Bill O'Reilly once referred to Manhattan as the Balkans because everyone has a competing agenda. However, the strongest voices for the liberal agenda reside in NYC. Their views couldn't rule anywhere else in the country, so they gather together in NYC out of a certain herd instinct. NYC offers them safety in numbers.
The whole NYC liberal thing is something created for tourists, etc. As I said, it's like the electronics stores in Times Square. But at its heart, NYC is about business and nothing else. You can rise as high as your talent and ambition take you or fall as low as possible, which is pretty low.
Whatever systems are in place, serve business. Like the public baths erected in the late 1890s and early 1900s, they allowed immigrants to keep marginally clean, stop the spread of disease to keep the sweatshops humming along.