Posted on 12/28/2007 4:13:08 PM PST by jdm
Times Square is crammed with tourists, and not just for New Year's Eve. These days, they're eager to gawk at the glittering lights of Broadway and visit attractions like Madame Tussauds Wax Museum and the MTV studios.
But 15 years ago, the place was considered a cesspool, overrun with crime and home to sex shops and peep shows. Drug addicts shot up on the street. Locals avoided the neighborhood.
The man who has taken the credit for revitalizing Times Square is GOP presidential hopeful and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He has made Times Square a symbol for how he tamed the evils of an out-of-control city and turned it into a tourist-friendly destination.
"It's called getting things done," he said at a fundraiser this year.
It's not that clear-cut, a closer examination of the Times Square renaissance shows.
While even his critics will say Giuliani deserves praise for his part in redevelopment of the area, the finished product was the culmination of decades of work that came before he was elected, according to lawmakers and urban planners.
"State agencies had plans in place to develop 42nd Street well before Giuliani," said Ethel Sheffer, an urban planning expert who led a quality-of-life study on Times Square during the redevelopment. Any large-scale redevelopment "takes a long time to unfold," she said.
The Times Square plan was in the works during the 1980s, when state officials and then-Mayor Ed Koch used eminent domain to condemn and take control of decrepit buildings.
But there was no legal way to control businesses until the City Council initiated a study during the administration of David Dinkins, who preceded Giuliani as mayor, that would allow them to pass rezoning laws if they could prove sex businesses were harming residential areas.
Walter McCaffrey, a former City Council member, said the idea to rezone wasn't even related to Times Square at first. It started with a neighborhood in Queens near the Queensboro Bridge that had suffered when topless bars and porn shops moved in. After the study, the City Council drew up stricter zoning laws that prohibited sex-oriented theaters, bookstores, massage parlors and dance clubs from operating within 500 feet of homes, houses of worship, schools or one another.
The law passed in 1995 - about two years after Giuliani took office.
By this time, the area was already changing, urban planning experts say. The paced quickened after the legal challenges to the zoning laws were defeated and Giuliani bore down.
Says Charles Millard, a former City Councilman and head of the city's Economic Development Corp: "I drafted the law that allowed us to do this constitutionally when David Dinkins was mayor, but until Rudy became mayor and pushed it through his planning commission, and pushed it through the city, not a thing had happened."
Others say Giuliani was in the right place at the right time, as the economy boomed in the 1990s and shifted toward tourism, real estate and Wall Street. The proliferation of Internet porn also made many sex shops obsolete.
"It was kind of like a perfect storm for him," said Arturo Ignacio Sanchez, a City and Regional Planning professor at Cornell University. The process started with Koch, picked up speed under Dinkins and really accelerated under Giuliani, he said, adding: "It fast forwards with warp speed under Bloomberg, and you have the city today."
Times Square has always lived a double life - even a century ago the 10-block stretch of busy Midtown streets was home to upscale splendor as well as hidden brothels and fetid hotels. With the invention of neon and the rise of Broadway shows, the area slowly became the entertainment center of the city.
But by the time Giuliani took office, the area had fallen into decline. In 1993, nearly 4,000 incidents of crime were reported in the area, according to the Times Square Alliance, a business group.
Part of the revival was the arrival of upscale hotels, theme stores and restaurants - businesses that Giuliani helped lure with a private-public team of developers.
Disney received a low-interest loan from the city to give a facelift to the New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street, considered by some to be the crown jewel of the new Times Square. The renovated theater soon drew in other businesses, such as MTV, ESPN and other media companies.
Giuliani talks on the campaign trail about the eradication of porn shops from Times Square and about declining crime rates during his tenure.
"It didn't happen by accident, it didn't happen by wishing they went away," Giuliani said in a speech in October. "It happened based on a very well-organized campaign, a study demonstrating the impact of pornography on neighborhoods, an intense battle in court that nobody thought we would win, and we won. And most importantly, the pornographers lost and they were chased out of Times Square."
There are still some sex shops in Times Square, but the majority of them disappeared long ago. Some simply relocated.
Former City Councilman Thomas Duane was among the few who voted against the rezoning laws in the 1990s, in part because he was not eager to see the sex shops simply switch neighborhoods.
"He didn't get rid of them from New York City, he dispersed them from Times Square, mostly to the industrial waterfront areas of the city," Duane said of Giuliani.
"And as Manhattan became a more attractive place to live, people started moving into those communities and now the same problem exists," he said. "It just doesn't exist much where the tourists go."
Cool, no prob :-)
No prob, that's what I figured :)
I think you and I agree. Big city mayors are more like corporate CEO’s. They don’t face the same sorts of issues, constitutional issues, as a governor or the President
Not only that but it's simply a fact that for any accomplishment of a leader in these positions, you could engage in a fishing expedition to dig down and find other people involved, a history that its success depended on, etc. To suggest that this diminishes the accomplishment of the leader is spurious and selectively critical. If anything, this is more true of people in higher posts than Mayor. It's especially true of Presidents!
Ronald Reagan is (correctly, in my opinion) given a lot of credit for "winning the Cold War". I think Ronald Reagan had a tremendous amount to do with this, was crucially important, and had Jimmy Carter been re-elected things would have been much different.
That said, the U.S. triumph in the Cold War depended on a lot more than the single, unaided actions of Ronald Reagan. The containment doctrine begun by Truman and carried out under every single President (except perhaps Carter :) had a lot to do with it. The space race had a lot to do with it. Even our "lost cause"/demoralizing wars in Korea and Vietnam had a lot to do with it. One might even say the Beatles had a lot to do with it. There was a historical sequence of events that started well before Reagan came into office that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, Reagan won the Cold War and to deny him this accomplishment because of these things is just wrong. Yes, one could very well write an article headlined "Did Reagan Really Win The Cold War?" and then point out various things that people other than Ronald Reagan did, but this would just be sour grapes, would prove nothing we don't already know, and the only reason to do it would be that someone felt like taking Ronald Reagan down a notch. It's actually a kind of straw man; nobody who says "Reagan won the Cold War" literally means that Reagan all by himself singlehandedly took down the USSR. They mean that as a leader, his leadership actions/decisions played a key role.
That's what's going on with this article & Giuliani, IMHO. Nobody who says "Giuliani cleaned up Times Square" means that he singlehandedly rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a broom, and cleaned it up. They mean simply that as a leader, his leadership actions/decisions played a key role. And nothing in this article actually debunks that. Instead the article focuses on two key points: (1) he didn't do it all by himself and (2) when Times Square got cleaned up, some other place in the city got dirtied up because some of the elements were displaced.
These are silly, straw-man criticisms. Best,
I don't speak for NYC Republican but I'll answer.
I don't think merely posting the article was pathetic (nor do I think that's what he was saying). Posting articles is what FR is about. But many of the responses to the article have been pathetic. If you don't believe me see me tangle with someone poo-pooing the difficulty of radiation cancer therapy above, just so they can keep their "dig" against Rudy.
I disagree that the article offers a "fairly balanced" view. The intent and raison d'etre of the article is clearly to try to reduce Giuliani's credit for cleaning up Times Square in peoples' minds. Articles headlined "Did [so-and-so] really [do such-and-such accomplishment]?" are almost automatically leading, subjective fishing expeditions with an agenda in mind.
Why does this article exist? Is this a news article? Did some news event occur right now in late 2007 which prompted "AP Staff" to investigate and write this article about whether Giuliani, as 1990s mayor of New York, "really" cleaned up Times Square?
No.
They (someone or some editor at AP) wanted to write a Rudy-takedown piece and so they did. This is not news, it is not balanced, and it is not even very informative, because the entire premise is based on a straw man. When Rudy takes credit, or people give him credit, for cleaning up Times Square, nobody means that he singlehandedly did so and that no other human had anything else to do with it.
If the criticism above is valid, it's valid for every accomplishment of every single leader in any institution. If Rudy didn't "really" clean up Times Square then no leader has ever "really" accomplished anything. That is where the standard they're applying logically leads. But of course, they aren't applying that standard equally to all leaders - just Rudy Giuliani.
"Balanced" indeed.
if you read my posts on this thread, you will see that i am not.
I just took my wife and 6 year old boy to see the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. It was pouring after the show and I told them to wait and I would go get the car which was 5 blocks away. Unthinkable before Rudy. When I worked there when Dinkins was mayor I was a 250 lb. construction worker and used to keep my tool belt on in case I needed a hammer and I still didn’t feel safe.
I remember when a cop and a drug dealer got in a shootout and wounded each other. Dinkins went to the hospital to visit the drug dealer and refused to visit the cop. Stunning.
Reading this article, it is clear that the plaque to cover all the little people who want credit for the change in Times Square must be huge, or written in very small proportional font.
I remember. I was a neighbor of Congress Gerald Nadler at the time. Even he conceded that Dinkins was an embarrassment.
Ole Joe Buck has aged pretty well.
I like your tagline and agree. Rudy would not be my first choice. But for all of his liberalism, Rudy IS an effective leader. And yes he IS a republican. He’s about the only candidate in fact that will actually point out Hillary hypocrisy. The rest of the GOP field just snipes at each other. It is no different than if I had a choice between Obama and Joe Lieberman, I’d pick Joe.
“You’re being way too logical and mature. Don’t you realize that to be a good Freeper you’re supposed to viciously bash whoever you’re against in the primary, whether it makes any sense or not, and no matter how much it might damage them should they eventually win and go on to face Hillary Clinton in the general election? ;-)”
I guess that means I am not a good Freeper.
On the other hand, if you want to have me doing some bashing, we can change the subject to Hillary, or any other Dem.
I do hope Rudy does not win the nomination. I really do not think he will win the general election. I say this based more on what I have seen and learned over the years about humans and human nature. I think others in the GOP have a better chance to win the general election.
Your hero used the remains of 9/11 victims to fill pot holes.
He's a disgusting weakling.
Who exactly are these first responders you claim to speak for? I've seen no evidence here or anywhere else that "New York's first responders" are mad at Rudy Giuliani over this petty issue. If they are, I'd be happy to talk to them, but as of now, for all I know this is just a fantasy you've constructed in your head.
Your hero used the remains of 9/11 victims to fill pot holes.
1. For the last time, where are you getting this "my hero" stuff?
2. No he didn't, and if you don't understand that there is something wrong with you.
Also filed was a 2003 letter in which the city’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch wrote that the tiny debris particles sifted at the landfill did in fact contain human remains, and that he was “virtually certain that at least some human tissue is mixed with the dirt at the … landfill.”
http://www.nypress.com/20/19/news&columns/feature.cfm
Rudy used the remains to fill pot holes. Disgusting.
It seems clear that in those victims he saw only an opportunity to cast himself as some sort of hero. He used those victims to raise his profile and then he used them to pave the streets.
What a joke. How can you be so infatuated with a man like that?
"9/11 family members, firefighters and members of the activist group We Are Change confronted Rudy Giuliani for a second time earlier this week, as the former New York Mayor refused to answer questions about his foreknowledge of the WTC collapse and the desecration of the victim's remains."
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2007/010607giulianiheckled.htm
Refused to answer questions. What a man!
Do you still wonder why New York's first responders have no respect for Rudy?
Goodnight, Frank.
You cannot reason with a lunatic. Don’t even waste your keystroke and bandwidth with this guy. One is known by the company one keeps, and the gassy poster refers us to “We Are Change,” a radical leftist group, to validate his/her points. Just not worth bothering with.
The cleanup was the result of Rudy defining the principal job of the police to take care of crime as job 1, and making sure they adopted strategies to do that. It did not require a lot of advanced planning. It required getting the police to focus on details of where crimes were being committed and who was doing it.
You have to remember how hard this is anywhere, because on the average day the average citizen in New York, or anywhere, is much more focused on hating his neighbor who parked 3 hrs in a 2 hr parking zone as he is about rapists and muggers. It is something about the American psyche, I think.
just so you understand who the group is that heckled Giuliani, the “families of survivors and first responders,” as alleged elsewhere in this thread, below is from the website for the American branch of “We are Change” ... it’s international leftists.
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Who Is Change
We Are Change is a citizens based grassroots peace and social justice movement working to reveal the truth behind the events of September 11th as well as the lies of the government and corporate elite who remain suspect in this crime. In addition, we are here to aid the sick and dying first responders through fundraising and social outreach programs in order to promote awareness of those who suffer from physical, emotional, and psychological traumas they received in the aftermath of 9-11. We also seek to meet other local citizens who are interested in educating the public while engaging in peaceful demonstration about the pertinent issues that are affecting our lives each and every day. Furthermore, We Are Change is a nonpartisan independent media organization comprised of patriot journalists working to hold those engaging in activities that do not represent the wishes of “We the People” by asking the hard questions that the controlled mainstream media refuses to do.
We Are Change has arisen from the remnants of our republic to fill the vacancy left by those who swore to preserve, protect and defend The Constitution against all enemies – foreign and domestic. We seek to expose the fraud of the left/right paradigm and reveal that the world truly functions on a top/down hierarchy that threatens to destroy free society as we know it. We Are Change works to educate, motivate, and activate those striving to uncover the truth behind the private banking cartel of the military industrial complex that is directing the majority of U.S. policy, and that is actively seeking to eliminate national sovereignty and replace it with a “one world order.” We will also continue to move in a direction that reconnects “We the People” to our nations founding principles laid out in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
We Are Change also seek an uncompromising and independent investigation into the crimes of 9-11, with subpoena power granted to obtain a long-overdue resolution for the survivors and families of the deceased. We reject the official explanation of the events leading up to, during and after the attacks of September 11th, 2001 as well as the fear-based politics and state mandated propaganda being disseminated by the Corporate Media which has facilitated the cover-up of 9-11.
As we establish citizens groups throughout the country and world, we wish to inspire a community of truth-seekers and peacemakers through creative campaigns with a commitment of nonviolence. We Are Change is not so much a group but an idea, an idea that “We the People” are the vehicles of these “ideas” and of the freedoms, liberties, and truths we are seeking all across the globe. An idea that captures the spirits of our forefathers who just desired freedom; that together, as residents of this planet, we grow like a snowball of truth and justice rolling down a mountain of tyranny growing bigger and stronger, recognizing the beauty in our differences and the diverseness of each other, but at the same time strengthening our cause because we learn and grow from each others individuality. Then as we learn to come together, that as one, you, me, him, her, us…will realize that WE ARE CHANGE.
The “We are Change” crew reminds me of the 9/11 wives who did campaign commercials for John Kerry, and Cindy Sheehan’s gang who have their grievances.
Just because someone makes a complaint doesn’t mean their complaint is valid. I’ve seen Giuliani answer questions from 9/11 truthers, but in general, if they accost him on the street, and he blows them off, that isn’t quite the same things as running away and refusing to answer questions.
BTW, they argue that we need an independent investigation of 9/11? Someone should tell them about the 9/11 Commission. Imperfect, like all investigations, but the report was highly respected and it was an enormous effort which investigated MANY, MANY issues. Some people will never be satisfied.
Your mock anger of using the dust from the WTC is unconvincing. I think those people who are upset about it are being used by those trying to stir up anger in grieving families, just as parents of soldiers lost in Iraq are used for political gains, and sick children are used to argue for socialized medicine.
What do you suggest they do with the thousands of tons of dust? Put it into a casket and bury it?
Remember that on 9/11, they thought they would need lots of bodybags, and would fill up the hospitals with injured victims, but this never happened. They either made it out of the building, or were crushed into dust. Finally, you have yet to mention how Rudy is responsible for this catastrophe.
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