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New York City: Are We an Empire in Decline?

The city was built on big ideas, but lately the vision seems smaller.

Tala Schlossberg and

Ms. Gay is a member of the editorial board.

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New York City: Are We an Empire in Decline?

The city was built on big ideas, but lately the vision seems smaller.

[RATTLING OF A TRAIN] I went to the Rockaways the other day. I was just thinking about the kind of vision that it took to build a subway to this slip of sand that you can get to with just a single MetroCard ride. At Rockaway, I’m reminded of how much vision it took to build this city. Where is that vision today? I’m Mara Gay, and I cover New York for the New York Times editorial board. I’m a native New Yorker from Brooklyn, where I still live, in a fifth-floor walkup. For the record, I am a total New York booster, but sometimes, I worry that New York is an empire in decline. Let me show you what I mean. It wasn’t just the Rockaways. Someone had the vision to build a 7 train that went to farmland. You come out of the subway in Flushing, then all of a sudden you see the most opulent building around. Someone thought to build that library and serve books to people in 50 different languages. New York’s public officials thought to put in 1,700 parks — 1,700. This is what our city created for commuters. When you walk into Grand Central, you feel like you are somebody. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I’m nostalgic for the New York of 100 years ago. The city is safer now. It’s more diverse. Bloomberg gave us those waterfront parks, and DeBlasio brought us pre-K. Lately, the vision just feels smaller. There’s an entire generation that can’t afford to buy a house. Even our own mayor doesn’t want to be here. Our city officials are actually entertaining plans to build a six-lane highway on top of a park. I don’t want us to just become a playground for the rich. I used to live really close to the Highline. One day, someone new bought the building, and we saw a condo going in across the street. And slowly but surely, over the course of about a year, the construction began. Eventually, we moved out. I just kept thinking to myself, if this is happening to us, and we’re college-educated, American-born citizens, what’s happening to poor people? What’s happening to people who don’t speak English or who aren’t citizens? It was heartbreaking. Tonight, more than 60,000 New Yorkers are going to be sleeping in a homeless shelter. Hundreds of luxury condos are sitting empty. Since 2005, the number of apartments renting for $900 a month or less has fallen by 400,000. That’s nearly half a million homes where New Yorkers used to live. Part of the reason why the rents are so high is because it’s renters, not wealthy homeowners, who are paying the lion’s share of the city’s property taxes. Vision on housing could mean fixing our broken property tax system. Vision could mean increasing train service to close suburbs like Yonkers and White Plains. New York car culture makes no sense. This year alone, so far, 69 pedestrians and 19 cyclists have been killed. Only 16% of our bike lanes are protected in New York. I think we can do better. Starting in 2021, New York will finally have a congestion tax, 18 years behind London. Vision on infrastructure could mean roping off more streets just for pedestrians. It could mean building 50 miles of protected bike lane a year, instead of just 30. Our lack of vision is hurting future generations, too. New York has one of the most segregated school districts in the country. Last year, Stuyvesant, one of our best high schools, admitted a freshman class where only 1% of the kids were black. Vision on education means tossing out an admissions test that shuts out black and Latino students from our city’s top high schools, rethinking and reimagining admissions policies from middle school to elementary school. We deserve big ideas. We deserve leaders with bold change, who are brave enough to get it done. We can demand more from ourselves, too. We can vote in local elections. We can show up to City Hall. We can protest, maybe even run for office. The president has called cities burning and crime- infested. Those of us who live in them know better. Cities are hubs of imagination and innovation. I want kids 100 years from now to peer out of their Hyperloop windows or read through their VR history books and just see all that vision that New York never lost.

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The city was built on big ideas, but lately the vision seems smaller.CreditCredit...The New York Times

New York City was built on big, bold ideas. The vision of past leaders kept New Yorkers in town and captured the imaginations of millions from around the world who came here to “make it.” In the Video Op-Ed above, Mara Gay, a native New Yorker who has reported on the streets of this city for seven years, questions where all that vision is today. She argues that New York’s current leaders need to bring big ambition and hustle to serve their residents. She supplies ideas of what vision could look like to a mayor whose reluctant homecoming offers dim hope for the city. New Yorkers, she says, deserve more.

This isn’t just a New York story — it’s a trend in many cities around the world, where broad public programs are pushed aside for narrow corporate interests and where transformative polices are as hard to come by as affordable rents.

Mara Gay is a member of the editorial board. @MaraGay

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