TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091790/0917108.000

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COVER STORIES

The Decline Of New York


A surge of brutal killings has shaken the Big Apple to its core.
Frightened residents now wonder if Gotham's treasures are
worth the hassle -- and the risk.

By JOELLE ATTINGER/NEW YORK -- Reported by Mary Cronin, Stephen
Pomper and Janice C. Simpson/New York


    If, as Lewis Mumford wrote, cities were created as "a means
of bringing heaven down to earth" and "a symbol of the
possible," New York is the epitome of those dreams. No other
city's skyline thrusts so aggressively toward the heavens,
pulling down the clouds like a monarch shrugging into a cloak.
No other city's history so embodies the idea of innovation and
achievement in such a dazzling range of human endeavors. "There
is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride
and exultancy," novelist Thomas Wolfe rhapsodized in 1935. "It
lays its hand upon a man's bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy;
he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never
die."

    That is why New York was for more than two centuries -- and
still is -- a beacon for the best, brightest and bravest people
from all over the U.S. and all around the world. They come to
test themselves against the toughest competition, to make a
buck, to reinvent lives that seem stale in any other setting.
As the song that has become the city's unofficial anthem puts
it, "If I can make it there, I'd make it anywhere."

    In virtually every category, New York has the best, the
biggest, the most -- except for civility, of which it has the
least. With a flood of new arrivals from Europe, the Soviet
Union and the Third World, New York's population has rebounded
from its 1980 low of 7 million to an estimated 8 million, more
than twice as many as runner-up Los Angeles. Washington may be
the home of Congress and the President, but New York is the
financial capital of the world. Even with the rise of Japan and
Germany, the New York Stock Exchange remains the world's most
prestigious financial market, on which stocks worth trillions
of dollars are traded.

    In culture too, New York remains a pacesetter. Other cities
would be proud to have one world-class performing troupe. New
York has dozens, including the Metropolitan Opera, the New York
Philharmonic, the American Ballet Theater, the Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater, and the Manhattan Theater Club. As a
showcase for theater, Broadway has few rivals -- unless they
are the city's own off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway
productions. Its collection of museums is a gallery in itself.

    But just as the sheer size of New York's population makes
possible a dazzling smorgasbord of urban delights, it also
magnifies a myriad of social ills. Only about 1 of every 100
New Yorkers is homeless, but that adds up to 90,000 people
huddling in shelters or eking out a life of not-so-quiet
desperation on the street. A mere 1 in 300 New Yorkers may be
a victim of AIDS, but that totals 27,000 people, a staggering
19% of all confirmed cases in the U.S. Says Paul Grogan,
president of the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a nonprofit
housing-development organization: "New York is the same as
every place -- only more so."

    Until recently, the negative aspects of New York living were
more than compensated by the exhilaration of simply being
there. As architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable says, "When
it is good, New York is very, very good. Which is why New
Yorkers put up with so much that is bad." Over the decades,
Gothamites have evolved a hard-boiled, calculating approach to
life that enables them to enjoy the city's manifold pleasures
while minimizing its most egregious hassles. Says Brigette
Moore, 19, a college student from Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay
section: "I wouldn't have wanted to grow up in any other city.
I think people in other parts of the country are more limited.
In New York you have the privilege to be anything you want."

    But that balance has now begun to shift. Reason: a surge of
drugs and violent crime that government officials seem utterly
unable to combat. Eight other major cities have higher homicide
rates, but New York's carnage dwarfs theirs in absolute terms.
Last year 1,905 people were murdered in New York, more than
twice as many as in Los Angeles. In the first five months of
this year, 888 homicides were committed, setting a pace that
will result in a new record if it goes unchecked.

    The victims have been of all races, all classes, all ages.
This summer, in one eight-day period, four children were killed
by stray gunshots as they played on the sidewalks, toddled in
their grandmother's kitchens or slept soundly in their own
beds. Six others have been wounded since late June. So many
have died that a new slang term has been coined to describe
them: "mushrooms," as vulnerable as tiny plants that spring up
underfoot.

    The city was still absorbing those horrors two weeks ago
when Sean Healy, a prosecutor in the Bronx district attorney's
office, was cut down by a hail of gunfire as he selected a
package of doughnuts from the shelf of a neighborhood grocery.
That same day Vander Beatty, a former political power in
Brooklyn attempting a comeback by running for district leader,
was shot to death in his campaign headquarters. The prime
suspect, according to police, was a longtime friend who was
allegedly angry over the manner in which a lawyer who had been
recommended by Beatty had handled his alimony case.

    Then last week came the murder of 22-year-old Brian Watkins,
an avid tennis buff from Provo, Utah, on a subway platform in
midtown Manhattan. Over the years, his family frequently made
a pilgrimage to watch the U.S. Open tennis tournament in
Queens. En route to dinner at Tavern on the Green, a popular
tourist attraction, the family was attacked by a group of eight
black and Hispanic youths. After one of the gang cut open his
father's pocket to get at his money and punched his mother in
the face, Brian jumped to his parents' defense. He was stabbed
with a four-inch butterfly knife and died 40 minutes later at
St. Vincent's Hospital.

    The shock of Watkins' death was intensified by the venality
of its alleged motive. According to police, the suspects are
members of F.T.S. (an abbreviated obscenity), a Queens youth
gang that requires its members to commit a mugging as an
initiation rite. They were reportedly trying to raise cash to
finance an evening of frolicking at Roseland, a nearby dance
hall, where six suspects were arrested. Two others were rounded
up later.

    Like the brutal rape of the Central Park jogger and the
murder of Yusuf Hawkins in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn
last year, Watkins' death quickly assumed a larger symbolic
meaning. Outside the city it confirmed what most Americans
already believed: New York is an exciting but dangerous place.
Among New Yorkers it reinforced the spreading conviction that
the city has spun out of control. A growing sense of
vulnerability has been deepened by the belief that deadly
violence, once mostly confined to crime-ridden ghetto
neighborhoods that the police wrote off as free-fire zones, is
now lashing out randomly at anyone, anytime, even in areas once
considered relatively safe.

    New Yorkers were quick to notice that the Watkins family
were attacked even though they were traveling in a group of
five, including three men. But such a precaution did not
prevent them -- or thousands of city residents -- from being
victimized. "Crime is tearing at the vitals of this city and
has completely altered ordinary life," says Thomas Reppetto,
president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a private watchdog
group. "Worst of all, it is destroying the morale of our
citizens."

    The looming question in many minds was what, if anything,
people could do to protect themselves when children were no
longer safe in their beds. "New Yorkers can put up with dirty
streets, poor schools and broken subways," warns Mitchell Moss,
director of the urban research center at New York University.
"But New Yorkers cannot take uncertainty -- risks, yes, but not
uncertainty."

    At times the city has seemed so consumed with crime that it
was incapable of thinking about anything else. Nursery-school
teachers in some of the city's tougher neighborhoods train
children barely old enough to talk to hit the floor at the
sound of gunshots. They call them "firecrackers" and reward the
swift with a lollipop.

    What has most dismayed many New Yorkers is the tepid
response of the city's leaders to the surge of mayhem. Like
everyone else in New York, Mayor David Dinkins and his
handpicked police commissioner, Lee Brown, seem at a loss for
remedies to the worst crime wave to hit the city in a decade.
"New York is in desperate need of leadership," says Moss, "and
it simply isn't there." A TIME/CNN poll of New Yorkers taken
during this summer's rash of killings showed that only 47%
approved of Dinkins' performance, and an equal number believed
he is no different or worse than his abrasive predecessor,
Edward I. Koch.

    New York's plunge into chaos cannot be blamed on Dinkins,
who has been in office for only nine months. In fact, he has
inherited the whirlwind sown by decades of benign neglect,
misplaced priorities and outright incompetence at every level
of government. If during the city's close brush with bankruptcy
during the 1970s Gerald Ford was willing to let New York drop
dead, the Reagan Administration seemed eager to bury it. Since
1980, cutbacks in federal aid have cost New York billions, with
funds for subsidized housing alone dropping $16 billion.
Despite a series of state and local levies that now place New
Yorkers among the most heavily taxed citizens in the nation,
the city has never recovered from those setbacks.

    Most brutally hit have been basic social services. Even with
the addition of 1,058 new police officers in October, the force
will still be 14% smaller than its 1975 level of 31,683.
Meanwhile crime, fueled by the drug epidemic, has jumped 25%.
Since 1987, the number of street sweepers has been slashed from
1,400 to 300, trash collections in midtown Manhattan have been
reduced by a third, and what used to be daily rounds in the
outer boroughs have been reduced to twice a week. Epidemics of
AIDS, tuberculosis and syphilis have pushed the health-care
system to the breaking point. As many New Yorkers are waiting
for public housing as there are existing units, leading
occupants to double or triple up in a frantic bid for shelter.
"The chickens have come home to roost," says Madeline Lee,
executive director of the New York Foundation, which supports
community projects for the disadvantaged, "and New York doesn't
let anyone escape from the reality of that."

    That reality includes an infrastructure so dilapidated that
the very streets seem to be rising up in rebellion. A year ago,
a series of exploding steam pipes spewed carcinogenic asbestos
into apartment houses in Manhattan. When some residents moved
back into their homes after a protracted cleanup, objects of
value had been stolen.

    During the roaring 1980s, it appeared that New York might
slip by. High finance and a booming real estate market
transported New York to a paroxysm of unbridled capitalism,
with all its attendant glitz and excess. At the height of the
bull market, 60,000 new jobs were being created annually,
luring droves of hyperambitious baby boomers to the canyons of
Wall Street and midtown Manhattan. Nicknamed "the Erector set,"
a stable of real estate developers transformed the cityscape,
throwing up 50 million sq. ft. of glistening office monoliths
within Manhattan alone. New fortunes upended the city's social
lineage, shoving Rockefeller and Astor aside for Trump,
Steinberg and Kravis. The new barons redefined wealth beyond
Jay Gatsby's wildest dreams, ensconcing themselves in palatial
aeries groaning with old masters and nouveau exorbitance.

    But behind the blinding glitter of the new
multimillionaires, the city was failing the bulk of its
citizens. Even the basic rudiments of civil behavior seemed to
evaporate along with the glitter of the boom times. Every day
155,000 subway riders jump the turnstiles, denying the
cash-strapped mass transit system at least $65 million
annually. The streets have become public rest rooms for both
people and animals, even though failure to clean up after a pet
dog carries fines of up to $100. What was once the bustle of
a hyperkinetic city has become a demented frenzy.

    Skyrocketing real estate prices (a one-room apartment that
rents for $800 a month is considered a bargain) have driven
middle-class families out of Manhattan and are threatening the
creative enterprises that make the island a cultural oasis.
Twenty years ago, about 50 or 60 new productions opened on
Broadway each year. Today soaring costs have driven the price
of an orchestra seat to $60, and a healthy season yields no
more than 35 new shows, only 12 of which are deemed successes.
In dance alone, New York lost 55 world-class studios in the
past four years. Others, including Martha Graham Dance, are
considering following the example of the Joffrey Ballet by
establishing second and third homes in other cities. That means
a shorter season in New York. "This is the most expensive,
difficult and competitive city for arts organizations," says
David Resnicow, president of the Arts and Communications
Counselors, which arranges sponsorships for corporations and
cultural institutions. "You don't have to be in New York to make
it."

    The daily litany of problems seems all the starker now
because of the feverish boosterism that characterized Koch's
three terms as mayor. The 65-year-old Democrat lived and
breathed New York, taking the pulse of the city through his
own. "How'm I doin'?" was his constant question as he flitted
from fire to shooting to gala to press conference. For much of
his 12-year tenure, the answer was "O.K." But rampant
corruption within his administration and the widening economic
and racial fissures in the city ultimately soured New Yorkers
on their tireless but tiresome mayor.

    Last November New Yorkers turned to Dinkins in the hope that
the cautious and gentle veteran clubhouse politician would heal
the rifts among them and offer a modicum of racial peace. "A
Gorgeous Mosaic" became the 63-year-old grandfather's metaphor
for his divided city, and he pulled together an ethnically
diverse electorate to become New York's first black mayor by
a narrow margin. Dinkins has named more minorities to top-level
staff positions than any mayor before him and has drawn on a
national pool of talent to fill posts in his administration.
With little fanfare, the silver-haired insider fashioned a
slash-and-tax $28 billion budget that met with grudging approval
from unions and business leaders alike.

    But the battle for survival is being fought on the sidewalks
of New York, not in the ledger books. And so far, Dinkins'
lackluster performance has strengthened the unsettling sense
that he is simply not up to his job. In the war against crime,
Dinkins' initiatives have been piecemeal and halting, ranging
from a stillborn gun-amnesty program (only 35 illegal firearms
have been turned in) to the hiring of less than a fourth of the
additional 5,000 officers that police commissioner Brown
contends are needed to win back the streets.

    Part of the mayor's problem is style. Unlike the prickly
Koch, Dinkins rarely raises his voice and disdains the
finger-in-your-chest aggressiveness that has characterized New
York politicians since the days of Tammany Hall. He is far more
comfortable in quiet back-room negotiations than in public
confrontations with unhappy constituents. His finest hour may
have been the lavish hero's welcome the city provided in June
for South African leader Nelson Mandela, for whom New York's
warring ethnic groups seemed to put aside their differences
during a three-day celebration of racial harmony.

    A more serious drawback is Dinkins' reluctance to attack
problems in a direct and forceful way. Since January, for
example, the Flatbush section of Brooklyn has been roiled by
a black boycott of two Korean grocery stores that began after
a Haitian woman accused the Koreans of assaulting her in an
argument over a dollar's worth of fruit. The shopowners
obtained a civil court injunction ordering the protesters to
remain at least 50 ft. away from the shops' entrances, but
Dinkins has not ordered the police to enforce it. Instead, he
appointed a commission to review his handling of the affair.
Not surprisingly, the report it issued two weeks ago praised
the mayor's conduct and lambasted Brooklyn district attorney
Charles Hynes for not vigorously pushing the investigation and
prosecution of the Haitian woman's original complaint.

    Despite the mounting unease about his leadership, Dinkins
remains unfazed. His response last week to demands that he
publicly condemn the Watkins murder was characteristically
orotund. Quoth the mayor: "I say that if two nations are in
dispute and one diplomat says to the representative of another
government, `Her Majesty's government is exceedingly
distressed,' everybody knows that means we're mad as hell. Now,
however, I'm prepared to say I'm mad as hell, not simply `We're
exceedingly distressed.'"

    Even so, Dinkins' remark was a significant shift from his
earlier pronouncements. At times the mayor has attempted to
downplay the crime wave as a public relations problem: "This
administration is doing all it can to win back our streets.
Some of it has been to address the image of the city. People
need to feel secure, and [a bad image] adversely impacts
business and tourism." He has also portrayed the outbreak as
a local manifestation of a national crisis beyond his control:
"If the problems of drugs and crime were only in New York, then
you could ask, What is it that you folks are doing wrong? But
all of our urban centers are afflicted similarly. The fact that
it's happening somewhere else doesn't mean that I don't have
a problem to address. But the fact that the problem is regional
or nationwide does say that the Federal Government should
assist in addressing it." Says Dinkins: "You have to have
credibility. People have to have faith in you."

    These days faith is in short supply. So is money.
Megadeveloper Lew Rudin, who heads a corporate cheerleading
organization, Association for a Better New York, estimates it
would take $5 trillion to bring his city back up to par.
Although its annual budget is larger than that of all but two
states, New York City is in a financial straitjacket, and the
nation's economic downturn, more harshly reflected in the
Northeast than elsewhere, offers little hope for future relief.
Says financier Felix Rohatyn, who devised the plan that saved
New York from bankruptcy 15 years ago: "I just don't see the
light at the end of the tunnel. However, we cannot turn our
back on the city now." Facing a $1.8 billion shortfall, the
Dinkins administration has been forced to raise taxes $800
million and cut city services more than $200 million.

    Such cutbacks mean that for average New Yorkers the struggle
to attain what other Americans take for granted will become
even more grueling. The challenge is especially tough for
families with children. New York public schools are burdened
with educating 940,000 students, representing 150 countries and
speaking more than 100 languages. Less than half read at or
above grade level, 1 out of 3 drop out before their senior
year, and those who do stay in school often take five to seven
years to graduate from high school. The system itself is rife
with troubles. Almost a third of the city's 32 local school
boards are under investigation for corruption, building
maintenance has chalked up a $500 million backlog, and a basic
in-school service like nursing care has been slashed 86%. An
impossible caseload of 1,000 high school students for every
guidance counselor makes a mockery of the profession.

    Other New Yorkers are waging private wars for safe and
affordable housing. Willie Olmo, an electronics technician who
supports his wife Mabel and five daughters on a salary of
$30,000, had nowhere  to go last year when the landlord
abandoned the apartment building in which the family lived.
When police declined to drive away crack users who had set up
a drug den in the building's basement, Olmo picked up a
baseball bat and chased them out himself. He then bought
walkie-talkies with his own money and started a tenants' patrol,
which has since expanded into a neighborhood watch committee.
Next he persuaded his neighbors to lease the building from the
city and manage it themselves. "We've tried to improve the
neighborhood so we could live here," says Mabel. "Rents
everywhere else are too high."

    For those who can afford it, the increasingly attractive
choice is to leave New York behind. According to the Household
Goods Carriers' Bureau, which tracks the business of the city's
six largest moving companies, 12,000 more customers moved out
over the past two years than moved in. For the first time in
this century, fear of crime is the main catalyst for this
burgeoning exodus. "People may want to be here," says Richard
Anderson, head of New York's Regional Plan Association, "but
the things that drive them away are bubbling to the surface."
Says Laura Ziman, a native New Yorker who recently fled to
upstate New York with her husband and their two toddlers: "I
love the city, but it's just becoming unlivable."

    So far the exodus from New York is no more than a trickle.
But it could become a flood if the fear of crime begins to
overshadow the city's unique combination of pizazz and
opportunity. Unchecked violence has already dulled the luster
of the Big Apple. The daunting task before its leaders is to
prevent it from rotting to the core.