AHCWI: New York goes the way of Detroit?

Have The Big Apple go the way of Motor City. Have most industry leave, along with the people. Detroit, ever since the auto industry left the city, began to suffer from advanced urban decay. It went from 1.029 million in population in 1990, to now about 680,250 and falling. Have something like that happen to NYC.
 
Have The Big Apple go the way of Motor City. Have most industry leave, along with the people. Detroit, ever since the auto industry left the city, began to suffer from advanced urban decay. It went from 1.029 million in population in 1990, to now about 680,250 and falling. Have something like that happen to NYC.
With NYC practically being the capital of the international world, the consequences would be dire. And it'd be the most obvious sign that America should either reform, or fall behind several countries.
 
There was a time before things started to get cleaned up in the 90s, when it looked likely - Chicago was the city of the future in the US in the 70s and 80s, while New York was a trashy, depressed place with porn shops in Times Square. Watch Taxi Driver or the Warriors - New York was once a place any tourist or hipster would have feared to tread.
 
Have an apocalypse happen making large scale urban populations impossible to support. Parts of Detroit currently look indistinguishable from Fallout screencaps.
 
The mafia and other gangs still have immense power within the city and effectively turn it into Gotham City. The Mayors are all mob puppets, if not mob leaders themselves, while meth and crack are allowed to be sold to children, thus tainting the future generations. Funding to schools and other government programs are funneled to the pockets if the corrupt. The police are useless and easily bribable due to being underpayed and underarmed. Infrastructure is left to rot. Eventually people leave by the hundreds if not thousands since if Gotham City was real, nobody would want to live unless they no other choice.
 
There was a time before things started to get cleaned up in the 90s, when it looked likely - Chicago was the city of the future in the US in the 70s and 80s, while New York was a trashy, depressed place with porn shops in Times Square. Watch Taxi Driver or the Warriors - New York was once a place any tourist or hipster would have feared to tread.
This. obviously wall-street and the surrounding important areas could remain strong, but the rest of the city falls into a spiral. I'm not sure you can make it Detroit level bad as it is located ina very strategic location and not sole dependent on "A industry" for survival.

That said, during the 70's and 80's along with Chicago, Dallas, Austin, San Francisco, LA and even DC/Northern Virginia were quite attractive markets for companies.
NYC could look more like Newark/Bronx, if not for the drastic measures taken to clean the core city up. However Detroit level bad? that would take a level of sheer incompetence that would be historic in nature.

Detroit's major problem was white flight to suburbs and shady real-estate practices during the 60's and 70's, and the Detroit Riots and miles upon miles of suburb's for them to run too. Auburn Hills is a suburb for all intensive purposes, any further north and you run into Flint Suburb's. obviously many people moved out of the NYC to Connecticut, upstate, and NJ or out to Staten island, but the cost of living kept rising in these suburbs due to fact that people wanted a plot of grass in their own little worlds.

I guess one way that could do it, have the Harlem Riots be worse and spread in the city itself, have them continued in 68 on the same level as other cities. no world trade center, leaving Radio row intact. (The WTC complex spurred a fair amount of urban retooling.) Have more large financial organizations flee to say Chicago or disperse around the nation.

I don't see it ever being E. St Louis or Detroit level bad, but you could put a dent in things.
 
Have The Big Apple go the way of Motor City. Have most industry leave, along with the people. Detroit, ever since the auto industry left the city, began to suffer from advanced urban decay. It went from 1.029 million in population in 1990, to now about 680,250 and falling. Have something like that happen to NYC.

Sounds like you would end up with the situation in the movie Escape from New York.

On a more practical note the difference between Detrioit and New York is that one is a manufacturing centre and the other a financial centre. As a result over time they behave very differently. It seems that financial centres adapt better than Industrial cities. You aren't really comparing like with like.

Detroit seems to me to be only a much worse version of the same decay of once industial centres in much of the Western World.
 
Sounds like you would end up with the situation in the movie Escape from New York.

On a more practical note the difference between Detrioit and New York is that one is a manufacturing centre and the other a financial centre. As a result over time they behave very differently. It seems that financial centres adapt better than Industrial cities. You aren't really comparing like with like.

Detroit seems to me to be only a much worse version of the same decay of once industial centres in much of the Western World.

That always just blew my mind, to think how bad it would have to be to give up Manhattan to be a prison. That's a lot of investment down the drain. Also with out investment the tunnels would flood, foundations would rot, a few storm seasons later it would be ultra dismal on Manhattan, especially during the winter, think of the first fire set that gets out of control.

Loved the movie back in the 80's though :)
 
Not gonna happen...more money to be made by the "right" people if the city stands up than if it crashes and burns...
 

samcster94

Banned
There was a time before things started to get cleaned up in the 90s, when it looked likely - Chicago was the city of the future in the US in the 70s and 80s, while New York was a trashy, depressed place with porn shops in Times Square. Watch Taxi Driver or the Warriors - New York was once a place any tourist or hipster would have feared to tread.
Indeed. New York City was a grim place back then, unlike today. It is not too hard to have NYC stay like that, Jackie Kennedy being dead in 1963 is one way to do it as is preventing Disney from getting involved.
 
Have a market crash followed by Chicago luring away as much of the remaining financial services industry as it can.
 
I think the key things are the financial sector and the crime rate. If the murder rate hadn't fallen by around a 1000 murders a year between 1990 and 1995, the big financial firms would've pulled the plug and left. Or just left a token office left as they decamped across the river to New Jersey or on up to Connecticut. And that would've been it, with the city too nasty for even the tourists to visit any more.

In defense of hipsters - or rather artists - it was them who colonized the abandoned factory spaces in Soho in the 50s and 60s, turning them into lofts. They kept New York cool long after it become this rotting corpse on the Hudson in the 80s.
 
This. Obviously Wall Street and the surrounding important areas could remain strong, but the rest of the city falls into a spiral.
Depends, if the city crashes more heavily than in our timeline past a certain point the financial firms might decide that enough was enough and relocate. New York isn't the only stock exchange in the US, you have exchanges in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and possibly a couple of other cities depending on when you're talking about.

Have the city's financial crisis in the mid-1970s spin out of control and it go bankrupt, the blackout and city-wide looting in 1977, the urban blight as best illustrated by the, apocryphal, comment "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning" which cemented the image in the public mind in the same year, Son of Sam also being active in 1977 etc. and if there's a viable alternative I think a lot of people would seriously consider it.
 
Depends, if the city crashes more heavily than in our timeline past a certain point the financial firms might decide that enough was enough and relocate. New York isn't the only stock exchange in the US, you have exchanges in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and possibly a couple of other cities depending on when you're talking about.

Have the city's financial crisis in the mid-1970s spin out of control and it go bankrupt, the blackout and city-wide looting in 1977, the urban blight as best illustrated by the, apocryphal, comment "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning" which cemented the image in the public mind in the same year, Son of Sam also being active in 1977 etc. and if there's a viable alternative I think a lot of people would seriously consider it.

Philly isn't much better off in the 70's, Boston and Chicago though as stated before would be the big beneficiary of financial flight. the only problem is there is too much money wrapped up in NYC, too much infrastructure,

could almost see a tale of two worlds NYC where the Burroughs split off, and New York City is simply is mid-town to lower Manhattan
 
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