see realized.
6
I'm a native as well, except I had to leave for work in my early 30s. When I could leave my new city a few years later, I decided to move to another city rather than back to NY. I'd become priced out and also quite frankly got my first taste of how easy life is outside NY. I honestly didn't know it was possible for a trip to the supermarket not to be a hassle.
Anyway, I see that the quirkiness of the city is vanishing - that's the saddest thing to me. Nothing is weird anymore.
6
Relative to the schools, maybe the problem is not the testing and admissions process. That should be carefully researched and considered. The problem may lie at home and the environment the children not making the grade have been raised in.
When families value education and being educated and instill that in their children, you will see a difference in outcomes. Among families that value striving, entrepreneurship and education, migrants quickly climb the social, economic and educational ladder regardless of skin color or ethnicity. If a family has been in America for multiple generations and is still trapped in poverty, maybe the problem at least in part is in the home environment and the norms of their environment.
My point is to be careful to not debase the quality of the best schools chasing "diversity". It might be better to model a high value on education, academic accomplishment, and high goals. Maybe if the kid in the National Honor Society is as revered as the kid starting on the Basketball team, things might be different.
11
Spend a month in China visiting some of the middle size cities - those with 12 million people and you will feel and energy and understand a vision - the cost of this however is profit at all cost. There is a tipping point to wanting more and bigger - keep that in mind, New York, it's not a race.
1
Same old idealism, hello 1969 and progressive inspired decline. Vision? the only thing i I see is a bunch of wealthy entitled NIMBYs who block opportunity for anyone in the working class. The Amazon debacle will haunt this city for generations
2
Ms. Gay doesn't seem to state that New York has a net out migration of people. According to Bloomberg 277 people move out everyday. This is likely related to some of the matters she raises ie, housing. This out migration is not being offset by new births and only partially by international immigrants.
4
Political leadership in NY City and in NY State generally has operated for the last few decades only to serve those who have corporate-style money. Government of, by, and for the rich and powerful, the poor and middle class be damned. This situation led to a kleptocracy and its corollary oppression. Small businesses, which made NYC an interesting and distinct place are long gone. Mom and Pop stores, small specialty businesses, are long gone and replaced by the same corporate stores that would populate a shopping mall in Minnesota or any other place that isn't NYC. Who needs NYC to go to another franchised clothing store or a Verizon store or a McDonalds? No more blocks in midtown are devoted to music stores as used to be the case. No more blocks on the land taken to build the twin towers that were filled with specialty electronics stores. Now the growth is in ridiculously tall condo buildings selling apartments for the tens of millions to people who won't even live in them but can brag that they own them. Koch, Giuliani, Bloomberg, and their banker friends treated NYC as a trough for the monied pigs to root for cash. NYC sold its soul and didn't get much in return for the
Faustian bargain. Mr. De Blasio promised to reverse the trend but it seems he hasn't the skill to pull off much of anything in that direction.
16
Giuliani & Bloomberg cleaned up NYC. Quality of Life crimes were punishable and homelessness was down. de Blasio ruined this city; a Republican needs to be elected to clean it up again. Democrats have ruined great cities in America
4
As a college student living in a larger city the repercussions of these huge corporate actions are heavy on our shoulders. We are unable to make much more than minimum wage unless we score an amazing job working for tips. Rent would never be under $600 a month and that would be a god send, we're talking $800-$1,200 a month realistically. Now on top of this environment that was created for us we are in school praying we have enough time in the day to get an outstanding GPA to eventually get a job with a livable wage.
In the next year, I hope there can be more talk about the little things like livable wages and affordable rent to give a helping hand to the young people who in very little time will be the ones making these calls.
1
I'd say that however you slice it, the empire is doing better than it was in the late 60s to the 90s.
Might be an idea to have cellular network access on most stations/trains though, like in about any other comparable (or not comparable) subway system.
1
In NYC about 5% of the people pay the vast majority of the bills.
When those 5% are tired of endlessly transferring their wealth to other worthy 'projects' and leave - then the empire is genuinely in decline.
13
@SteveRR The majority of NYC Property Taxes are paid by renters.
Is your false ideology your own, or are there others?
2
@dannyboy
You must be thinking of 1929 - Personal, Business Income taxes along with sales taxes dwarf property taxes now.
Wall St alone pays just short of 10% of total tax revenue.
So - yeah - renters - no
1
Universal Rent Control (Lowering Rent), Limiting Cars/Ubers, More Bike Lanes, Public Transport, Meritocracy Free Schools/Colleges/Universities, and, Humane NYPD.
We need gutsy politicians who stand up to elites who do not even live in new york but selling/speculating real estate to corrupt individuals/corporations. A lot of these corrupt individuals are laundering money from developing countries and find a safe heaven in NYC real estate. Therefore, they are increasing the price/tax/values of property and making the city unaffordable to live for the natives.
Let's be clear rich New Yorkers are not cool either. So, when I and my friends have to move out of new york - this city will be silent, quiet, rich for a while and then will be deserted.
1
@Nazmus Saquib
Deserted?
I don't expect that you and your friends leaving will have quite that impact.
2
Seriously? Haven’t you noticed that it’s the elites that pay the bills?
3
New York's corporate interests are in disarray, as it's capitalistic nature is trying to block healthy competition by a few oligopolies...that lost, conveniently, the vital ethics required to not fall in a snake's nest, where selfishness and greed thrive. Unless the corporate world starts serving it's community (Newyorkers), of which it depends, in solidarity and by integrating the least among us, we shall see no social justice; the prize when inequality is cut down is dialogue, a core constituent in any democracy worth it's name.
Yes, you are in decline, of course you are: have you noticed which New Yorker is POTUS?
7
We are falling behind in large part because we have a petty, small-minded mayor who can’t spend enough time away from his Park Slope gym and real estate fundraisers to actually implement any meaningful policy. He is so enamored with grievance politics that people’s everyday concerns get entirely forgotten.
Simply put, we want usable subways, free of homeless people who make it unbearable; affordable housing; regular trash pickup; and well-maintained public spaces. This is not a lot to ask.
28
@CP He is also wildly unimaginative. You just have to look at some places in Western Europe to see there are many more imaginative things that could be done to address NY's issues.
2
Yes!
It’s the sign of the times. It’s not only the New York city. The whole nation is crumbling in all facets and morally the most. It’s given that when you fail morally everything else follows the decline. Today we considered just a few years ago the greatest nation on earth, beacon of freedom has a leader who constantly lies even when he doesn’t need to because that’s in his DNA and not only the so called his base but the elected leaders of his party also. defend him. Even the most corrupt dictators don’t utter non sense like our President
Right now I would be more worried about our nation’s future than New York City.
15
America is an empire that has been in decline since the Reagan Administration and there is very little NYC can do to halt the fate that many civilizations have fallen prey to because of military overreach, incompetent leadership, a totally passive citizenry, and out of control deficits. History has taught us nothing or maybe America is so "exceptional" that lessons of history fail to apply to our unique role. The foolishness of American exceptionalism has contributed to our fall and in fact may have blinded land encouraged leaders to compound problems we were suppose to have "eternity" to solve. We are in decline and as along as technology deceives the American populace with delusions of cultural advancement and innovation, we will be to stimulated with apps, and bigger mobile cameras to care.
10
@RC Yes, my only quibble with this video is that the woman narrating it doesn't seem to realize the smartest thing she could do is get out.
1
I just saw a thread on our neighborhood network in a section of Norwalk, CT, usually devoted to lost dogs, requests for contractor recommendations, etc, nice, ordinary, friendly stuff. But someone posted what turned out to be a totally inaccurate list of all the tax increases our Democrati governor was recommending. By the time local elected officials had corrected the record, dozens of people had been railing hysterically about what really are very minor tax increases, castigating "Dems," promising to leave the state immediately, screaming that all the "liberals" want to do is spend other people's hard earned money, it's a DISGRACE, just generally freaking out. It was really depressing. It's not really "vision" we're missing, as so beautifully represented in this little video. Or it's not only that. Voters do not want to pay 20 cents a year to chip in for a library or to get rid of plastic bags or for anything whatsoever. They're not going to pay for big visions to transform New York City, or Norwalk, or Arkansas (see the Sunday Times story), or anywhere.
8
I'm not sure why you included "increasing train service to close suburbs like Yonkers and White Plains." MetroNorth already runs fairly frequent service to these cities. Also, what does this have to do with fixing NYC? How about better public transit to Queens and the Bronx?
9
@Elizabeth A Exactly. There have long been plans, or at least suggestions, to add two new stops on the Metro North New Haven line in the northeast Bronx. I don't understand why they can't just move faster on that.
3
Sorry, but NYC is USA in a microcosm. Both are empires in decline, incredible places of innovation, growth, and progress, now weighed down by neglected 50-year-old infrastructure and the paralysis of a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy (hello Albany! Hello MTA! add your own whipping boy here). The difference with New York is that one person, the mayor, can do a lot to turn it around and bend the bureaucracy to their will...but I don't know what you do to crack the nut of wealth polarization and the fact that no one who actually contributes new idea (artists, upstarts, dreamers) or makes the city run can afford to live there any more.
13
Destroy the SHSAT schools and you'll destroy the only part of the NYC public school system that works, thus hastening the decline of the city even more. As it is spaces are so limited that if you want your kid to get a good education and you can't afford private your only realistic option is to move out of the city altogether.
16
Well if you vote for the wokest candidate or the one with a black son on TV or whatever instead of the ones with vision, you shouldn't be surprised at the results.
I will be shocked, however, if the voters ever decide to hold themselves accountable.
20
@Silly This must be satire. The city that is the poster child for Capitalism declines and the explanation offered is Socialism?
If a Socialist city declines, will you blame Capitalism?
You don't want NY to become a playground for the rich.
But you want bike lanes ??
Are you kidding ?
Turn the roads over to Uber and Amazon ? Really ?
And if your over 60 and live in the city..."hop on your bike".
The 7 train is 12 miles or more from the border with Nassau.
What are those NYer's to do ? to get from point A to B.
5
NYC is a one-party town ergo the lack of ideas and energy and tension to get it done....ergo the low voting rate (why vote when there's so little choice and besides you know who is going to win?!).....so the folks of NYC got what it wished for.... a one-party town...minimal political energy....
12
Ruthless capitalism built New York
, eg Grand Central Station.
Knee jerk socialism, get lost Amazon and 25 thousand jobs, will kill it.
15
I don't know if New York City is in decline, but when I come here for filmwork, I look around, then think of the other great cities in the world. Gorgeous architecture. Splendid infrastructure, including underground rail lines, airports, terminals. And I think: "What happened to New York City?" I love New York City, but it's an old city, not quite a 20th Century city. As Trump might say: "Sad" - but he helped make it so... 666
8
NYC's population is in decline for the first time in a decade because it is too expensive to live in and too highly taxed.
We deal with the fallout in conservative states, SC, FL for NYC'ers, AZ/UT/ID for California. Boise had ~80% of new buyers from California, pushing out long-term residents and increasing real estate.
Utah, Arizona are the same story. Can't afford California but find they love freedom from government, low cost of living, good public services... then D right down the ballot. Look at Denver and Portland - dirty, highly taxed, homeless problems, etc. Mini-SF's, which is D controlled.
Stay in NYC. You built it that way.
12
I am proud of us and the great work we have all accomplished. There is plenty of fascinating art being made; in the run-down neighborhoods that will grow and glow. Times Square? nothing like it...in the bad old days it wasn't 'cool' it was gross and sad. Cyclists just need to grow up although we will have to teach them how. As for Amazon, they will be back-Bezos loves it here. Companies will always settle here if the boss wants to live here.
1
The consensus seems to be that Ms. Gay's video was wonderful. But I thought it was terrible. I will try to explain.
I first saw New York in 1973 and moved to the city in 1978, or 41 years ago. Yes, New York has quite significant problems. But it is nowhere near the "decline" it faced in the 1970s when it was basically bankrupt and looked it. There are endless examples I could give of the awful crime levels and abandoned buildings, with corporations and everyday citizens leaving in droves. She should have seen Central Park, Harlem and Times Square then, among countless other neighborhoods and districts that were essentially written off.
Because I am a Boomer, I also was a teenager in the 1960s and I witnessed almost all American cities burning with riots in those years, not to mention political assassinations, the Vietnam War, extreme racism and more that almost destroyed not just New York but all of America.
What I have that Ms. Gay lacks is experience, a longer lived New York history and especially perspective.
I watched as my city recovered and gained roughly a million and a half people from it's lowest point to reach its highest population ever. I watched again as it recovered from the worst day of my city's life, 9/11.
I suggest Ms. Gay watch all episodes of "New York: A Documentary Film", directed by Rick Day.
It will chronicle how there is always someone who says, sometimes justifiably (for a while) that New York is so over with. It ain't.
29
@Marc I guess if crime safety is primary, I'd see your point. But from my perspective it's our shared culture that is primary; so I see things differently.
2
@Marc Correction: New York: A Documentary Film, was directed by Ric Burns.
3
That’s because you’ve had the privilege of not having to truly worry about crime in NYC. MY college classmates had their little siblings sleeping in the bathtub, as a shelter from stray bullets from all the gang members shooting each other and selling crack. What you now call “mass incarceration” is what saved this city.
6
Technology, particularly video, has changed most of our 21st century world. Allow the public to see inside of our classrooms in real time. After the secret problems of our schools gets out we could finally have the chance to fix them. Then our city could blosson.
World class cities have public transit that goes to the airports and understands the concept of "region." Bloomberg's idea for the 7 train to Weehawken is one example. Christie's idea to kill the cross Hudson tunnel was another, negative, example. (How about a train from West NY, New Jersey to East NY, New York?)
World class cities have housing that runs from adequate and antique, to new luxury, to standard middle, to low rent. Not just obscene glitz and decrepit public housing.
"Vision" implies a sense of the future. Does anyone think NYC will exist in 100 years? 200? Will people need mass transit then? Housing? Then let's start building for it.
3
Brava! Your piece is spot on. Where is the vision for making our places of living places worth living in? Vision means connecting all the dots that have led us to now. Creativity and imagination present the solutions we need and can fuel the power to achieve these goals. Nature is crying out for us to participate in reality and connect with her. Lord help us.
In Decline ? More like Decay. The decline started more than 2 decades ago. Have you been major NY city counterparts in Europe : Rome, Paris, Berlin, Munich, London, Zurich, etc. Or how about our sober northern neighbor, Canada : Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal etc.
There is zero urban planning in the US and that is being kind to ourselves. "Fix the chaos as you go" seems to be the current model. It is the same system that gave us Trump which is to say that there is no system.
15
Not one word about rising crime or the bad effects of reduced policing.
Not one word about bums in the subway.
Not one word about homeless starting to make us look like San Francisco.
20
Developers only build housing if they can get filthy rich from it, therefore there will NEVER be any additional affordable housing created in NYC in amounts that would make a difference.
All the rest follows from that.
10
@L Blaming developers is always the answer these days. But what about developers in London, Paris, Berlin and the other cities to which we show poorly? Are they charities making any less money than NY developers? No. But they are developing in capital cities where governments are spending what needs to be spent on infrastructure, schools, and the like and have generous programs to encourage affordable housing.
1
Developers do what is in their best interest - and is legal. We need legislation to keep them in check. My guess is the other nations you mentioned have more guidelines developers need to follow.
2
All great societies, civilizations, were built with co-operation, a clear vision of that society, and lots of taxes to pay for it all.
2
Bloomberg PlaNYC 2030, read it. Calls for a million more residents with absolutely no transportation plan. We now average 100,000 less commuter cars than 2012 but have much slower traffic. Deliveries, ubers and the chaos they cause are the problem. Lack of enforcement, or sensible choice for these service vehicles to operate can be dealt with< if we have vision. As it stands we subsidize UPS , Fed Ex, and Fresh Direct and the rest of their lot by negotiating a discounted parking ticket rate. There is no reason that a supermarket delivery needs to take up a traffic lane on an avenue for a couple hours at a time, but it happens on a daily basis.
Congestion pricing is just a tax to ensure the streets are clearer for the elites who can afford it(it will be ineffective anyway), a product of Bloomberg's class war.
7
Citizens United, gave the already wealthy and powerful, much more power. The powerful would rather that others pay taxes they should be paying. They want the cake, all of the cake. The powerful, will not be happy merely allowing everyone else some crumbs, no crumbs, is just fine with them.
1
Certainly many challenges. perhaps a good first step would be to realize that New York is just a important big city, not an” Empire” and start from there rather than mourning something that never was.
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NYC Is a Transaction, no longer a relationship.
As an example: most people now move here to get a high-paying job, experience and a network.
Then they leave.
They take but give nothing.
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@dannyboy If they're working a high-paying job, then they're giving an almost ludicrous amount in taxes, not to mention keeping the economy moving by eating out and seeing shows.
4
@KM The Post indicates that NYC renters are paying the vast majority of NYC Real Estate Taxes.
And that's another thing. Since "high-paying job{s}" arrived, many purchase their apartment. Under Rent Regulation families lived in their community, not buying and subsequently selling their apartment. You must have observed how school segregation, homelessness, and vilification of the poor and handicapped followed from this apartment ownership.
Thanks for bringing that up.
2
When Amazon wanted to bring 25,000 high paying jobs to NYC and help make us a world class tech center, local politicians demanded we shut it down. This is the lack of vision you speak of.
Rent Control and stabilization means the housing stock is woefully inadequate just like it is in San Francisco which also has rent control. That these are the two most expensive cities for housing is not a coincidence.
Metro North already provides train service to Yonkers and White Plains. How is adding subway service at the cost of tens of billions visionary? Or anything but a completely ludicrous way to spend scarce resources?
I would love to see Stuyvesant and other top high schools in the city be more representative of the city at large, but is replacing a standardized test with a quota system or with a politically manipulated admission process really visionary or a step backwards?
I agree congestion pricing is long overdue. But overall, see little vision on a piece about visionary thinking.
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My question is: why are the resources scarce with so much money coming in?
1
Ask de Blasio’s wife who “lost” $850 million dollars
1
I think the critical problem in NYC is the cost of housing and business real estate.
People like Donald Trump build housing not to provide housing for New York's residents, but to maximize their profits. The result, in housing, health care, or anything else, is to serve the needs of the wealthiest, and ignore ordinary working New Yorkers.
NYC was left with a relatively successful public housing program. Then came the conservatives, who insisted that government couldn't do anything right. The best way for a conservative to prove that is to reduce the support for those programs until they fail.
We should look at the successes and failures of public housing in NYC and elsewhere, and do it right. My state assemblyman, Dick Gottfried, can tell you how to do it.
It's not by handing over "incentives" to billionaire campaign contributors.
2
I recently visited Hudson Yards. As a native New Yorker, I had expectations. Whatever I was expecting, I didn't find it.
When I was a kid, my parents took me to Battery Park. We took the boat to the Statue of Liberty, read the poem, made the climb, looked out on the harbor, saw the steamers, saw Ellis Island, the great skyline. And that was New York, and we were New Yorkers, and I knew I had a role to play and that this city was mine.
At Hudson Yards, the centerpiece is also an enormous copper statue. It's so hideous and abstract, even the artist couldn't think of what to name it. But it might be valuable, so he trademarked it and I'd like to show you a photo, but they don't allow pictures there. It's just a cyclone of ramps, some going up, some going down. An Escher nightmare in copper and concrete. You can climb to the top, and look out at the homes of billionaires, places where you can never even dream of living. And I realized, this is the Bones of Liberty. And this is someone else's New York. And I no longer have a part to play.
21
@Mike
Michael Bloomberg made Hudson Yards a gift to his fellow Billionaire Steve Ross; he even built him a new subway line, the first in decades, while the rest of the system crumbled. If Bloomberg could be reborn as a real estate development, it would be as Hudson Yards: sterile, soulless, and technocratic, it's him to a tee.
4
@Mike
Thank you for capturing the feeling of loss.
2
It displaced no residence or small business. Was built with private money. Provides state of the art office space for thousands of new economy jobs and therefore results in tons of tax revenue. It’s within walking distance of Penn Station, offering easy access to LI and NJ commuters. Bonus: it resulted in the extension of the 7, connecting the Javits Center to the city.
It may offend your aesthetic sensibilities but it’s a win win for NYC.
2
Most American cities are at an unprecedented infrastructure and social structure intersection. Perhaps lessons can be learned from Detroit and Newark (scary thought). The first part of solving a problem is acknowledging it. This piece is a start.
4
Unless the city takes control of its destiny, protects its residents, supports small business, regulates rents, invests in its infrastructure, understands what makes New York New York, our days are numbered. Right now it feels like I’m living in a money laundering operation for Saudi princes.
20
@Mike Smith - "a money laundering operation for Saudi princes" high concept of the year
Excessively over priced, more of an international city,
Foreign money is destroying New York City, but, everyone knows this.
12
Where are Gay's big ideas? More bike lanes? More affordable housing? Better education? This is just a leftish rant, no specifics, no real thinking of cost effective possibilities to make things happen. This is what passes for bold innovations these days? I think not.
21
I’d love to move back, I don’t think I can afford to buy an apartment though. Great city, centre of the world.
3
Any city that wants to fine people $250K for using the correct legal term for immigrants that are here illegally is definitely a place that has lost it's way.
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@Earl Wynter if you find such a place, let us know.
Because the people who told you that this was done in New York lied to you.
15
@Earl Wynter
Thank you. This is the truth.
10
@Laidback No. What the rule forbids is exploitation; an employer refusing to pay and telling someone he'll turn them for making trouble, a landlord renting and threatening the tenant with exposure if he calls in a code violation.
That's what the rule goes after.
12
I lobed this video Mara, but you lost me when you complained about the supposed segregation of black and Hispanics at Stuyvesant as your poof of lack of vision.
There is NO segregation, nobody is turned out because of the color of their skin. Blacks and Hispanics are turned down by the results to these race blind tests.
These results are governed by 1) the median IQ of the students who take the tests and 2) work ethic of the students instilled by their families.
Lowering the standards is not the answer here, because this means lowering the standards of the USA and turning it into a third world country.
The rest of the countries and especially those in Europe and Asia are not lowering their standards. How is the US going to compete with them in 20 years?
Stuyvesant is a science high school. I don't know about you but i don't want someone who got a degree because the admission and graduation was dumbed down to perform surgery on me, fly my planes, or build my buildings and bridges.
143
@Alexgri I meant, I loved this video Mara, not lobed...
@Alexgri
I worked in a large manufacturing plant in the South Bronx in the 1980's. Women there worked long and hard to send their kids to parochial schools instead of public schools.
These black and hispanic women (most single mothers) CARED about the quality of schools and the education their kids got. Sadly the best opportunity most of their children would have was in the military.
NYC was failing them. NYC needs HIGHER standards overall and MORE 'good' schools where kids CAN learn. Those students should have the chance to go to an affordable college that means something.
Lowering standards helps nobody and that is what we have done. How you change things I don't know but clearly having concerned and involved parents does matter. A HS classmate of our children teaches in a charter school. Like it or not they do a 'better' job - for whatever reason. Staff? involved parents? A more 'select' student population?
We need to revamp our education system. Let everyone learn at the limit of their ability. That means 'advanced' schools and it means schools for the 'underperforming.' More tech schools may help. Schools geared towards those with learning disabilities.
As long as there are a limited number of 'good' schools with parents fleeing NY for the burbs because of that limitation you will have a serious problem in NYC.
11
@Alexgri - Both our bi-racial kids when to a specialized HS, one to Stuy, one to Queens HS for Science. The test for admission was a two year struggle of fighting for slots in city sponsored after school prep programs. once at Stuyvesant we saw there were still kids that cheated and kids that coasted barely doing enough to graduate & going on to less than stellar lives. The pain we & especially our kids went through getting them prepped for the specialized High School exam shouldn't have been that hard! We were lucky my spouse could find the time to research all the possible support that was available, fighting for slots in those programs, and then spending two years with each kid shuttling them to after-school and weekend prep programs all over Queens. Science tells us that test taking as a sole tool for evaluating a student is far from the best method of assessment. I believe that there's a way to RAISE standards at the specialized High Schools by changing the criteria for admission, identifying and supporting highly motivated students from an earlier age, rather than relying on a single standardized test. I only hope this comes to pass, especially since the city sponsored prep courses have withered since our kids attended over a decade ago, giving even fewer promising students an equal chance.
7
The problem is that far, far Left Wing Mayors see their jobs as distribution of resources not building for future benefits. As an example so we see housing shortages, people in the streets etc.
Although this post is about NYC I tell people about my native Chicago when Da Mayor Daley was in charge. He made sure the University of Illinois put their campus near downtown, before it was needed he built the train to go from O'Hare to downtown, Chicago has the only commissioned sculpture by Picasso which is 50 feet high and he worked with business people to keep downtown vital as it is today. No vision like this any more that I can see. It is a matter of short term (with lots of accolades) vs long term (which is a slog).
6
The high rents mean that the creatives and artists can't afford to live in NYC, and they are often responsible for making a city a vibrant place filled with great ideas.
On the bike lanes- I understand the thrill of lanes for bikes but as a pedestrian and driver I find the bike riders terrifying. They almost never stop for lights and so at each corner I have to look very carefully to make sure that a bike isn't speeding towards me. Sure make the city friendly for bikes but ensure that they follow the traffic laws - something that is rarely discussed. Thanks for a beautiful video.
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@Barbara Siesel Bloomberg was the biggest disaster that NYC ever had. He thought New Yorkers wanted Scarsdale in the sky. Goodbye to nightlife. Who needs that? We need bike paths and Disneyland in Times Square. We don't need artists. We need bankers to buy up all the glass buildings that replace the bars and clubs that made NYC what is was. Who cares if they live in Russia and they only visit the apartment for a week in any given year. I never thought I could live anywhere else (I was born there). Then New York started to bore me to death. I moved to Europe 2 years ago.
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@Barbara Siesel
Bicyclists are the biggest danger in NYC these days (yes, I have indeed been here since the 70's). I've come within a hair's breadth of being killed on multiple occasions by bicyclists who come out of nowhere riding in the wrong direction, who run red lights, and who have motors attached (making them vehicles, in my opinion!). Many of them act like entitled narcissists, screaming profanities at pedestrians. I know it's very un-PC to hate bicyclists, but they have become the bane of my existence.
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@Barbara Siesel The problem with the whole bike lane thing (and ditto for the more recent Revel scooters) is that... so many things in this city are done piecemail...with the right hand not knowing what the left is doing...no one taking a step back and looking at the big picture (i.e., where are our true 'urban planners'??).
NYC has always been a city for pedestrians, but you'd never know it with how much power we have given to vehicles and their owners. The majority of NYC residents, and who Do Not Own Cars, need to speak up more and take back their streets and Public Space.
Bike lanes are great, but only if they are actually separated from cars. A mere white line down the street, and right next to rows of parked cars, are meaningless and at times downright deadly ('dooring').
Our streets now feel like the Wild West. We've got more vehicles than ever, with the majority now being massive SUVs. We've got electric scooters, mopeds, cyclists. With gentrification and 'luxury' buildings going up everywhere, the overall population has increased. In Astoria, Queens (where I live), crossing neighborhood streets has without question become more dangerous. Drivers get impatient, cyclists are travelling the wrong way, etc. Vulnerable pedestrians are in crosswalks as food delivery guys on eBikes whiz through Red lights, and turning SUVs try to beat the light, while not seeing the pedestrian in the crosswalk. It's utter chaos. And the DoT /NYPD? Zero traffic enforcement.
51
Improved public transportation (particularly new subway lines) is the best way to improve quality of life in NYC. Protected bike lanes provide a false sense of security because riders still need to confront drivers at intersections and very few people can realistically commute by bike from the outer boroughs. Moreover, many drivers commute from areas of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx that require (in some cases) a combination of bus and subway travel daily, which is inconvenient. If most New Yorker's could commute by subway, I believe that few would choose to drive...
Reforming the real estate market to reduce empty commercial and residential spaces would also yield great benefits to the city.
In terms of the homelessness, I've lived in NYC since the early 1990's and this has always been an issue. Not sure how you can solve this problem in a capitalist mecca like NY.
And the schools, it seems that some folks are resentful of the success of some immigrant groups over others. Changing the standards to make students' success appear more equally distributed than it actually is, is like putting a band-aid on a broken leg.
80
@Matt When I lived in the Netherlands Protected bike lanes allowed us to get around the neighborhood much more easily without having to didge delivery vehicles and bad drivers. This included faster train lines that were not within walking distance of most of the residents so they would bike to the station instead. The bike lanes were so popular they had more traffic than the car lanes.
4
@Matt WE did not have this enormous homeless problem in the 50s or 60s....it is the result of human policy decisions, not natural forces.
5
Great piece. I left NY in 1986, thinking I'd move back in a couple of years when I had a little more work experience (I was in the beginning stages of a filmmaking career). Now you couldn't pay me to move back because NY's character has changed so much.
The Patriot Act exempted real estate from full disclosure of buyers, and that's part of what contributed to the astronomical costs of apartments in NY. It's also why NY feels so different these days. The highly creative people - starving artists if you will - who could afford to live in Tribeca or SoHo have been pushed out. The dynamic feeling of having residents at all different income levels has evaporated. Times Square looks like Las Vegas and the whole town feels more corporate.
I hope the author's call for visionaries is answered so NY can re-become a creative dynamic place again.
224
@Barbara I wish that America would support artists so that they don't have to 'starve'. I get the desire for maximum profits but maybe there's a balance. I'd rather live around jazz guitarists than doctors, or ideally both. Mixing is good.
14
@Barbara
So I searched for "The Patriot Act exempted real estate from full disclosure of buyers" and found a NY Times Article that confirmed it. And its happening in other big cities too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/business/treasury-urged-to-scrutinize-foreign-real-estate-buyers-for-money-laundering-risk.html
By getting themselves an exception for vetting foreign buyers, they interpreted it as not having to vet their foreign clients. This brought large amounts of money into NYC
I don't think it would be an unreasonable metaphor to call the tall thin luxury towers that keep popping up, offshore banking.
14
@McGloin And now those luxury buildings are 25% empty, so maybe the developers will stop with this nonsense of only building for the rich.
What we really need is laws in this City that for every x apartments for the rich, the developer has to build y apartments for the middle- and working-class. And "middle-class" does NOT mean an $800,000 2-bedroom condo with an $1800 money maintenance.
We also need commercial rent control and fines or increased taxes for real estate owners who keep street level retail empty for longer than x months.
5
Great video. You can easily apply this, as she stated, to any major U.S. city - Chicago, Miami, S.F., L.A., Denver, Seattle, etc. I think you'll see a lot more people, especially Millenials and Gen Zs, moving to smaller, mid-sized cities in the next ten years, which is what my husband and I did in order to pay off our massive student loan debt. Although I miss the vibrant culture of the cities in which I used to live, the constant financial struggle just wasn't worth it to keep me there.
94
@Ashley, Agree. Unless you are ridiculously compensated or have parents/trust willing to allocate $1M to real estate, it's not worth it for upper-middle class young professionals to stay in NY. Maybe it works if you have no student debt or snagged a rent controlled apartment.
In this decade I have moved out of both NY and Chi, partially due to cost of living.
4
@GM This is also why the suburbs are experiencing a boom of creativity, at least where I live. I'm an older millennial in a suburb outside of Chicago. Most of the new restaurants, bars and specialty shops opened in my suburban area in the last 5 years are owned by people 33 and younger.
It's easy to be creative in a suburb with better schools, cheaper living and cheaper rent for your business is only a quick train ride away from the major city.
4
@Ashley
The move to smaller mid sized cities...
..doesn't mean the end of vibrant culture. There's less of it - for sure - but it's much more reachable.
5
DeBlasio has put New York City on a path to inevitable decline. The City is saddled with pension and healthcare obligations it cannot afford to meet and is reliant on the super rich to pay for everything. Meanwhile, the super rich are fleeing. Replacing them are cleptocrats who don't pay taxes. Imagine what New York would have been like without a Guiliani and a Bloomberg to course correct. Unfortunately, the eight years of DeBlasio has done irreparable harm.
12
I've lived in NYC most of my life. From the perspective of over 40 years, it is no secret as to why NYC is losing vision.
The simple reason is that corporate wealth has no vision. It must keep every penny to indulge itself with power and more wealth. NYC is not even its playground; there are better places for that.
The wealthy drove down pay and raised the price curve for everyone else, leaving us a middle class squeeze. Who has time for politics?
To them, the crime of government is that it takes their money to help others, when it should be paying them for the privilege of staying (or coming here). Never mind all those hedge fund managers driving in from Greenwich get a free ride on city services.
So, what is a financially strapped government to do? Fix the budget on the backs of those who live here, such as raising parking tickets from $45 to $125 (plus late fees), and turning other city services into revenue centers, like Bloomberg did.
And when the price curve puts housing out of reach? Build more. Never mind that our taxes help build $600k studios and empty units for foreigners to park their money.
And let's not forget all those tourists dollars. Unfortunately, it takes a whole lot of tourists to make a decent dollar -- good for the budget, bad for those of us who live and work here.
Vision? We'll get vision when the wealthy regain a sense of public responsibility beyond putting their names on buildings. Until then, vision is for the hoi polloi.
141
@RMS "The simple reason is that corporate wealth has no vision." ......I burpd on this one! The very scary conservative David Koch poured millions into NYC infrastructure - most recently the redo of the MET's exterior.....and what did liberals and New Yorkers offer upon his recent death ? Nothing but scorn.
Liberals are big on BIG GOVERNMENT - so why shakedown private interests, especially when you specifically tell them you hate their guts on a daily basis? GO after DeBlasio & Co for your dreams & wishes. Big Gov is your friend.
8
@Cathy Do you have any concept of the lasting damage that the Koch's and their vigorous efforts at regulatory capture have done to our environment? Renovating the Met, or Lincoln Center is hardly recompense for the looming climate disaster that all of us and especially our children, are facing. The Koch's and their ilk have done everything in their power to fight even the most modest efforts to keep in check environmental damage that many people around the globe are already dealing with and that all of us--ALL OF US--will need to reckon with.
16
@RMS
Those with cash problems have to stop believing they have no time for politics.
Just because those with money vote more, it doesn't mean that having more money is the cause. Voting gives you influence over how government money is spent. Maybe they have more money, because they vote more.
I'm not saying I don't understand why people think that way. I used to think that way too. But then I realized that the billionaire con-men wanted me to think that I couldn't understand or change anything, so they could design the system to benefit them without interference from democracy.
but that its not true. (Trump is taking this one step further to redesign the Constitution to make himself King.)
You can understand how it works, and you can help change how it works.
Lying thieving criminals are working every day to siphon off money from the government. They are outnumbered by relatively honest and hardworking Americans, who would all be better off if we spent more time keeping them from doing that.
4
Real estate replaced real life in New York City.
My city no longer exists. The cultural capital died with the voters who elected Giuliani, prioritizing a suburban culture if “cleanliness,” “order,” and catholic “morality” over the embrace of radical heterogeneity, intellect, and artistic risk that made this city an engine of invention.
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@Alix Hoquet the city was considerably safer under Giuliani's leadership. Crime is up now. Do you really want a return to the 1970s when NYC was not only dangerous, but broke?
29
@Washington Reader
Crime is not up since the Giuliani administration! Crime is the lowest is has been since they started counting such things. Get your facts straight.
53
@Washington Reader
Wrong -- the facts say otherwise. Crime rates are FAR lower than the 90s under Giuliani and continue to plummet:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm
https://www.amny.com/news/crime-stats-nyc-1.25268806
And, another fun fact, crime began to drop under DINKINS, not Giuliani. (I'm an eyewitness to that.)
It was Dinkins who implemented the successful policies that led to the drop. However, Giuliani was smart enough to continue said policies and to take credit for them as well. I'll give him that, I actually voted for his second term for that very reason. I appreciated that he was cared enough about the city to not dump the successful policies of his predecessor out of spite.
37
Short answer: yes, NYC empire is in decline. The reason is the SALT limitation, which will over time force an inexorable migration of the affluent upper middle class out of NYC, NYS, NJ, CT, MA and RI (the entire blue NE). As the tax base collapses, there will be no one left to pay for the 'big ideas'. Future looks more like Detroit, less like the NYC of old.
12
@Richard There's a remedy to that ! So far, no one has suggested editing or cutting ANY budgets - and the politicians' slush funds are huge...seems like on a regular basis we hear that Cuomo is handing our $25 million here and there; ditto Deblasio (What the heck is his wife's $250 million mental health boondoggle all about anyway?! ). Yes, SALT money is walking away....so do something about it. Talk about lack of imagination. Look up the words, 'edit', 'cut', 'slash'.
1
Love NYC, always have. Visit twice a year so I see the city in 6 month intervals. Broadway still great. Excellent restaurants are now throughout other US cities. Online shopping combined with NY high rents mean less interesting one off stores. Subway is sub-standard compared to other world class cities. Mostly I miss the characters and street life that made NY fascinating. A playground for the rich.
6
This is what only 6 years of DeBlasio has brought us to. This article would have been unthinkable under Bloomberg.
10
I was onboard until I reached your view on school admission policy.
5
It is to be greatly hoped that the New York City "empire" comes to an end. The city's disproportionate strangle-hold on media, art, and finance has done no favors to the great darkness beyond the Hudson River. With its subsidiary city of Washington DC, it has brought us to a political/social moment of peril--all in the name of extremes of self-interest, hypocrisy and greed, the specialities of the men and women who really, truly believe, "if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." The city, built on just this facile dream, is a sponge, soaking up sociopaths, hustlers, greasy-pole-climbers and those who make a living catering to their ilk.
Good riddance. Can't happen soon enough.
1
NYC has and always will be dog eat dog; put up with it or move out. The City is glamorized because it takes near impossibly good luck and hard work to make it there. The rewards are remarkable, but the cost often are too. No need to complain or suffer, there is beautiful life beyond the Hudson.
4
@Buck Biro said: "NYC has and always will be dog eat dog; put up with it or move out."
That's a beautiful sentiment Buck. You are fortunate to live in such a tolerant city, else your attitude might draw disdain.
1
World class cities build affordable housing for those in need. But they don't locate that housing in the most expensive areas. They don't require renters to depend on the 'luck of the draw' [rent stabilization] or having an older relative [rent control]. They do build affordable housing near the end of of rapid transit lines where land is cheaper and they require means testing. They subsidize that transit for those meeting income tests. Others pay for their own apartments and transit.
5
@Donna Gray Would one of those "world Class cities" be Louisa, Va?
Here in NYC we prefer not top segregate our people. Just funny that way.
1
People want to live in midtown Manhattan in a tent controlled apartment or on the taxpayer dime in a NYCHA building
Well intentioned but a totally Millennial narrow vision. Congestion pricing does not solve the problem of cars and trucks .The rich will continue to do what they do and just pay more. Also millennials will continue to use Uber and Lyft that clog streets and parking bike lanes. Millennial's will continue to order everything on line so UPS will continue to block the streets as they deliver all the stuff you are too lazy to go to the store and buy. Bikes only work for young and healthy. What happens when it snows or rains? I did not see any middle age or seniors on bikes in your video. Most working class have a 45min to 1 hr commute so are you going to bike in the rain for 45minutes in hi-heels and a skirt? I don't think so. Fixing New York city"s problems are not as simple as in your app culture. These are difficult multifaceted issues that need to be worked out with a comprehensive solution not in a low tech video.
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@byron Millennials are not the only people ordering online. I live in a building of over 200 apartments where 80% or more of the inhabitants are baby boomers or older and the building receives 50 packages a day (and more during the holidays).
And I'm in my 60's and bike 50 miles a week (but only in good weather). But that's not even the point. Different strokes for different folks and everything has to be shared. There has to be a balance between cars, bikes and pedestrians. And I believe that bikes and pedestrians should have a priority because they don't add to pollution.
NYC was once known for having the lowest per capita car ownership of any large city in the U.S. I don't have exact data, but from observation, I don't think that's the case any longer. I live off of the Grand Central Parkway and it's heavy traffic even at 3am on a weekday. That never used to be the case. From 1990 to 1996, I had to commute 50 miles to New Jersey and I would leave Queens at 7am to arrive at my office around 8:10am. If I did that today, I'd probably have to leave by 6:45am.
Only the rich commute by car into Manhattan because to park a car in Manhattan, one has to be rich. Our obsession with cars is absurd.
Don't ask someone if they if they are an illegal alien or you will be fined bigly. It is laws like this that make America great.
19
@Concerned Citizen
Wow, really ? So it's illegal to hire an... well a person who doesn't have workng papers (can I say that?), but it's also illegal yo check if.they have papers ? An immigration lawyer's dream come true !
10
When the New York Times has a "California Report" section but never reports on upstate New York's issues, they've lost control of whatever empire they ever claimed to have that extended beyond their own city borders.
13
Totally on point. All construction in NYC is about making a quick fortune and moving on to the next project. There aren’t any singular transformative projects that have been built since the late Mayor Koch was elected. Indeed, he promoted a give away of city assets to his friends, which continued under Mayor Bloomberg (St Vincent’s Hospital). The High Line is really geared for the wealthy residents in that neighborhood.
Mara Gay could have included the destruction and sale, by former Mayor Bloomberg to one of his friends , of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village, the poor people’s hospital to make way for super luxury apartments. The penthouse was said to have gone for $50 million. Other apartments were in the multimillion range as well. Working families are chocking. BTW, it’s also Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy that NYC has the most segregated school system in the country. He was also the architect of “stop & frisk”, which since it's elimination has made zero difference
4
I am interested that the video appears to show only young, able New Yorkers. The video talks about vision and predicting the future, but seems to neglect the author’s *own* future as an older New Yorker. 50 miles of bike lanes won’t help elderly or disabled New Yorkers. Depending only on property owners to pay taxes won’t cover the education, police, sanitation and transit we all rely on. Raising real estate taxes can only undermine the remaining middle-class homeowners in the city. Change can be good, but we have to remember to include all New Yorkers.
18
Go hang out in the upper east or west side or even midtown after midnight. Where are the people compared to 20 years ago? Too many people own but don’t live there and they are not part of our city. People are the city and people are not visible anymore! We used to sit on the sidewalk in lawn chairs and talk to our neighbors- now the streets are deserted in these areas.
15
@David You're in the wrong parts of town...the money and action has drifted downtown...go to Washington Square Park anytime and it's packed, etc.
As Yogi would say your story is deja vu all over again.
Yes, NYC had it periods of decline, the latest being circa 1970s with declining pop, near bankruptcy etc. but it always came back.
The current high rent glut/blight, whatever you want to call it, will cause an implosion but NYC will recover from it like it always has.
6
@Paul It is the values that define NYers that are in decline.
Don't focus too much on the money angle, that just one of the precipitators.
2
@dannyboy -Thank you for your reply. Values? They have been accused of being in decline since NY was founded in 1664. Yes they go up and down but in the end as Churchill taught us, and I am paraphrasing after America does everything wrong, in the end they get it right.
1
Big ideas are fine, but I'd prefer good ones, and adding more bike lanes is neither.
Bike lanes have slowed the city to a crawl, and NYC cyclists are the most lawless wheeled villains since Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
If breaking the "car culture" means adopting a bike culture, I'll stick with the cars.
24
@Gary Taustine I find this hilarious. Bike lanes have taken one lane of a road, if that. Meanwhile, the streets are crammed full of cars. Cars can't move because there are way too many other cars.
9
@K10031: No, bike lanes often remove TWO lanes of road - one for the bikes, and one for the concrete "buffer" lane.
Cars can't move b/c the city has effectively cut lane space by about 50%, and chopped up roads like Broadway into little pieces that are useless.
And Ubers need to be driven out like the plague they are. They are usually double-parked, holding up traffic - and for what, some millennial who needs to feel "superior" by being seen in a black SUV instead of a yellow cab?
NYC is going down the tubes partly b/c the young & the clueless - entitled to the hilt - want everything brought to them, and everything they want must be provided instantly or they throw a tantrum. They want bike lanes, waaaah! They want their Ubers, waaah! Take their phones away and they are effectively disabled.
3
@Gary Taustine - thanks for keeping the memory of "Ernst Stavro Blofeld" alive - surely a man for the times
Is "Are We an Empire in Decline?" a trick question? Even WV coal miners know that America, like WV, is in terminal decline. Just ask Xi, not Trump.
8
I'm a native New Yorker who was raised in New England. I lived in the city in the 70s and loved it despite the fact it was broke, dirty and scorned. Absolutely nothing worked. I've been back many times and still find it exciting, if shockingly expensive. My bank account has become used to South Carolina prices and is still crying from the last trip.
There is no solution to the New York dilemma. People have been moving to cheaper and greener pastures since the city was founded. There will never be enough affordable housing. My advice to New Yorkers is to enjoy it to the fullest while you can. Just know that many of you will ultimately leave and when you do, you will find there is civilization elsewhere.
46
New York did not vote for him.
@Tom
I was just thinking about your last line a moment ago when a fellow commenter brought up China as some anti-thesis to NYC decline. Meanwhile, the Chinese have a serious generational problem that only looks to get worse as their millennials are uninterested in having children, largely due to, you guessed it, cost and living conditions.
So it's happening in London, China as a whole, NYC, etc. Where do people go? Oh, right. Medium sized towns are making a non-farm comeback, which is also good for the farming communities.
Hopefully they eventually bring the culture with them. I personally despise medium sized towns. All the city fuss, none of the charm. BUT for most people, it's a welcome way out that allows a nice future, all the way into retirement. You can easily pick up a house in my area, for a family and decently nice, for $120k. Which is within reach for someone making $15 an hour, a common amount here.
We don't get a lot of good concerts, but there is an art museum, a decent concert venue, a symphony, and the schools are really good. Plus there's parking. Would I trade it for NYC? Yes. I do see the appeal though.
1
Well, New York you DID unleash the likes of Trump on the world. Try undoing that mess first.
9
@Martino Guliani
3
@dannyboy Sorry.. I have no Italian heritage anywhere in my family history. Swing and a miss. Wanna try for two more? Strike three isn't nearly as much fun as you may have been lead to believe.
I grew up in New York, moved out in 2010 because there were very little opportunities at the time for new Engineers. I had a number of ideas of things I wanted to do to turn New York into a more "modern tech" equivalent city, similar to cities in Japan. But I was quickly hit with road blocks as most engineering jobs required 20 years experience or start out with unpaid internship for a year, etc... Coupled with the exponentially rising cost of rent, I had no choice but to move out.
My advise to the politicians and executives running New York, start by giving your new hires a chance. Work with them, young people are very curious and imaginative, they know how they want to transform they city. But they need top ranking officials help to invest in their future. Otherwise New York will follow similar pattern in what happened to those cities in the "rust belt."
5
Over the past five or so years, New York City opened a city the size of downtown Atlanta on top of a rail yard, a soaring white marble train station with neighboring skyscrapers downtown, a nice segment of the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway, miles of creative public spaces along waterfronts/piers, a pioneering university on an underutilized island, like four or five new bridges, and who knows what else.
There are plenty of issues in this city, but lack of big ideas isn't one of them.
10
@AGuyInBrooklyn "New York City opened a city the size of downtown Atlanta on top of a rail yard" BAD IDEA
"soaring white marble train station with neighboring skyscrapers downtown" BAD IDEA
Just change your summary to "There are plenty of issues in this city, but lack of BAD ideas isn't one of them."
4
I worry that rent control will stop construction of new housing and encourage conversion of apartments to condos (increasing rents), as almost all economists on the left and right agree. I think we should consider something bold like a publicly owned construction/development company that can mass build studios, 1bds, and 2bds instead of luxury buildings. They don’t even need to be subsidized, publicly owned, or sold for a loss, we just need to increase our housing supply for ordinary people.
We shouldn’t accept our great city to be only affordable for those who are rich or have 5 roommates.
9
@Francis Condos and co-ops operate at cost and their "rents" reflect this and are lower than market rental buildings. As pointed out in the video, apartment dwellers pay property taxes directly or indirectly that are nearly three times the rate of those paid by single family houses.
These are not big ideas and they are not new. These are the ideas of the sixties and seventies that have become received knowledge. They may have been impractical then but some of them were new. Now even that is gone.
6
Questions for you though:
1) "Wealthy property owners" are only motivated to take the risk of renting to working and middle class people because they can potentially make a profit from the business of being landlords. If they're not allowed to pass their costs onto renters, then why would they rent to people in the first place?
2) What is it about the SHSAT that keeps out black and Latino students?
3) How would you ensure, without the SHSAT, that the students who are admitted to the magnet schools are capable of meeting the high standards that make those schools great? Without those standards, won't Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech meet the same fate as CCNY?
21
Maybe they should dust off T Kennard Thompson's plan to fill in the East River and extend Manhattan island to Bay Ridge.
1
It's a very big nest of very small, narrow, aggressive interests. The public interest often comes into play in the form of clumsy and corrupt bureaucracy or is hijacked by activists who imagine themselves to be the voice of the community. The presence of global investors and one-percenters, while causing great distortion in real estate, can't be be blamed for everything. It is exceedingly difficult and expensive to build anything (or change anything, or do anything) in New York, and there are many reasons for that. For a quick visual state of the city, just watch it choke itself in scaffolding, often where no construction is underway or will ever be underway. A single unfortunate death in the 1970s led to the passage of a law, which gradually gave rise to a billion-dollar industry that seemingly can never be undone. There are many dense and vertical cities in the world, and yet no other city has ever done this to itself.
2
@David Richards It's the Activists?
I guess you don't like anyone speaking up.
2
The most characteristic feature of New York - monstrously high buildings - are what make it unlivable. People need light and space. New York is interesting for 3 or 4 hours. After that the feeling of claustrophobia is palpable.
20
If you've ever read Richard Florida's book, The Rise of the Creative Class, he says that cities that are successful welcome diversification. That includes LBGT, people of all races, artists and eccentrics. Cities that stall out are the ones that can't or won't diversify.
Notice that he included artists and eccentrics. When I was younger, going to New York City was the big dream of the kids who didn't fit in small towns. The kids who wanted to be actors, set designers, writers, painters, fashion designers, costume makers, musicians, and all kinds of talented people fled to New York, escaping those places where their dreams would never come true.
Lately I read of a writer who got a $350,000 advance and still had to move to Durham, NC because she couldn't afford to live in New York City. What will NYC become without the starry-eyed kids who dreamed of making it there? It won't be the vibrant city and the center of creativity anymore when it runs the creatives off.
29
@Linda oh, come on. The kids with ambition still come here, and as they always did, many leave over time.
2
@Paul’52: No, now the 'tech bro's' are the ones coming here and lowering the tone of everything. They care only about money and getting drunk and behaving badly. They are NOT going to be found at a museum, or reading a book, or creating any kind of art. They'll be found playing foosball and vomiting in the streets every weekend.
7
NYC is an empire, if you will, in decline because it is not an empire.
It is a mess of splinters, a pile of real estate matchsticks .
The city, or rather its self-interested politicians, gave away control, developed attitudes that all that matters is maximum profit, fanciest space, tallest, shiniest, most exclsuive.
This city ceded its ability to legislate in its own, and its residents' interest.
So we have "poor guy doors". We have formerly sunny prospects shrouded in shadow of scrawny monuments to foreign investment, sitting empty, benefiting literally no-one but the money people.
Quality of life is a concept met with hilarity around here. A sign of weakness, a defect in sophistication and ambition. Cause enough to dismiss out of hand whatever is being discussed.
New York City is a heedless mass of building, now growing for the sake of growth, expelling retailers and residents to shrugs of "well, more progress".
You could stop this, if you would. Other cities have done. All you need is to develop a history of seriously caring for the experience, for the lives of the people who opt to live here, the people who make the place go.
Its like establishing a credit rating. You need enough of a history to carry the day in a courtroom, against rapacious developers and soulless lawyers.
Until then, yes, you are a city in decline. And you're going fast.
14
You’re just now figuring this out?
13
It’s wrong to say New York and New Yorkers no longer have vision or ‘big ideas.’ It’s wrong and simplistic. I’ve lived in the city to see its transformation from a crime-ridden and broken mess in the 70’s to the transformed and exhilarating city it has become. Robert Moses didn’t do this. Arguably, people like Bloomberg didn’t either. The city turned around because ordinary people, with outsize dreams, have committed their time, their energies, and their futures to gamble on an idea, the grand idea that life can be better, that you can come to this place from anywhere in the world, and make a life for yourself and your loved ones. Because I live in this amazing city, I get to interact every day with bodega owners from the DR, grocers from Calabria, and, yes, investment bankers from the Heartland, who couldn’t wait to get out of Ohio and make their own way. As New Yorkers, one and all, we have a stake in this grand experiment, and we all bring our own ideas of what will make it better. That requires openness and compromise, and so things often don’t happen as quickly or as efficiently as we might like. Thank God for that. How many of us remember Robert Moses’ grand plan to build a freeway through the Village to speed traffic from NJ to Long Island? Spare us such ‘grand ideas.’ I much prefer block meetings and bottom up transformation. It seems to be working.
6
@Robert Brenneman I disagree that the messy New York of the 1970s was transformed into a neat and tidy metropolis by "ordinary people." The recent history of the city is not nearly so sunny. Rather, New York was made into a playground for the wealthy--one built by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
The true causes of New York's transformation are well-documented. Like many big cities in the 1970s, New York hit hard times. (There are many reasons for this, among them changes in U.S. economic policies, shifts in labor, the recession of the era, middle-class flight, etc.) The city went into a fiscal crisis, faced bankruptcy. The federal government refused to help.
The powerful banks took advantage of New York's position. They agreed to extend loans to the city in return for control over its finances. The banks created an "emergency council" that instituted a neoliberal program of austerity. Money was taken from public programs--schools, parks, public transportation, etc.--and redirected toward building an infrastructure for the finance industry. The city was reshaped. No longer was city college free; no longer were pensions assured; no longer were public employees given job security.
Since then, the city and state have largely pursued this austerity agenda. Policies encourage investment in the transactional and services economies. The middle class sees less and less. The rich ride in Ubers and send their kids to private school. But what of everyone else?
1
@JK My New York isn't just Manhattan, it's also the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Parts of it are, indeed, the playgrounds of the wealthy, but not the vast areas of the city where I spend my time and meet all kinds of ordinary, hard working people through my work and volunteering. I agree with many of the things you're saying, and New York is certainly not 'tidy', thank God, but it's not the gated, exclusive enclave you seem to describe, at least not my New York. Come out and see how the rest of us live, it's not Park Avenue, but it's not bad, either.
1
Left NYC in the mid-80s, I wish I had understood and participated fully in what an amazingly creative time it was. To me, NY started to sell its soul in the 90s, which was great in terms of renewal projects (with reservation about Times Sq.) aided by the tax money flowing in from Wall St. From then on, the corporatization of US cities has been relentless and the results unsettling. Greed and standardization has won the day, with nice input from smartphones.
But there's one city, with all its troubles, that seems truer to the American spirit while being a megalopolis: Chicago all the way. Better skyline and subway too. Maybe the two should put their heads together more often.
7
This is a consistently recycled forewarning that misses many major points. So many Europeans, whom I engagedly visit long and regularly -as well as Asians and others - love this city passionately as no other. San Francisco, London, Venice, Paris, and many other cities suffer from squeezing out their working class.
The list of buts goes on and on considering architecture, trade, commerce the arts, etc. Yet above all possibly is the unique blend of cultures and races that interact on a scale and within degrees of proximity unseen in so much of the world.
The energy and intensity with which some disparage New York, beyond for a short recess commencing on 9/11/01 further serves to amplify its imposing personality, strength, energy and empire status.
1
Ms Gay is absolutely correct. My corner of Brooklyn (Cypress Hills) could be flourishing. Instead, my low income neighbors struggle with lack of affordable housing, destruction (via flippers) of charming, affordable older homes, lack of excellent schools and a dearth of healthy affordable food.
I love my neighborhood, but the city's lack of respect for its affordable neighborhoods is forcing citizens to move out of state. Bold vision is needed, coupled with strong regualtions to preserve and grow affordable housing.
Join me at the upcoming rally to protect NYC homeowners and stop real estate speculation on Tuesday, November 12 at Kings County Court, 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, 11:00-12:00, sponsored by the Coaltion for Community Advancement, and other advocates for affordable housing in NYC.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2516107585135707/
6
It's hard to remain the center of innovation and financial services when you intentionally run Amazon out of town and actively demonize Wall Street.
96
@John Those libertarian views are the reason why many cities are being crushed under their own weight of acquiescence to corporatism. Cities were constructed to efficiently provide goods and services for their citizens, and cities were not created as cash cows for the "renters" economy. Societies cannot survive, when all of the resources are being provided to a few.
48
@John
Apparently Amazon is looking for rental property in Manhattan... that story in the NY Post not the Times and yes IMO Amazon was doing NOTHING but adding to midtown congestion . If they had put their headquarters in the Bronx or in East NYC but OH NO... have to be close to Bloomies!! Work for Amazon, shop at Bloomies! (never mind)
11
@John
Let's tell the truth.
Nobody ran Amazon out of town. They were never here. If the condition for their coming was to listen attentively to residents' concerns, and respond, and if they couldn't do that, it was a mutual parting.
They may have been bitter because of the loss of anticipated prestige and profit, but so what. You don't owe them a thing.
And, as it happens, their promises were more than a little exaggerated, their timeline attenuated, and the benefits they promised greatly reduced as a result of spreading out over many more years than they had implied.
I was very proud New York chose not to cram this corporate hulk down residents' gullets, and prouder still of residents who persevered.
There's life in the old girl. Good, creative, exciting days could lie ahead, if we stop thinking, like you, that money, lots of it and fast, are the only things that matter in the life of a city.
61
This video is so good. I'd like to add that many of New York's biggest infrastructure projects--subways, libraries-- were only possible with federal (deficit) funding. And some of the biggest ideas for helping cities today are national ideas: federal rent control, federal credit regulation, guaranteed 60k income for teachers, and lots more federal funding for transportation.
Those ideas aren't faceless: they're championed by Bernie Sanders. The New York Times consistently publishes content that diagnoses the same problems he diagnoses, and calls for a vision as big as his. But I worry that by never naming him, they are pretending that these ideas would be just as easily accomplished without him. I hope they match their local vision by endorsing the largest possible national vision.
10
New York was, at one time, one of the premier cities in the world. I had the opportunity to live and work in Manhattan for a month in the latter part of 1989 and it was both invigorating and inspiring.
But, all things must pass. As America's preeminence in the business, finance, manufacturing and marketing areas declines, so does the panache once deserved by "The Big Apple".
It's not something New York is doing, it's something that is happening to one of my favorite cities.
So yes, we, and the things we love, are all in decline.
9
I lived in NY from 57 to 63 and thought it was in decline then and when I had a layover in 14 and walked around the Penn Station block I knew that it was gone forever. Our President is the way he is because he is a New Yorker.
13
@Rich Murphy It's sad that one faired so poorly while here to experience the city this way, and pathetically dishonest to pose Trump as anything resembling what New Yorkers value.
5
@Rich Murphy um, Trump lost his home city by 75% and his own district by 90%. You can blame a lot of people for Trump but not New York.
11
@Rich Murphy No, your president is the way he is because he has a personality disorder. NYC has nothing to do with it.
5
Thank you for this. Great insights, and a well-produced/designed video as well!
And...I'm so glad you brought up our car culture and how perverted it is...and all the moreso in a place like NYC. We simply must keep the momentum going on this piece of the conversation.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/04/opinion/self-driving-cars-safety.html?searchResultPosition=2
NYC is often described as a 'walking city', yet so much of our public space and tax dollars are allocated towards accommodating cars and their owners. Many NYC car owners are as militant as certain gun owners, and simply refuse to consider that maybe, just maybe, they need to cede some of their 'rights'. When local car owners here that a lane of traffic is going to be given over to cyclists, and/or that some Public parking spots are going to be removed...oh, the fury that the rest of us must here. Car owners fail to remember that it is a huge privilege that so much Public Space is afforded to them and their Two-Ton Private Possessions.
Why do so many feel the need to own a private vehicle? SUVs have become a scourge, littering our streets, and posing a far greater physical threat to smaller cars, not to mention cyclists and pedestrians. The SUVs themselves are getting bigger and bigger. Yukon, Denali, Escalade, Voyager, Suburban, and even F150s etc., all over the streets of ...New York City?? Are you kidding me?
The majority of NYers do Not own cars. We take priority over vehicles!
35
@Lisa Truth is they can own a car and use it. also Bike Lane that are not used show a disregard to civility. Car owner have to follow rules and Laws. Pedestrians have to follow rules and Laws. People on bikes areal over the place.
1
@Lisa - i have to wonder where you live, as raising a family in Queens pretty much requires a car to shuttle kids to programs that are not in transit accessible neighborhoods or actually to take our kids to school when we received a variance to send our kids to a better public school further from our home. A car was also cheaper and more reliable than car services. I'm all for scaling back car ownership but it MUST go hand in hand with better, more reliable mass transit, just as more Bike lanes MUST go hand in hand with better traffic enforcement to keep the remaining traffic in the smaller space that remains (which is NOT currently happening).
2
I love your vision
1
I completely disagree that the "leaders' have made New York great.. Rather it has always been the people of New York that have given the city its greatness..their dreams, their energy, their humanity & sense of community have been the seeds of New York's greatness..
...-- If New York today has begun to lack some of its past greatness.. then we merely need look at its citizens to see the cause.
7
@mike The Citizens have been suppressed.
NO Power left to the People.
1
I live in NYC and visit European cities frequently and I always find it depressing to see how much more open to new ideas about urban life Europeans seem to be.
We get things like bike lanes, Citi Bike, congestion charging, and other similar ideas decades after they are commonplace in Europe. And people still kick and scream here about how unfeasible these ideas are for New York, as if we are the only large city in the world with totally unique problems.
When they first announced CitiBike, for example, I couldn't believe how many New Yorkers were completely skeptical of the entire concept of a bike share. I kept having to explain to people that bike shares have been successful and popular in countless other cities, including Paris and London. Same reaction to changes like congestion charging, pedestrianizing Times Square, bike lanes, etc.
It truly amazes how conservative New Yorkers can be when it comes to "new" ideas that are already proven effective in similar cities. This mindset makes it very hard to make big changes in the city that could benefit millions of people. I wish we were the city pioneering ways to make urban life better yet we are always playing catch-up with Europe.
27
When it comes to car culture the legacy of Robert Moses’ infatuation with the car still lives on in the context of inequitable access across the city to subways and buses that get you anywhere reliably and in a reasonable amount of time. A problem far worse in some parts of the outer boroughs.
NYC was once a place where the Bowery, LES and even the Far West Village, due to their proximity to industrialized areas and/or highways on river fronts, were undesirable places to live. This was due in part to the impact of a culture that is still alive as well via enabling strong reliability on cars to get in and out of a city where outsiders would once verbalize they wanted to visit only, not live in.
Jane Jacobs legacy gave way to Giuliani, Bloomberg and De Blasio’s offerings to developers of multi decade tax breaks adding to hyper-gentrification from decreased crime perception and increased tourism further exacerbating or transforming Manhattan and its closest neighborhoods into places for the wealthiest. The latter two Mayors hoping tax revenues from these plans would be used support social programs for the poorest.
The unintended and intended consequences ask us now, at what cost? Stagnation is somewhat debatable as De Blasio has tried to change the car culture, addressing inequality over who controls the streets as well within schools; both met with varied forms of resistance.
Is this even the irony of Triangle Waist Shirt/Al Smith’s influence as well?
3
@Davin: WHY would we want to be Europe? Nearly every non-African-American here came to the USA to get AWAY from Europe!
And I have friends who spend half the year here, and half in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is not such an Eden as it's portrayed, nor are the Netherlands such a nice place to live. They have a very rigid bureaucracy, as does France.
We owe nothing to Europe except "bye-bye!"
2
@Davin
Many of these innovations started in America — in cities up and down the west coast.
3
This video Op-Ed started out OK and then crashes and burns.
The 400K apartments - New Yorkers still live there. Just not at dirt cheap prices.
Hundreds of condos vs 60K homeless ... the luxury condos in no way prevent homeless from getting homes. The lack of inventory in their price range - THAT prevents it. Could also be the booze and drugs and mental instability.
High demand, high performance schools - you blatantly want to discriminate against people on the basis of their race in order to discriminate in favor of others based on their race. Some animals are more equal than others?
Grand public works - the “activist” class in this city will prevent anything great ever again being built. Don’t build anything new, ever, anywhere. That’s their motto. And they’re quite good at making sure that nothing gets fixed.
41
@Yeah - Her Emails
I don't agree with your last take. I'd argue that the class you identify are not activists, since they want to stop something from happening. They are preservationists, conservationists, etc. (And I support them!) I'm guessing from your comment that you're a relatively conservative individual. Isn't this a conservative goal at it's heart? But it is at odds with (conservative) pro-business orthodoxy. So there's your conflict.
The real "activist" class is that which seeks to demolish and pave over every inch they can find in the name of new lucrative development. Surely you'd agree that an idea as out-there as building a 6-lane highway over a park - getting the idea scoped out, pushed through various hearings, zoning boards, etc. - is the result of an activist's efforts.
@Yeah - Her Emails
We need more middle class and low income housing.. and perhaps the gov should build it and believe me there is lots of space in Bklyn but not on the subway to get there.
2
We don't need politicians with "big vision". Big vision politicians are people like Robert Moses, and projects like Hudson Yards. Small, local actions bring better outcomes for everybody because they are in tune with what the locals need. Why are progressives always championing people like Jane Jacobs over Moses but then extolling the virtues of mass government action?
"Hyperloop windows" and "VR history books" won't be brought about by politicians visions, they're happening on their own. NYC was made great by tons of local actors, communities and neighborhoods, being allowed the space to flourish and evolve.
11
New York City is still full of big ideas. They are just not your ideas. Every change poses the possibilities of unintended consequences. The High Line is a great example. Things can become victims of their own success, as well. Having bike lanes all over the city sounds great. The problem is that they have aggravated an already dreadful traffic problem. While you are at it, please consider a rethink of some of your ideas. Go a bit deeper and consider complexities. Don't be so quick to call out high rentals, especially when so many small building owners find themselves under tremendous pressure, ironically from the city, itself an awful landlord.
29
@Mike Allan Interesting, Why is the city an awful landlord?
2
@Mike Allan said: "The High Line is a great example. Things can become victims of their own success, as well."
Well no. The Highline STOLE A NEIGHBORHOOD.
4
@dannyboy: EXACTLY! The rich *cough Diane von Furstenberg & Barry Diller cough* paid for the High Line and it did steal a neighborhood. Now they are doing the same with their private pier on the Hudson River.
NY is for those who can afford to buy access to the city administration. And De Blasio is absolutely on the take!
1
I would be curious to know what percentage of the vapid wealthy living in Bloomberg's glass menagerie are entrepreneurs in any sense of the word but instead are trained seals, the kind whose entire childhood was devoted to producing a college application for the ages? That type of unimaginative person accepts a huge paycheck for sublimating any creative impulse, to do meaningless work they hate, in service to some corporation who really doesn't care whether they live or die, all for the right to a view of the East River.
4
Ouch. There’s significant complexity and, despite your sniping, a clear creative aspect to the big paying jobs in law, finance and tech. Plus the tremendous tax revenues they generate make possible the experiment that is NYC, where teachers are very well paid and rents are stabilized.
1
The future of city dwellers is small livable towns that provide all necessary services.
As an expat American we moved to a town of 6000 people in Provence where both services and beauty are plentiful.
France has a treasured national health plan called Carte Vitale that cares for all medical needs from birth to death.
This national value of solidarity and caring for ones neighbor is a far cry from America’s dream of acquired wealth and the resultant value of greed.
93
@Michael Kittle That's wonderful. But not everyone who lives here has that option, nor should they be judged for staying in the city that raised them. I think you'll find many neighborhoods here in New York where there is a tremendous sense of solidarity and willingness to help thy neighbor.
12
@Michael Kittle
So silly.. Check out Paradise CA and the Camp Fire... Small towns where they should not have been built. Cities have existed from historic times-- Sumer, Babylon, Cairo and with reason. TRANSPORTATION and access. Much easier in a densely built city than in a spread out town.
If only NYC could clean and modernize (make a robot run transit system) the subway and bus system. Bein in thrall to the MTA is not fun. (Administration and workers- some workers actually have scrubbed clean a few stations -- 34th St. IRT -- kudos to them.)
3
@Michael Kittle That all depends on people being willing to invest in the collective good. How many Americans say, "I don't want to pay for your illness"? I also live in Europe and I love (not only the national health care) but the ongoing small tweaks to the urban environment - a new tree here, a new bike path there, a new fence in a park, etc. These are all small things but they add up. Somewhere along the line Americans made a collective decision to abandon the public space to its own fate. No surprise then that it is withering.
1
What a stupid video! The reason rents in New York City are so high is because of competition and success. Jobs pay more in New York also.
The elected leaders solve problems - which are almot insoluable in New York but which it does a much better job at than, for example, my city with its glaring homeless problem and human defecation on the street. San Francisco can handle dogs but not humans.
Vision comes from artists (who seem mostly to focus on their huge accomplishments coming from immigrant families). Why not talk to "Hamilton" about vision for the city? The original Alexander Hamilton's vision created New York City as the banking, economic opportunity, and well-educated polyclot urban center that it is. Hamilton, significantly, never ran for public office.
Or perhaps you could talk to head of the Federal Reserve - Hamilton founded that also.
New York does grow out of the vision of its politicians but of its visionaries and doers! Politicians are just good looking bureaucrats/bookkeepers.
1
What a bunch of nonsense. Pretty much everything Ms Gay stated in this video is 100% wrong.
NYC should not be going out of it's way to create affordable housing. People who can't afford to pay market rates for housing should move to other cities. When that happens, the pressure on housing will be reduced, and rents will come down.
The (non) problem is that NYC is too popular. This is a good thing. If NYC wasn't desirable it would have turned into Detroit. But we now have a lot of people, including and especially, millennial snowflakes like Ms Gay, who think they have some innate right to live in NYC. They don't. No one does. If they can't afford it, there's a whole huge country out there (and world beyond that) where they can go, the vast majority of which has a much lower cost of living.
As far as infrastructure, the reason that we can't get anything new built is that the political layer has been pandering to the labor unions, campaign contributing contractors, and NIMBY locals so much that the cost of building public infrastructure projects here has gotten ridiculously expensive. If the politicians can say no to the special interests (like using non-union contractors, for example), things might just actually get built.
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@BBMW
It is exactly what is happening; my city is the recipient of people tired of coastal cost of living issues. As a result, my city is getting more "big city" amenities. And this is repeated across America.
New York is truly a unique place and the people that value that level of unique will pay to live there. Everyone else will disperse and find a balance between amenities and cost of living.
I would NEVER live in NYC because I don't value what it offers in terms of lifestyle. If people are sitting there miserable about the cost of living, they really need to move, keeping in mind they will be making some sacrifices.
11
@BBMW Only that all middle class jobs and low income jobs do not pay enough to live in NYC, and a city cannot be made of only rich Wall Street people.
9
@BBMW If everybody who can't afford to live in New York City leaves, will the wealthy who stay cook their own food and serve themselves in the restaurants because food service workers can't afford to live there, stock the grocery store shelves because stockers can't afford to live there, clean their own apartments because housekeepers can't afford to live there, teach their own children because teachers can't afford to live there, put out their own fires or solve a crime by themselves because first responders can't afford to live there? It's going to be an exhausting place to live if you have to do all the work that was once done by the people who can't afford to live there.
24
Hard to say... The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act pushed through by Trump and the Republicans seeks to redistribute income from places like New York to poorer and less productive parts of the country that trend Republican. NYC and other coastal cities thrived from trade policies that brought goods in for distribution through coastal ports. This created a lot of resentment from interior states that lost on the trade deals.
1
Remember though, much of the world looks at NYC with envy.
4
@Bob
NYC is my hometown and even if I had the money I would not live there. It has become yet one more stomping ground for the rich - it used to be a city where you could work a normal job and live there. Not anymore.
94
All New York needs to regain its Big Mo is a new mayor. DiBlasio has proven to be totally out of touch and unable to accomplish anything while articulating "progressive" nonsense every minute of the day and night. Does anyone listen to and believe a word he says anymore? The greatest city of earth deserves better than this bumbler. As a native NYer who returns often, I have unending faith in the City's ability to redefine itself to stay on top of the world in every category - except perhaps in its ability to pick good mayors.
50
It's the false bravado that the world believes that keeps NY going. Like Mick Jagger, if it ever admitted that its best days were forever in the past, the game would be over.
13
Mara should run for office. she's much brighter and more appealing than most candidates.
6
Well said. And what about the lead crisis in our public schools? I cannot believe this is not being widely reported on: https://gothamist.com/news/kids-head-back-nyc-schools-lead-concerns-remain
3
Our entire country is in decline, due to our despicable president.
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@General’s Daughter I am sorry but this decline has come long before Trump, soon after 9/11.
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@Alexandra
DITTO
1
@Alexandra but not unrelated to the same nexus of real estate and political corruption which trump personifies.
5
Cry me a river. Move to one of the numerous places in this country that are underpopulated. No one is entitled to a cosmopolitan life.
24
Everyone is entitled to fight for the kind of life they want, even a cosmopolitan life. Beyond that, turning NYC into a haven for Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires, mobs of tourists, and hedge fund manipulators, hardly serves to create a cosmopolitan city.
34
Big ideas are cheap. What’s difficult is reaching consensus on how to go forward and who will pay for it — both in the literal, financial sense and in the sense of who will reap advantages where others lose out.
Every plan is subject to protests, lawsuits and other obstacles. It’s amazing anything gets done at all.
5
This is terrific... I loved it. However, I am not sure if the wealthy pay a low property tax. A friend with a big 4 million apt downtown pays 50,000k per year in property taxes. It seems a lot to me.
I believe the truth lies rather in the big developers with 80/20 apt who have scammed the system and the CITY for years with a legal loophole that allowed them to write off losses DOUBLE than their actual subsidies and the real market value of those apartments.
I used to live in such an apt and I was forced to moved out when the rent increase became untenable - all with the blessing of Bill DeBasio's City Hall. I had to leave my beloved apt after 20 years!
When I moved in the rent was 900 for a junior 1 bdr/studio alcove with a partition added to sell as a 1 bdr; when I left was over 2,000; and the market value was closer to 3,000, however the building was listing it as a 4500 value - which was fiction - in its tax deduction to the city hall and had been scamming the city like this since 1980 when the high-rise was built.
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@Alexandra I would like to add that a lot of apts are owned by Chinese. Why are we allowing foreigners to buy apt and drive up the prices for Americans? If there are 7+ billion people outside the US and 0.01 are very wealthy it is still a huge number that would outprice regular Americans out of their own homes.
33
@Alexandra Rent Control and rent stabilization means buildings are valued at a fraction of what they would be otherwise. This substantially reduces property taxes which could be used to build thousands of affordable housing units.
On the other side, the 421-A tax abatement program was massively abused providing an enormous windfall to developers who certainly didn't need it.
1
$50,000 in annual property taxes on a $4,000,000 downtown Manhattan property? I’d call that a deal.
3
You have to ask??
It seems like a naïve article.
1
"The city was built on big ideas, but lately the vision seems smaller" because eyes are glued to IPhones.
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@Nicole Lieberman
Phone bad!
Give me a break.
2
New York, like many great port cities, came into being to suit the needs of the railroad and steamship world. It was where the two main means of transportation, in that age merged.
Aircraft and automotive traffic do not do well there. As we move even beyond that to the age of the internet, such concentration is even less needed.
7
@Penseur
except that its also one of the the financial/advertising/fashion capitals of the world
4
@Penseur
Good points! Also new technologies have enabled industries that were once confined and rooted to concentrated labor & consumer markets to become portable I.e. if labor (preferably cheap) is needed somewhere they can move there. While managing daily operations from thousands of miles away.
However industries are facing a new difficulty: new labor & consumers are also growing wiser and demanding more of them!