http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
It’s hard to remember sometimes that the latest Bloombergian crusade to ban all the sodas, steal all the salt or wall off half the streets to automobile traffic had its roots in another New York City where Times Square was a seedy flickering danger zone, entire neighborhoods were always on the verge of an explosion and the only optimistic people were the ones moving out.
Some twenty years ago, Rudy Giuliani began tackling crime directly with waves of men in blue using
smarter and blunter tactics, and also indirectly by going after “Quality of Life” issues. The theory was that crime came out of social blight. Improve the neighborhood and you reduce crime.
The ubiquitous squeegee men were put out of business and drives rejoiced, Times Square’s acres of sex businesses were broken up to make way for Disney musicals. Homeless encampments that had taken over public places were broken up. Graffiti, prostitution, panhandling and a thousand other behaviors, some criminal, some not, but that contributed to the grimy dangerous city were targeted.
Critics called Giuliani a fascist, but New York City became a better, safer and more prosperous place. It’s hard to remember what a gamechanger the notion was, back then in the dark days of liberalism, that cities didn’t have to be fixed with an endless round of welfare that only added more blight. Instead they could be fixed by enforcing civilized norms that too many had given up on enforcing.