Top Ten Brooklyn Stories of Last Decade?
Rich Calder of The Post takes a stab at defining the ten biggest Brooklyn stories of the last decade. It seems like a decent list to us, though we would have put the rezonings of Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg higher on the list. What about you? What’s missing or shouldn’t have made the cut? 1….
Rich Calder of The Post takes a stab at defining the ten biggest Brooklyn stories of the last decade. It seems like a decent list to us, though we would have put the rezonings of Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg higher on the list. What about you? What’s missing or shouldn’t have made the cut?
1. Atlantic Yards
2. The Fight (Sitt vs. Bloomberg) for Coney Island’s Future
3. Cyclones Arrive at Keyspan Park
4. Condos Added to Brooklyn Bridge Park Plan
5. Astroland Closes
6. Rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn and Williamsburg
7. Marty Markowitz Becomes Borough President
8. Clarence Norman Busted for Selling Judgeships
9. Ikea Comes to Red Hook
10. Opening of Brooklyn Cruise Terminal
Calder’s Honorable Mentions on the jump…
Brooklyn’s Top 10 Stories of the Decade [NY Post]
Honorable mention:
– Feds call for Superfund designation of Gowanus Canal;
– Jehovah Witnesses begin selling properties in Heights and DUMBO;
– Walentas continues transformation of DUMBO;
– Hasids and Hipsters fight over bike lanes in W’burg.
Photo by loop_oh
Montrose Morris, I would like to hear more about the specific policies Dinkins implemented that helped reduce crime. I moved to NYC during his administration, and due to his policy of not arresting street dealers, my neighborhood (Manhattan Valley) was plagued with drug dealers (one per corner plus the middle of the block) and the nights were filled with gunfire. My East Harlem middle school students were routinely caught in crossfire, and my classroom had bullet holes in the windows.
While Giuliani was all you said, his policies — particularly his anti-gun policies and statistics-driven policing — dramatically reduced street crime in NYC, making it safer for everybody, most especially people living in poorer neighborhoods. He also got rid of the mob in carting and fish-mongering. I don’t like him, but his blunt-force tactics were necessary at the time.
Rob – I truly dont see how that whining can be attributed to a “suburban mindset” -(not to defend suburbanites) but that kind of whining strikes me much more as an (upper class) urban phenomenon.
Montrose and benson,
Big debate on this very topic a number of months back, with references to graphs, charts and everything.
Here is my view:
1. From the 1990 peak, year 1 of Dinkins, late middle of crack epidemic, crime started dropping fairly rapidly. Dinkins’ moves were tons of new cops — hiring and civilianizing the back office to put more on the street, community policing. The graphs show that this is where the drop began and it was steep in the final two years of DD. The “benson” side of this debate is statistically wrong to discount this part of the story. The “montrose” side overreaches in assuming continuation of this strategy without more would have achieved the same results over the same time. We just don’t know.
2. During the Giuliani era, crime continues to drop precipitously throughout both terms. Just as steep but not much steeper than years 3-4 of DD. Giuliani’s moves were comstat (computer mapping of crime clusters and other sophisticated uses of data), going after the quality of life stuff (squeegee men, turnstile jumpers and graffitti), the constitutionaly-challenged stops and frisks without probable cause, and talking tough. It’s the tone and attitude that people remember, on both sides of the debate. MM and benson, I bet you would disagree on the importance and effect of tone, but I think that even when Dinkins was effective, few people thought he was serious enough about it. The liberal side of this is that this could all have been done with a civil tone and without pushing the constitutional envelope, which did a fair amount of civic harm even as the crime drop did good, and that much fo this is due to national trends. The conservative side is that the tone was important and that, as the trend continued, it became ahrder and harder to sustain (gravitation to the mean and all that) and Giuliani deserves credit for pushing and sustaining the trend.
3. Crime also dropped precipitously nationally, but not as fast in NYC. Dinkins’ and Giuliani’s strategies and tactics did not singlehandedly bring down crime, but they enhanced a national trend.
4. Crime continued to drop under Bloomie, even after the economy turned and even after the nationwide drop bottomed out. He continued comstat, low-keyed the tough talk. I’d like to think that some of the continued drop in the murder rate is due to Bloomie’s aggressive effort nationally on guns — getting rogue dealers to clean up their act, etc. But I don’t know — haven’t seen data. He’s proof, I think, that techniques developed under both previous mayors are effective and that projecting competence is enough, sherriff-style swagger is not necessary.
Anyway, that’s my take on what history is likely to show and where the debates will lie.
“the lowering of the crime rate started before the end of the Dinkins administration,”
Sort of a fallacy – the crime rate (using homicide rate cause it is most accurate) went up sharply during the early dinkins years, (18% in 1990) and then fell slightly in last three years (4%, 7%, and 2% in 91-93) but rate was still UP under Dinkins (2%)
By comparison in Guiliani’s first term the homicide rate fell by 20%, 24%, 16% and 21%
CLEARLY there was a difference that occurred WITH GUILIANI, and as far as I am concerned grasping on to Dinkins tiny declines (from an earlier increase) and then attributing the crime decline to him is revisionist history of the worst kind.
when i lived in harlem i did not see any gentrification at ALL. it was a total disgusting cesspool. and i liked it that way 🙂 but it wasnt healthy for me or my dog, so i had to move out.
*rob*
middle class people just came BACK to brooklyn. it used to be a regular place to live for regular people. it was the bad times and the freeways that sent people packing.
Sparfucile;
You are correct that gentrification has been going on for more than a decade. However, I would argue that prior to the previous decade, it was widely viewed as a NON-mainstream social development. For example, even though the prime portions of Park Slope were genetrified decades ago, there was little new construction in the area. Only in the past decade have we seen the widespread construction of new middle-class housing. Moreover, the movement of the middle class in the past decade has been into areas with previously-low-quality housing stock (places like WB and Greenwood Heights).
Put another way, the middle class acceptance has reached critical mass the past decade. As FSRG said above, it is now self-sustaining.
As to Harlem, as the Times article notes, it’s been changing for years. Spanish Harlem’s rise in population has contributed much more to the rise in population of non-black folks more than anything else. While there are certainly more white folks moving into Harlem, they are hardly becoming the majority, which is what the article seems to imply, but really doesn’t. Harlem is still, by and large, a black community, and will remain so for the foreseeable future for a lot of reasons, both good and not so good. The gentrifying positive elements that are brought with higher income Harlemites, which include an awful lot of well off black folks, have benefits to the entier community. I can’t find too many people I know in Harlem who can argue that. I think Harlem will still be Harlem because people will make sure of that. Bensonhurst is still seen as a predominantly Italian-American community for many of the same reasons, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either.
Rob’s 10:34 = Quote of the Decade