Rudy Giuliani likes to take credit for the transformation of the city's Times Square.
But some say the cleanup was the result of years of urban planning.
Bookmark. I’m interested in what knowledgeable FReepers have to say. (I don’t know enough to comment on this.)
Look, I’m a Thompson/Hunter kind of guy, but give credit where credit is due. I saw first hand the turnaround in NYC under Rudy’s watch. I worked and went to school there and the transformation is remarkable.
ML/NJ
When CBS and AP get together you know the lib slimeliars are at it again. This peiece is a smear and nothing else. They are still afraid of Rudy.
More wishful revisionism from the Friends of David Dinkins...
BUT he has single handedly transformed NYC from a cess pool of crime and anything goes attitude to one of the safest liveable big cities in the world.
sw
I don’t like to quote the Village Voice but this article talks about a lot of things the Mayor did.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9835,goldstein,3394,1.html
All I can say is that I’ve been to Times Square before and after Giuliani and the difference is remarkable! And it wasn’t years of urban planning. It was much quicker than that.
Well, he did take care of that so-called “low fat yogurt” scam!
(Sorry, that’s all I know about Rudy and NYC).
Times Square on TV looks huge. In person it looks like a gaudy little corner of lighted advertisements.
It was very disappointing.
In other words, Rudolph Giuliani the individual, all by himself, was not single-handedly responsible for every single positive change that happened vis-a-vis Times Square. He didn't do it with the help of zero other people in city government and bureaucracy. Some other people helped. He didn't roll up his sleeves, lift sex-shop owners over his head, carry them to the East River, and throw them in. He didn't pick up a sledgehammer and singlehandedly demolish decredpit buildings.
I'm glad we got that cleared up. That is an excellent, important, and totally fair criticism.
"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.
Giuliani didn't conduct an extermination campaign of sex shop owners and people who frequent them. He didn't put them into concentration camps and then throw them into ovens so as to make them no longer exist. They still exist somewhere.
Another fascinating and important criticism. Clearly, if bad things still exist somewhere, then you can't give Rudy Giuliani any credit whatsoever for cleaning up Times Square.
This is a totally fair, objective, and most importantly - logical news article.
Yes.
And every shithole in NYC. On the night he took office the NYPD raided a "welfare hotel" which was a crack den in my old neighborhood, which everyone avoided because of the awful crime (and this was a decent area near Grammercy). Within a month the area was completely dsafe again. I give Rudy 100% credit.
That doesn't mean I support him for the GOP nomination. I do not. But he was perhaps the best mayor in NYC history. Just can't take that away from him.
When Guiliani was Mayor every fare beater on the subway was arrested and brought to the precinct to be fingerprinted and to be checked as to whether they had outstanding arrest warrants.. The criminals began to leave their guns and knives at home...it was too risky to carry them.
Guiliani had every welfare recipient fingerprinted. The welfare roles dropped dramatically. I think the drop was from 1,300,000 to 600,000. There were lots of double-dippers collecting welfare apparently and also a lot of working people who lied about their status.
Without Bratton though it could never have been done. Bratton made the police be more productive than they had been.
You’re from NYC right?
When did you live in NYC?
http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2007/1130/News/010.html
Takes Aim At His Myth
WTC Board Game Zings Rudy
By ARI PAUL
Pete Gleason, an ex-cop who’s now an attorney, can add board game developer to his list of professions, as he unveiled the prototype for his Ground Zero board game Nov. 20, a work of satire he believes can shape the course of the presidential campaign.
READ more at the above link, there is no love for Rudy from the New York City Police Department
Increasingly, the American people are seeing through these false myths and are seeing Rudy for what he really is. That's why he's going down in the polls.
As Rudy's "base" shrinks, it becomes increasingly dominated by females without self-esteem and males who are homosexual.
Say goodbye to Rudy.
Having lived in NYC through the morass that was David Dinkins, I’d say unequivocally that Times Square redevelopment got a major impetus from the election of Rudolph Giuliani. While Rudy has many issues (well-characterized here), this piece is sour grapes.