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lodibet How to Bring People Back to New York City
In the 1970s, New York City’s population fell by 823,000 people, a loss of more than 10 percent. Crime rose by a third. As people and businesses fled, the city got dirtier, parks deteriorated and subways were scrawled with graffiti. The quality of life ebbed and financial disaster loomed; by 1975, the city had run out of money and had to turn to the state and, ultimately, the federal government, to avoid bankruptcy. It took New York two decades to get all those people back.
Now, in the wake of the pandemic, the city once again is facing the crisis it faced in the 1970s. Census figures from April 2020 showed a record population of 8.8 million people. But by July of last year, 550,000 residents had left, 6 percent of the population (though the true number may be lower if, as some believe, the 2020 census was inflated).
The same pattern is true for many other major American cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. Each is facing population declines or stagnation as quality-of-life and cost-of-living challenges push people out of the city, taking tax revenue and spending dollars with them.
In New York City, that essential ingredient of urban living — the quality of life — has tanked. Thirty percent of residents feel that life in New York City is good or excellent, down from half in 2017, according to a recent survey by the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission. Only about half of the population feels safe riding the subway during the day versus more than eight in 10 in 2017. Only one out of 10 residents feel the city is addressing their housing needs as rents have climbed by about 17 percent since the pandemic began.
The quality of life in New York City is directly connected to the city’s operating budget, and that is where the problems afflicting the city lie. Budgets for the agencies responsible for making life in the city enjoyable and fulfilling — education, safety, the environment, cleanliness, parks, culture, housing and transportation — have barely budged after rising by nearly 4 percent a year for much of this century, according to my analysis of the city’s budget data. As so many people have left, the city no longer has the tax revenue to spend as it once did on quality-of-life concerns. And so it faces a vicious cycle of decline rather than a virtuous cycle of growth essential for any city’s continued or renewed success.
The most important metric of a city’s health is population growth. A city is like any other product. It has customers. It has competitors. It has to be marketed. New York City is successful when more people choose it over other places to live.
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