Suburbaniztion in the 70s hollowed out the middle class leaving just the extremely wealthy and extremely poor. Crack epidemic and the War on Drugs and the resultant crime accelerated the exodus. With the loss of tax base the city was going bankrupt, cutting back services (like police), and the infrastructure began to rot.
It wasn't all bad. Some of my favourite artists and musicians lived in the city of that era. They were paying low rents or squatting while working on their craft.
Once the disinvestment had run its course developers swooped in and bought some of the most desirable property for cheap. New buildings went up. A generation of kids raised in the suburbs discovered cities were awesome. And those starving artists either became successful or were forced to move out.
The working poor and working class who built the city, maintained the city when everyone else walked away they were discarded. Sent to live in unfashionable suburbs hours away. Rising ever so briefly as "essential workers" while COVID wrecked the economy and ravaged the cities knowledge workers.
Lots of crime and cities not thought to be attractive places to live. Crack is often cited as the main driver of urban decay but there myriad reasons cities like nyc began a decline in the late 60’s until the early 90’s when cities began to be sought after again.
What happens is as the tax base leaves the city has less money to take care of itself leading to more people leaving, etc. The opposite happens as people move back in.
I’d never count NYC out but it was clearly in need of a correction. After the riots and the regime in charge supporting it, the increase in muggings and robbery, and the blandness to much of what Manhattan has become, I know a few people that left. Especially with remote work being more viable.
The problem is NYC has learned nothing. In fact, it passed a record multibillion budget for this year after federal aid. Everyone is putting their head in the sand pretending everything is back to normal.
I expect the city to crash and burn financially in another year or two. Or start begging for a federal bailout.
And I don't say this as a twisted conservative wanting to see liberal cities burn. I'm pretty fucking liberal and NYC is going pretty much off a cliff at the moment.
For a few decades NYC settled into a truce—-things would be good for real estate moguls, bankers, jet setters with 2nd/3rd/5th houses in the city, etc.
In exchange no one would complain that city government, the state authorities, and trades would be fantastically overpaid and overstaffed.
This was also good for people that worked in industries that cater to the rich (waiters, doormen, weed delivery services, etc, etc).
Things were hardly perfect but aside from the very poor and people being squeezed out of neighborhoods due to gentrification most groups were doing well enough to be satisfied.
The problem is that the whole thing depends on a few thousand very wealthy people sticking around. If they no longer care enough about the restaurants, museums, clubs, private schools, house parties, whatever to want to be in NYC pay taxes and spend lavishly then the whole thing falls apart. The worst part is that there’s no way to gracefully dial back—-wages and benefits are sticky.
The police riots were indeed awful but unfortunately I don’t think there’s going to be a correction- as they showed when they were cracking skulls in Washington sq park the NYPD can operate basically independent of the civilian authorities
I have a friend who is an NYPD and he retired early along with his batch mate, he cited the cities policies is increasing crime and it's becoming dangerous to be out there. One of his mate got shot and died after he retired this year and he said that guy was also retiring soon and got unlucky.
