That sounds like MA trying to get after their shoppers in tax-free NH.
With 8 million people crammed into NYC, you’ve got to expect a few of them to spill over—and a few of their suppliers to be there across the river ready to serve them.
Who is getting squeezed out of NYC is the middle class. I mean firefighters, nurses, cops and secretaries with families. More neighborhoods now tend to be gentrified, hardscrabble, or even a combination of the two. But that is largely high real estate costs chasing them out of Manhattan at least, and maybe farther than that.
There’s demand for much more housing and construction, but then the issue is the transportation infrastructure. Just how many more passengers can they cram through the subways every day?
I moved to the edge of CT a few years ago, but I’m still in a couple of times a week. There are pockets of small-scale teen/gang crime creeping back into pockets here or there, but there’s also gentrification going in even the toughest of neighborhoods.
I see your point about the middle class being squeezed out.
In terms of the infrastructure: I know that when Governor Christie canceled the project for a rail tunnel from NJ to NYC, he simply stated there was no need for it. I’ve had that confirmed by both friends and family that commute into the city on trains - there are less people on the existing trains than there were in the “before-times”. The proponents of the tunnel were reduced to claiming it would make it easier for people to see a Broadway show - an admission that in fact there was no need for it. Granted, that was not for the internal infrastructure.
I think at a certain point congestion takes so much away from the quality of life.