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NYC is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better now than in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Yes, wow. I grew up there and through those times and while living in it, it was rough at times and it didn't seem THAT bad - but now, looking back and whenever I see the myriad of photojournalists who documented some of the very areas I lived in, holy cow, it was absolutely terrible.
As stated....NYC has been resilient. BUT, they have never faced something called bandwidth before.
Plus, it sure doesn't look like the people in charge of the city are in any hurry to get things rolling again. From where I sit, read and look...not much concern over it either.
‘A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within”
The dolts continue to misunderstand New York City.
As a born in Manhattan and educated close and from a 100 year dynasty of upper Manhattan dwellers the place has an ongoing life and will simply snap back when the crisis declines.
And it is not remotely damaged. Just have to reshuffle things a bit to get it all up to snuff again.
For some reason the dolts seem unable to understand the granite beneath the island...and the vast array of other communities that live off of it.
Kindly go away and come back in a couple of years...The same magical place.
Okay, so no one has a crystal ball so everything is just theory, but calling people you disagree with as "dolts" is a little harsh.
But anyway, the past 100 years of NYC made it what it is because of the waterways. Industry, commerce brought about the NYC you know and love today. True, NYC has survived a lot in these past 100 years. What I think what is different this time is something that is a relatively recent phenomena due to the covid pandemic is that companies were forced into using internet and remote technology for daily "office work". Something that proved that people can be just as productive. Why pay high rents when you can work anywhere? Why pay high office leases when the NYC address doesn't really matter as much anymore. So just my theory, but I think these historic times will result in a crash in the NYC real estate market which will trickle down further than imaginable.
From what i understand, the charm of NYC was all the boutiques, restaurants, etc that were right outside your door if you live in the right places. which were very prevalent. They renters could afford 250 square foot apartments because they could go outdoors for everything. Once those places closed and got trashed, it totally fubared the whole area. now all they have is a stupid closet-sized 250 square foot apartment with $2,400 a month rent.
So sad for the restaurants that were there for 150 years making pizza and stuff and now suffering.
Maybe it will be like West Side Story again.
Imagine how much better it will get when Biden takes office and mandates a complete shutdown from the Oval Basement.
The dolts continue to misunderstand New York City.
As a born in Manhattan and educated close and from a 100 year dynasty of upper Manhattan dwellers the place has an ongoing life and will simply snap back when the crisis declines.
And it is not remotely damaged. Just have to reshuffle things a bit to get it all up to snuff again.
For some reason the dolts seem unable to understand the granite beneath the island...and the vast array of other communities that live off of it.
Kindly go away and come back in a couple of years...The same magical place.
I don't have the longevity in Manhattan that you do. In fact, I've never lived there, and I haven't stepped foot in it since 2012. But I do know how to read.
During a typical Monday through Friday daytime (pre-COVID), Manhattan housed the following numbers of people:
1.46 million residents
1.61 commuting workers (from the other boroughs, NYS, CT, NJ, etc.)
404,000 out-of-town visitors
374,000 local daytrip visitors
17,000 hospital patients
70,000 commuting students
Thus, you had close to 4 million people packed onto that relatively small island.
But that was then. This is now.
Some fraction of the 1.46 million residents have moved away, or will do so shortly. Somewhere on here is a thread about Upper West Side residents who have gotten fed up with junkies and perverts invading their neighborhood, courtesy of DiBlasio's policy of sticking them in fancy hotels, and have bailed out. I don't have a number for people leaving, but it seems as though it's significant.
In any case, how many of those 1.61 commuting workers are now working from home? And how many will continue to work from home, even after the coronavirus is gone, because their companies did the math and found out how much money they can save by not paying the obscene commercial rents of Midtown or the Financial District? Again, I don't have numbers, but right now it must be a large proportion, and it will likely stay a large proportion going forward.
The out-of-town visitors? Gone. Well, maybe not all of them, but the great majority. And as long as the restaurants and theaters and museums remain closed, and as long as there's the persistent risk of becoming a victim of criminal activity, they will stay gone. Ditto for the local daytrip visitors. And also for the students, as long as schools remain closed.
What this all amounts to is that Manhattan has lost a very large share of its pre-COVID daytime population. And some of them aren't going to be coming back.
New York may yet survive this. Honestly, I hope they do; I have a great deal of fondness for this city. But you cannot deny that the prognosis has never been this gloomy before, at least not since the depths of the 1960s crime wave.
People are quick to say "Oh NYC jumped back from the 70s/80s" and "it was just fine post 9/11."
Fair enough, it has recovered in the past. BUT, realize this: in the 1970s and 80s, and to a large degree still in 2001, the US was without a doubt THE economic behemoth, THE global superpower. It could weather any storm. New York may have been crumbling 40 years ago but suburbia and places like California were thriving. The factories in Ohio and Michigan, the aerospace industry in SoCal, were all still churning and China was a poor, meaningless overpopulated Asian country. The politicians, bad as they were in hindsight, did not yet give away American manufacturing and all the high-tech know how was all still here. The middle class was big and as strong as ever.
Fast forward to 2020. The US has very little manufacturing left, which became painfully evident when the pandemic hit and we realized we can't even make our own penicillin anymore. Instead, our economy is kept afloat in a fake way where services bus drivers and restaurant servers essentially form the backbone of the economy. China, meanwhile, produces everything from antibiotics to airplanes to military weapons and with it has the know-how. China is now in a position to threaten to kill us by withholding drugs or key electronics (As it did in March when the pandemic was unfolding). Simultaneously, a new generation has been brainwashed by radical left marxist professors and teachers to hate America and see it as a fundamentally unfair, evil country. The middle class is diminishing by the day. Infrastructure is crumbling. America is destroying itself from within.
The point is, in 2020 America isn't as fit to weather these storms as it was in the 1970s and 80s. This time, New York really may never recover as it gradually becomes the same slum it was over 40 years ago.
lots of great points here. +1
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