Tragically-and bewilderingly, given such improvements-a new generation of progressive urban politicians seem intent on returning to some of the policies that cost cities so dearly decades ago.
In New York City, the rolls expanded from 500,000 to more than 1 million people, even as the city's population was shrinking.
The remarkable revival of neighborhoods in many cities, along with surging, tech-driven urban economies, has lured a new generation of educated young singles and well-to-do families to become city dwellers, and they've got the progressive beliefs typical of their demographic.
Since 1991, the peak year of crime in New York City, to take the most striking example, the number of yearly shootings by the New York Police Department has declined by two-thirds-a testament to the force's professionalism and to the impact that major crime declines have had on the need for cops to use their weapons.
As a former homeless-services administrator for New York City told the New York Times in 1992, "I had hewed to the party line that the solution to homelessness is housing. The belief was that if you focused on drug problems or family breakdown, you played into that blaming-the-victim mentality," Nancy Wackstein said.
California's state constitution also thwarted a campaign in the state's cities, including San Francisco, to set up community courts like those that New York City established in the 1990s, where ticketed panhandlers were brought before judges immediately and often required to begin serving sentences for community service the same day that they were charged.
In their Atlantic article, Wilson and Kelling noted that the "Unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window." New York demonstrated the truth of that observation when, in the early 1990s, the city cracked down on the "Squeegee men," panhandlers who had long harassed motorists in the city by "Washing" their car windows for donations.
https://www.city-journal.org/progressive-policies-urban-dysfunction
In New York City, the rolls expanded from 500,000 to more than 1 million people, even as the city's population was shrinking.
The remarkable revival of neighborhoods in many cities, along with surging, tech-driven urban economies, has lured a new generation of educated young singles and well-to-do families to become city dwellers, and they've got the progressive beliefs typical of their demographic.
Since 1991, the peak year of crime in New York City, to take the most striking example, the number of yearly shootings by the New York Police Department has declined by two-thirds-a testament to the force's professionalism and to the impact that major crime declines have had on the need for cops to use their weapons.
As a former homeless-services administrator for New York City told the New York Times in 1992, "I had hewed to the party line that the solution to homelessness is housing. The belief was that if you focused on drug problems or family breakdown, you played into that blaming-the-victim mentality," Nancy Wackstein said.
California's state constitution also thwarted a campaign in the state's cities, including San Francisco, to set up community courts like those that New York City established in the 1990s, where ticketed panhandlers were brought before judges immediately and often required to begin serving sentences for community service the same day that they were charged.
In their Atlantic article, Wilson and Kelling noted that the "Unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window." New York demonstrated the truth of that observation when, in the early 1990s, the city cracked down on the "Squeegee men," panhandlers who had long harassed motorists in the city by "Washing" their car windows for donations.
https://www.city-journal.org/progressive-policies-urban-dysfunction
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