NYC is actually very easy to understand. Nothing happens there unless it is good for business.
Be real -- do you think that all of the abysmal social, economic, educational, and criminal justice policies in NYC over the past 40 years were all "good for business"??? Granted, beginning in the mid-90s some things changed for the better, but overall NYC has been run by a lot of nutty socialist race-baiting pols imposing some really stooopid policies on the city.