Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival
Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival
Chapter 1: The South Bronx, From the Bottom Up
The tale of the South Bronx is one that many people do not understand. This is a city that made a remarkable turnaround without getting rid of or enriching their poor. It was done over the course of many years and a lot of money, but this money was not needed in one lump sum.
It began with Jimmy Carter, who went to the South Bronx, hoping that he could help restore the area. He never actually promised any money, but in later years, when the story was told, he reportedly had done so. He wanted to improve the city badly, but by the time he returned home, only a few hundred thousand dollars had arrived and he felt defeated. He was then blamed for a lot of what was going on in that area.
For twenty years, the South Bronx became a politically detrimental area. Almost no presidents stepped foot there for fear of being thought to make a promise to change things. Then in 1997, President Bill Clinton went there with cameras and everything for another look at “the urban wasteland”. With the help of community organizations and some funding from New York City, the South Bronx had done a complete change.
In the worst areas, shootings were down by more than 2/3, and robberies and assaults by more than ½. School attendance had also dramatically increased. Property values had become so high that some residents of more affluent neighborhoods like Manhattan could barely afford to live there.
The credit for this change does not go to one person or organization only.
The change was set in motion on Oct. 5, 1977, and took 20 years to realize.
The three elements for the change were:
1. Community organizations willing to stay and build
2. A federal government willing to finance their efforts
3. A local government that had learned clear but bitter lessons from decades of massive, top-down “renewal”
This was a shocking event to those who saw it on the day that Clinton arrived, but there are some things that he did NOT see.
In the 1970s, the South Bronx had lost a great deal of its population, and they never returned. Poverty is still significantly higher than in most other parts of NY. The South Bronx has not regained its former grandeur and will probably not do so. It...