I lived in New York in the late 80s and early 90s when everybody had given up on it. The city was as exciting and fun as ever, but it was also dirty, drug-plagued, crime-ridden, and insolvent. Nobody thought it could be fixed. It was just the way New York was. Then came two mayors, Giuliani and Bloomberg. Guiliani restored order. The crime rate collapsed, and small businesses began to prosper. Bloomberg built on that, concentrating on quality-of-life improvements that were unimaginable only a decade ago.
As a car-oriented city with spacious suburbs and leafy inner-city neighborhoods, any comparison to New York might seem silly. But Dallas can still learn two important lessons from New York’s experience. Lesson #1: Anything can be fixed. Lesson #2: City government can and must lead in improving quality of life, mostly in getting rid of old ideas, traffic patterns, and ordinances that impede its natural development. (H/t Urbanophile)
