New York, New York, New York (The Book)

 

Once, when asked to name his three favorite American cities, Willian "Holly" Whyte (1917-1999) answered "New York, New York, New York." Thus, the inspiration for the title of Thomas Dyja's delightful chronology of four decades of New York City - surviving and thriving through its four R's (Renaissance, Reconsideration, Reformation, Reimagination) - New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation (Simon and Schuster, 2021).

Dija begins his story at Tavern-on-the-Green on Valentine's Day 1978, the first "I Love New York Day," when the city was just beginning to recover from its period of drastic decline from the "workers' paradise," my generation had grown up in - a city " with its own free university, hospitals, low transit fares, and lots of public housing  that balanced the mansions along Fifth Avenue." In place of the city's old social contract, the city had become dysfunctional, more surviving than thriving. Dija tells the story of how, in the aftermath of that crisis, mayors from Koch to De Blasio and countless other individual New Yorkers combined to make New York so much better - but also, in some ways, worse.

Dija identifies seven themes through the story: "how City Hall made an ungovernable city governable; how the once Great Conversation of New York culture broke apart; how AIDS transformed Gay New York and the city as a whole; how the built landscape and public space were fundamental to new growth and community while also creating inequality and new forms of control; how millions of immigrants stabilized and globalized the city even as its People of Color confronted diminished power, dislocation, and brutality; the impact of technology on nearly every aspect of life in New York; and finally, the rise of Brooklyn as an expansion fo the city's consciousness of itself."

As a New York native and lover of the city's public parks, I particularly appreciated his treatment of the recovery of the city as a public space, starting with its amazing network of public parks, which had become "a textbook example of  the 'Tragedy of the Commons' wherein a public good is destroyed because every individual takes advantage of it with no thought of the greater good." Another important moment in the recovery of the city as a public space was the historic State Health Law 1310, which went into effect on August 1,1978, which for the first time required citizens "to pick up after their dogs" and so "admit their own civic responsibilities."

Inevitably, the book recounts the rise of two New Yorkers who were subsequently inflicted on the country as a whole, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.. "Of all the things [Mayor] Abe Beame can be blamed for," he writes, "Donald J. Trump is by far the worst." As for the politically ambitious Giuliani, Dija observes how Giuliani's "Catholic righteousness made him look above politics. Which was a very good thing when you wanted to enter politics." It was in the Mayor Giuliani years, Dija notes, that "New Yorkers suddenly noticed changes that had bene in the works for years." Unfortunately, that was also the period that, in the words of former UDC head Richard Kahan, we redefined "our sense of community in the narrowest possible manner."

Then, came September 11, which Dija recalls vividly and well, as so many of us who were New Yorkers at the time still do. He writes of "the silence of those empty, blasted streets" and "memories shoved behind a door that never fully closes," and of how "the full grief of past decades was released." Dija sees 9/11 as "the final vindication of people like Holly white, Jane jacobs, and Gordon Davis who believed that New Yorkers wanted to trust each other and did; that they had a natural inclination to live reasonably and civilly with each other." Then, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Giuliani was succeeded by another nominal Republican, Michael Bloomberg, of whom ex-Mayor Koch said, "he's changed the climate of the city so that people are no longer frightened of the mayor." Amazingly, Dija continues the story from Bloomberg to DeBlasio, through the financial crisis and the bailouts to Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy to Trump's election and the pandemic.

Through it all, the lesson to take away is that "New York City will not die ... because the world needs it too much, because New Yorkers want it too much. The density and the constant dance of shared space; the speed and convenience; arts, commerce, and conviviality all tied together; that's always been the ultimate purpose of cities - to facilitate exchange between human beings." 

Any New Yorker would do well to read this book, both for the past memories it recalls, the present problems it describes, and the future hopes it offers in its prescriptions for responding to today's challenges.