When I was reading Starr’s NY Times article, “Making New York Smaller” I couldn’t help but think that this guy writes like a politician. After a quick google of his name I discovered that he was in fact New York’s housing administrator before he began writing for the times and in fact my hypothesis was correct. The way I happened upon this conclusion is the manner in which he discussed the solution to New York City’s financial crisis and it is quite noticeable how he puts a political motive in his writing.
The first thing Starr says about New York is that it can be divided into two different types of cities, a political city and an economic city, this is the first thing he said which led me to my hypothesis. By saying that New York is two different types of cities that coexist in order to form one type of city in itself sounds very much like a bureaucracy. In other words, he says that there’s an Economic city is the city which produces and sells all the goods, while there is the political city whose job is to provide the city with social services such as a fire department and public education. Furthermore, if one were to look at what each of these cities represent they would see how he truly shows his political nature. The political city is clearly a representation of the NYC government while the economic city is more of a representation of the people of the city who make the money and pay taxes. Well, this is a very political point of view and in fact an un-American point of view as one of the main principles of the American government is that it is a government of the people for the people, not a city which stands on its own.
The second thing which led me to my assumption of Starr having a political motive in all this is the way he leads up to his introduction of the shrinking city solution. Starr first brings up ways in which New York City could try and get out of the financial crisis firstly by way of increasing taxes and secondly by way of appealing to Washington and Albany for more money. Then he introduces a third method, his method. However, if one notices the wording, when he was introducing the first two methods of trying to get the city out of the financial crisis, he says it in a manner of exclusion where the government should make tax programs or appeal to Albany, in a way he makes it seem far away. But, when he introduces his idea or the third method he does so by using the word ‘we’, he says, “We could simply accept the fact that the city’s population is going to shrink, and we could cut back on city services accordingly.” By using the word ‘we’ he’s trying to include the reader and make it feel like they are a part of it so that they’ll be more likely to agree with him and follow his ideas and this in a way seemed like a move that a politician would use.
The third thing he mentions which helped me develop my hypothesis was his mention about how two communities picketed to not let him speak at the Regional Plan Association meetings at the New York Hilton. Now no average news reporter is going to be invited to speak at something that sounds so important and if they are no one is really going to care. But, Starr had not one, but two communities (the African-American community as well as the Puerto Rican community) unhappy with him. This led me to believe that the guy writing this article is not your average journalist and must have some type of background.
All in all, I found Starr to be sport a political motive in his writing. I do not necessarily know if he wrote this before or after he became New Yorks Housing Administrator, and in fact if this proves anything, it’s that he knows quite a bit about how the New York City Government works and about its politics. But, just because someone knows about politics, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they should write in a political manner.
