Roger Starr’s “Making New York Smaller” discusses various methods of saving New York from the financial crisis of the 1970s. Beforehand, Starr explains how the city is fiscally divided into the Economic City and the Political City. I really liked this description of the city, for I’d never thought to separate it as such. As I understand it, these two entities must balance each other out. In essence, the revenue earned in the Economic City becomes the basis for the taxes collected from the Political City, so there’d be an issue if either of them fell behind. When it came to the financial crisis, the Economic City was lagging, so the Political City had to overcompensate to maintain the balance. This led me to question whether or not NYC could survive solely on the Political City. If the economy ever got so bad that there was basically no revenue, could we get by on federal funding? If this balanced system were to fail, do we have any sort of backup plan?

It is mentioned in the article that New York used to be a center for manufacturing and that it was suffering financially because it was no longer that. While the shift occurred for other reasons, something that caught my attention was that New Yorkers didn’t want to think of their city as a factory town. I personally never thought New York had that image to begin with and that it was always a tourist attraction, but it seems that tourism was not always what it is today. Apparently, tourism was low at the time that the article was written. I’m not sure if that’s a result of the financial crisis or if New York just didn’t have as much to offer as it does now. Still, I agree with the consensus that New York should be more than a factory town. Starr implied that the decline in manufacturing brought financial troubles, but I’m glad that nobody pushed for the return of factories. If that had happened, the NYC that I grew up in might have been monumentally different.

One of Starr’s main arguments was the concept of planned shrinkage. He believed that the city’s population would decline as the number of jobs declined and that the city government should plan accordingly. However, I don’t really see how he could anticipate such a drastic change in the population. Even with unemployment at an all-time high, there’s no guarantee that people would leave. If they did, it probably wouldn’t be until a few years later anyway. If it were me, I’d probably just muddle through it until the city found a way to get out of that rut. I wouldn’t want to uproot my entire life just because the economy was temporarily unstable. Who said the same thing wouldn’t happen in another place too? I don’t think Starr was being very realistic when it came to his contingency plan. He proposed federal assistance in this process, but I don’t think that’s plausible in such magnitudes.

There really wasn’t a specific way to plan for a smaller population either. If a significant number of people did move away, which places would still be considered alive? There wouldn’t be enough funding to support the entire city, so only certain places would receive maintenance while others became desolate. That alone sounds bad, but how would you get people to move into these designated areas? If an entire building is vacated with the exception of one resident, it wouldn’t be fair to make him/her move and there’d probably a lot of resistance too. Perhaps that area would have been a good place to maintain too, so it would be a waste to shut it down. How would any of this be decided?

Towards the end of the article, Starr almost refutes his entire plan by saying that the Department of City Planning could formulate multiple plans based on possible future populations. If they were to do that, there is really no point in banking on the hope that the population would decrease. It could fluctuate easily based on so many factors, so I think all of this planning would have been useless. Starr shouldn’t have been focusing on coming up with possible outcomes; he needed to find a way out of the financial crisis. That means devising a plan to implement right away, not hypothesize how to handle a situation that could basically go in any direction. All the time people spent criticizing his idea of planned shrinkage (and all the time Starr took to defend it) could have gone to a better and more productive cause, which would have been ending the crisis instead of figuring out how to deal with its supposed aftereffects.

In the chapter, I found it a surprise how New York City’s ratings in the 1970s were so poor. One of the reasons stated by Harries Brenton was because the city had “bad publicity…because of crime, strike, and welfare, etc.” Although this may be true, I find the comment arguable. A city would statistically have more crime and welfare because there are more people. In addition, a city would have more strikes because there are more jobs. I find this particular reason made by Brenton for the low rating of New York more of a correlation than causation.

What also shocked me was the fact that the highways did the opposite of what was thought to happen. Instead of bringing commuters to the city to work, the companies left the city to set up in the suburbs. I was a bit unclear why this would happen, besides the fact that taxes are lower. Perhaps it is because from what I see now, there are more businesses in the city than in the suburbs (specifically the location of large companies). I always thought being in the city would be ideal because it is connected closer to other businesses, and if people from other countries want to work with a company, being in the city is easier and more convenient. I would rather go to London than Purbeck (a small, not well-known city in England).

In addition, it is interesting that once these businesses leave, the city declines. This reminds me of the phrase “Corporate America” and how business really affects and influences life. Are we the only country that has cities that are only sustainable if there are businesses? I can think of examples of Detroit and Philadelphia where they used to have a lot of business because of the manufacturing industry; however, once society moved towards service industry, these places lost work and now the cities have low standard of living. There must be a solution to this problem.

I enjoyed how this reading has a marketing-style view on how New York City was “rebranded.” The ABNY used the “power breakfast” which at first was not too successful and cost a lot of money. However, by using important people to talk, it is like an endorsement/sponsorship. People listen and pay attention to famous, important, high-up people. Furthermore, I finally know how the phrase ” The Big Apple” came about. It is creative and smart how ABNY was able to reimage the city. I was shocked that they spent money on policing, when all this time I thought it was the mayor. Also, how ABNY pushed the image of the apple as New York is incredible because it is still seen today. Although there was a lot of money put into all of this, ABNY truly was successful. It is inspiring to see how marketing can play a role to change/”revamp” the city. I used to think marketing was for business, but now I see it can also be to market a city to fit a certain image.

However, one thing that amazed me was the fact ABNY tried to censor television. This reminds me of how China censors everything that goes against their own country. I was just surprised ABNY was kind of able to get away with it, because isn’t this hindering the first amendment of freedom of speech? Yes, by not talking about mugging in Central Park you prevent the public from hearing and knowing anything bad happening. Yet, on the other hand, you are misleading them and possibly making them naive to the dangers that can happen.