The article “Making New York Smaller” by Roger Starr talks about how different ways to get New York out of the financial crisis in the 1970s. I hadn’t really read much about this before, and much of what was in the article wasn’t really anything I had read about either, so I found it very interesting and though provoking. Seeing that there was a financial crisis very recently, it’s interesting to think about if what he wrote still applies and his solution could still work today.

Starr says that New York can be divided into two cities that are responsible for producing New York’s wealth, the Economic and Political city. The Economic City is made up of the private and public enterprises that create goods or services people are willing to pay for. The Political City provides services for people such as criminal justice, elementary education, and fire protection. The Political City is partly funded by the Economic City by taxes and fees by vendors, but the Political City also produces wealth through the federal government. Starr’s distinction between the two cities and what they do is pretty interesting as I have never thought about or read about the city being separated in such a way, especially with the Political City because those services are things that I and probably most people don’t really think about since in this country, they are just services that city’s everywhere provide, as opposed to other countries where is might not be the case.

The two cities are intertwined, but from the article, it sounds like the Economic City is more important because it is the backbone. The Political City previously increased the local taxes on the Economic City when the cost of the services it provides increased, but in the 70s, it wasn’t possible with the Economic City not being able to provide enough jobs. Its like if the Economic City fails, the Political City would too, unless it gets enough money from the federal government, which doesn’t seem very likely. I think this can bee seen in other cities where the main industry and main source of wealth has fallen and the city can’t really survive, or at least in the same level it did before. The article mentions how New York’s exports lost their attraction and manufacturing shrunk to almost nothing, but I’m assuming that it wasn’t so bad because there are so many different industries and not just one large one with some smaller ones that most people are a part of.

The main argument in the article is the idea of planned shrinkage, which as Starr notes is not a popular idea. This is when there is a deliberate withdrawal of city services, to deal with decreasing tax revenue. This really just sounds unjust because the “normal” city services are what you expect in return for paying taxes. In addition, how would it be decided which neighborhoods would lose their services? How bad does a neighborhood have to be? Starr also says that the idea that the poor would be victims of the policy isn’t true, and the opposite is actually true. His reasoning for this just doesn’t make sense to me because he argues that the poor need the most government help, so it the government isn’t properly using its resources economically, it would hurt the poor the most, but wouldn’t just taking away government services including “normal” ones be worse since their neighborhoods wouldn’t get them at all?

Another thought I have is about after people do leave. The article says that consistent density through out the city is important. It’s better to have one full building than two half buildings. However, you could have many people leave from one neighborhood, and only some leave from another, but it’s not like you can just move those still in the mostly empty neighborhood to another. There could be the use of not providing city services but it might not necessarily work. I just don’t think planned shrinkage would be a good plan because it doesn’t hurt the people who need the most help and there are also so many different outcomes that  could happen that aren’t easily dealt with.

New York’s financial crisis that occurred after 1975 was due to the inability of the city government to maintain the city at a level the people were accustomed to. Roger Starr states that the maintenance was not possible, because the city’s input of wealth was not sufficient to maintain the standards of the people. However, after reading the goals on how to increase or acquire funds for the city, I think a major contribution to the problem is failure to acknowledge change, and the growing population within New York City.

Starr describes the problem by separating the problem into two cities: Economic City and Political City. I agree with him that the crisis was formed by the problems of the Political City, which as a result created problems in the Economic City. Starr explains that there is money involved in the Political City, and this money comes from the government. For instance, government funds for criminal justice and education. The national government was strict with how much money was given in the case of poverty and nonsocial programs, which made it difficult for New York to increase their wealth, even though they increased local taxes. Although it was difficult to attain funding from the national government, if New York’s government focused on the biggest problem of financial trouble, there might have been a way to avoid this crisis. For instance, problems in the economic sector began to arise when the city’s exports began to diminish. While exports were dwindling, the city began to increase more imports. If the city noticed that increasing imports would not increase the city’s wealth, maybe there could have been a relatively heavy tax on importing goods so that businesses would have to think twice about buying goods abroad.

I think that the city’s desire to stay the way it was contributed to the crisis. When the city was increasing imports, they did not do so out of necessity, but out of “hope for the future.” People of the city wanted to use the reputation to convince others that New York would stand on top in the future even though they were going through a bumpy road at that moment. Although this reputation holds some truth to it today, if there had been some slight changes to adjust the wealth of the city to match the amount that was incoming, maybe the crisis could have been avoided. Maybe the city could have changed the level of maintenance accordingly with how much the predicted wealth would be after proposals to increase wealth were put to action.

Population also played an important role to the crisis. Starr stated that to increase the wealth of the city, there needed to be more jobs so there would be less unemployed people and more people boosting the economy. During the crisis, employment dropped more than it had before, yet the population was growing. With a growing population up to 8 million, decreasing employment would only further deepen the crisis. Even so, there were only slight attempts to increase employment, which in the end did not do much to boost the economy. I think there should have been more efforts to create more jobs, especially since the population was not going to decrease anytime soon. More people without jobs would just mean more money needed from the government to help people out of poverty, which is due to unemployment.

I believe that this crisis would have happened even if the government provided more help to New York. New York, with its growing population, had refused to change, which led to its downfall. Even if New York decided to change just a bit, I think the local government could not have done enough to bring more wealth in. Without increasing or stable incoming wealth, New York would not be able to avoid the crisis it fell into.

As a student in New York, the sense of overpopulation is idiosyncratic to the city I so love. There seems to be a never-ending flow of people, noises, cars and Starbucks coffee shops. Quite honestly, I could not imagine New York City any other way. When reading Roger Starr’s “Making New York Smaller,” I was surprised by his planned shrinkage ideas to combat New York City’s impending “doomsday.”

Starr describes New York as having been divided into two cities: an Economic City and a Political City. It is important to note that this 1976 article was written during a time in which New York City was in economic limbo. At least 3.5 million new jobs were needed to help offset the growing 10% unemployment rate, but fewer than 3 million were actually provided. Loans made by foreign entities were defaulting and mortgages foreclosed. Significant numbers of people had moved from the city to the suburbs and the Federal Government was providing much help. This all led to a vicious cycle and many feared for the future of New York. But why was this all happening and what could be done?

Starr states that while the Political City was the cause of such turmoil, difficulties were shouldered by the Economic City, home to the businesses, workers, and residents of New York. Starr refers to “…gross underestimates of future New York costs and over estimates of future revenues…” as one of the key issues behind the crisis. This, coupled with the fundamental fact that the economy was rapidly shifting away from manufacturing, signified that times were changing but New York City could not seem to keep up. In turn, the crisis had caused people to step back and analyze the well being of New York—a city whose future once seemed so bright. The traditional remedy for such a situation was for the Political City to increase taxes, formulate a new economic development program and send appeals to Albany and Washington seeking aid. Less representation in Albany, coupled with a fundamental issue many people not taken into consideration meant that these old ways were useless.

One of Roger Starr’s most controversial suggestions was to welcome a shrinking population. Conversely, New York’s future prosperity was always pictured with a growing population. Many opposed the idea that a New York with 5 million people (as opposed to 8 million at the time) would still be a world city. Starr, however, seemed to stress quality over quantity. He also alluded to the need to attract semi-skilled workers as opposed to the unskilled laborers of the past. There was untapped potential in the tourist business, as well. But according to Starr, New York could not move forward if it did not accept the fact that the population was shrinking and that that could quite possibly be a good thing.

As I read, I realized two things: 1) if I were a New Yorker reading this article in 1976, I would have thought that New York would never find its way out of the slumps and 2) many parallels can be seen in today’s economic environment. Luckily, New York did, in fact, bounce back but we are again going through a very similar situation. Since 2008, unemployment rates have gone up, inflation has been on the rise, the overall quality of life is changing. Over the course of almost five years, the traditional methods of the government do not seem to be working. Although I am not sure how likely a drastic population decrease in New York City will be, I do know that something new and unconventional needs to be done in order to better accommodate our ever-changing society.

This reading really surprised me; I didn’t know that after world’s fair New York’s economic crisis was that serious. Many leading businesses were moving out of the city, and the creation of highways facilitates the outward moving trend. At the beginning, everything just seems to be completely helpless. The high interest rate and the bad city reputation all drove people away from New York City.

In 1963, when the city bond’s rate was downgraded to the “high risk”, which means that the city had to paid a huge interest rate for borrowing money to maintain itself. In order for the city to operate, it must borrow more and more moneys; therefore, New York City “was falling ever deeper into debit.” The two main reasons for the low rank of city’s bond was that there were huge amount of bonds needed to be sold, and the city’s reputation as a business center was falling apart.

One of the interesting things that I learned from this reading is that although all of other business units weren’t doing well, the media and news industry tended to grow in a large percentage. I can understand that New York City as one of the biggest broadcast city, media industry will definitely play an important role in the successes of other business. I think that during the economic crisis, not only people depended on the news and the media to get the information they need, many business and even the government units would use media to advertise and try to catch people’s attentions.

One of the bad things that media brought to people was that as the media continuously to report bad things about the city, people would lose faith about the city. With all those crimes and businesses going bankrupt reported in the media, people lose their confidences; and probably that’s why everything seems to be helpless. Potential investors would not put any money into the market, because they might think that the financial market in New York City was dangerous especially when all those leading firms were continuously moving out.

Eventually, groups like the Association for a Better New York helped to create a better image of New York City. Although, many criticized the group as operating for their own profit, I think that they still deserve the credit for what they did for the city. The biggest take away from this reading was that the city’s reputation could really affect its financial successes.

In the article, “Making New York Smaller,” Roger Starr argues that in order for New York City to escape the financial crisis and avoid “doomsday,” the city must accept the fact that its population is shrinking and plan accordingly. He begins the article by stating that at this point “doomsday” is inevitable and that whether it comes ahead of schedule or within the next 5 or 7 years, it will indeed occur. He then goes on to explain the causes of the economic crisis, along with initiatives that he states would lighten New York City’s “fiscal burdens.” Lastly, he provides a particular solution, that although controversial, would solve the crisis and allow New York City to once again prosper economically and thrive.

One thing that I found to be extremely interesting was how he explained the sources of revenue and expenses that the city incurs. He stated that in a sense the city is comprised of 2 cities, the economic city and the Political city. The Economic City includes all of the public and private enterprises that create goods and services in New York. The Economic City is the main source of the city’s wealth. Furthermore, it produces jobs for the city’s inhabitants and spreads the city’s wealth among its constituents. However, one problem that comes along with the Economic City is that recently its exports that it ships to foreigners have lost their attraction and in order to pay for the cost of its imports, New York City must rely on its reputation and persuade investors to lend them money. He goes on to explain that by underestimating costs and overestimating revenues, the city’s constituents were forced to default on their loans, increasing the burden placed on the part of New York City, the Political City.

On the other hand, the political city provides services that people require but for which they are unable or not willing to do so. Some examples that he cites are the education system and criminal justice. This component of the city also brings in revenue through taxes and funding from the federal government,  who provides money for families with dependent children, the disabled and the poorly housed. However, the city only gets back three quarters of the money that they spend through the services that they provide. He states that one problem with the Political City is that they are unable to meet the rising costs incurred through their programs and services with the limited amount of revenue that they receive. They don’t have a sufficient amount of revenue to provide enough jobs to the population. Their lack of revenue leads to economic decline and an increasing unemployment rate in New York City as they are unable to support the cities inhabitants, forcing people to move elsewhere for jobs.

While reading this article I noticed that New York City has changed drastically from 1976, the time that this article was written, until today. Firstly, over more than 35 years the number of people in the city has risen from 8 million to almost 20 million people, 2 and a half times the amount that there were in 1976. Back then, the city was unable to accommodate and provide for 8 million people and today it is the place that 20 million people call their home. Furthermore, in the article Starr mentions that New York has not fully tapped the tourist market, due to the fact that tourists don’t feel safe and comfortable in New York. Today, New York City is visited by millions of people from all over the globe. People from all different countries wish that one day they can visit New York, stand on the red stairs in Times Square and visit the top of the Empire State Building. I was amazed to see how far the city has grown in respect to tourism in a matter of 35 years. Lastly, he mentions that New York is no longer the “classiest address for a major corporate headquarters.” However, today many of the major Fortune 500 companies have offices and headquarters in New York. New York City has become the center of business and trade and companies all over the world desire to have offices in the city, where they can be in the center of all the action.

Although, Starr’s plan of shrinking the population due to the declining number of jobs and concentrating the city’s inhabitants in certain sections seemed to be plausible at the time to avoid as he calls it “doomsday,” I wonder if he could have ever envisioned New York City as it is today. Although his plan may have allowed New York City to escape the financial crisis that it was experiencing, it would have thrown away all of its potential for growth. By knocking down stretches of empty blocks and terminating the services provided in the area, he would have destroyed any hopes of future growth and allowing New York City to become what it is today. One question I have for him is if his plan was enacted, how would it allow for the city to grow in the future and once again thrive?

Roger Starr’s “Making New York Smaller” took a new approach to the city’s economic issues. This article began off with various fiscal and monetary policies, but then took a unique spiral into this concept of planned shrinkage. While this is definitely an interesting concept, I was surprised that Starr would even think that this was possible. Everyone has their own “doomsday” planned out in their head, and despite all the past events this city has gone through “doomsday” has yet to come, and that’s why I believe Starr’s ideas are far too radical.

One theory that I found very interesting was how Starr broke down the city into different cities; a political city and an economic city. There were two different sources of revenue and expenses, with the economic city including all of the public and private enterprises that create goods and services in the New York. The economic city was the main source of the city’s wealth and it also produced jobs for the citizens. The biggest issue with the economic city is the foreign imports and exports that mess up the cycle, causing foreign investors loosing interest in investing in the city. New York City underestimated costs and overestimated revenue in regards to this and the city’s constituents were forced to default on the loans causing major upheaval in the political city.

The political city is responsible in providing necessary services to the citizens such as the education and judicial system. Revenue in this sector comes from taxes and funding from the federal government to directly provide for families with dependent children, the disabled and the homeless. The issue is that the political city is unable to provide services that people require because of their failure to meet their rising costs of their programs and services due to the limited amount of revenue they receive.  Their lack of revenue with the economic decline leading to increasing unemployment leaves New Yorkers to leave the city so that they can move elsewhere for jobs.

One important thing to note is that Starr wrote this piece in 1976, and the so-called “doomsday” he was predicating never occurred. In the past 35 years the city’s population has gone up from 8 million to 20 million. Another thing is that in the 1976, prior to the Times Square Redevelopment Project, the tourism sector was barely tapped. In those days New York City was a dark and foreign place to visit, but now it is the tourism capital of America. People from all over the world come here to visit the Empire State Building, the red stairs at Times Square. Another thing Starr mentions that is no longer true is that New York is not the “classiest address for a major corporate headquarters,” considering the multitude of companies here.

Looking back at Starr’s plan of shrinking is obviously ridiculous to the New Yorker today. Today we face a similar economic recession, and if someone like Starr were to bring up his plan of urban shrinkage I am positive he would face the same amount if not more resistance now than he did in his time. I feel as if New York Cities has gone through many potential “doomsday,” but this city has always further developed and grown, and that is why Starr’s concept of pulling away from the city is not the right course of action. I am sure he would have never guessed how much the city has improved and grown since 1976, and perhaps even he would have changed his mind for the right course of action. I think it would be interesting to look at what other radical plans are out there right now, which don’t help us plan for the future.