Make Gotham governable:

...At a point munity-based organizations such as the Nehemiah project in when David Dinkins was taking flak for traveling abroad to Brooklyn and the venerable Community Service Society are find global investment for Manhattan, David Rockefeller wrote graced with innovative economic and social agendas, well-quala letter defending him in the New York Times...

...realm for discourse, debate, and negotiation concerning mat- Pittsburgh and Cleveland have all kinds of innovative financters of the common good...

...Russians in Brighton Beach...

...Greater New York has always been a cosunderground economy of sweatshops and drugs...

...While the Liberals are fairly thin on the ground Plan of 1929, the deindustrialization of Manhattan was supin the West, they can, with justice, claim to be the only truly posed to be complemented by industrial zones in the outer bornational party...

...As for what it really means, we shall know political party to direct and control fiscal policy, the size of more in a year's time...

...They that the mayor of New York needn't concern himself about could be a political force and the basis of new leadership unitwhether Singapore beats out Manhattan as the city with the ed for common social production, if allowed an independence most multinational corporate headquarters...

...mopolitan city whose strength and vitality derived from the conHow can this picture be changed...

...visible foreign policy prob- president and his advisers face is not only The danger now is that these cases threatlems-Bosnia, Haiti, and framing a policy adequate for the secondary en to stamp the entire Clinton policy as a Somalia-are not the coun- issues, but communicating more clearly failure before it is given a fair hearing...

...JORDAN BISHOP the bureaucracy, the proliferation of interest groups, and the Jordan Bishop writes frequently for Commonweal from orderly access of new immigrant groups to positions of poOttawa...

...2) the destruction of Tammany...

...talent and treasure, and why they hard cases (Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti) are Clinton administration's foreign-policy are so resistant to rapid resolution...

...lem isn't size but the lack of common interest between the world 4. Build leadership by politicizing community-based orgacity of Manhattan and the outer boroughs...

...The Clinton policy whom a Democratic president needs for been to stress that "the world has changed" shows sound instincts on these themes, but support-is that on the traditionally deci- and the old models for developing and ex- does not have an articulated view of them...

...As much as or more than any monarchical capparty should form the official opposition...

...not only of Manhattan but of the entire city...

...The country has the stabili- gressive politics that would build the infrastructure of the world ty of a solid majority government...

...in the coming four years will rest with his ability to unite rather Though these strategies, rooted in new priorities, will not than divide ordinary people with a new agenda geared not to change New York overnight, they may have immediate and ben- the world city that was, but to the ordinary-and democraticeficial side effects...

...In neither case were the administration's President Bill Clinton's most policy fraternity...

...Relying on an organization of Manhattan-based orities may work provided it is accompanied by strategies like global CEOs like the New York Partnership to reconstruct New the following that will not merely refocus attention on ordinary York is like expecting Rebuild LA to reconstruct South Central people and places but also redistribute power to them...

...Instead of moving, then, to empower the commu- 1993, and both candidates, explicitly or implicitly, played this nity-based organizations as countervailing political forces, may- card to appeal to core constituencies...

...policy should respond to it...

...A reversal of pri- nizations...

...and found wanting...

...seceding from Manhattan, so much as letting it fend for itself- But the coalition of white liberals and minorities that elected that is, rely on its own strong market, find its own "competi- David Dinkins in 1989 had reason to expect a community-based tive" level among similar world cities (London, Tokyo, Paris, political strategy from his administration...

...WORLD WATCH University, and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies), the administration sought to specify its view of what has J. Bryan Hehir changed and how U.S...

...The truth of this proposition is, however, not very useful to Clinton at the present time...

...In most minicans, and Cubans in upper Manhattan and the Bronx...

...The habit of looking to government to resolve all the social problems caused by the world city's perpetual project of urban renewal resulted in a tradition of govMAKE GOTHAM GOVERNABLE ernment overload that made New York dependent on federal CONSIDER CLEVELAND...

...try's most important for- and decisively why these issues should en- In fact, running through all three of the eign-policy challenges...

...His own capital, as the command center of the American corporate econpower is mostly symbolic, and given the realities of power, the omy, and also America's global contact point...

...In New York, comFrankfurt), and see to its own economic development...

...The NDP, with 7 city agenda and pay its "social costs...

...The city's fuhomelessness...

...adjudicate the peaceful coexistence of two distinct but nonetheMost of the electorate see New York as a city less interdependent urban cultures-the world city of Manhattan trapped within the structures and mistakes of its past, but there and the ordinary city to be found in Queens, the Bronx, was hope that the election-regardless of who won-might pro- Brooklyn, and Staten Island (Richmond...

...ing strategies to assist local industries that create jobs and train Can New York emulate Pittsburgh and Cleveland...

...In my view, the talent of the team is quite good, but this view is probably a minority position in the foreignCommonweal 19 November 1993: 7...

...New York has similar programs, but these it is too big, complex, and politically fragmented to achieve the are a drop in the bucket compared to the city tax incentives that civic cohesion of these "ordinary" cities...

...Secession, and overblown rhetoric of the New York's may- now being pursued by Staten Island, is a temptation but not oral campaign, there was an unspoken but om- a solution, because the dismemberment of New York will not nipresent question: Is New York City governable...

...One way to begin is to tinual infusions of immigrants endowed with energy, ambition, forget about Manhattan and see New York as a slightly larg- wit, and tenacity...

...OR PITTSBURGH aid and, when such aid was not forthcoming, the all-too-familiar situation of a city promising expansive services but delivering either fiscal crisis or the daily breakdown of basic services: garbage collection, pothole repair, and safe streets...

...Rather than fearing the economic, social, or or midwestern cities that know the worst effects of deindus- cultural effects of the new immigration, the citizens and govtrialization, that have ghettoes, deteriorated neighborhoods, ernment of New York ought to do everything in their power to and their share of crime, drugs, poverty, unemployment, and encourage immigrant enterprise and integration...

...As in almost all recent political machine, New York's mayors cling to any shred of New York elections, the undercurrent of race was strong in autonomy...

...In a series of September address- tervention, and human rights...

...and (3) the liberelectoral system are much in evidence...

...Each has been and nonproliferation, the Clinton team es (President Clinton at the United Nations, a staple of the foreign-policy debate for has set forth and sustained a coherent, ef- Secretary of State Christopher at Columbia decades, but each must be reinterpreted in fective policy...

...For Lucien Bouchard ital of Europe, New York was consciously envisaged as a global himself, the position is something of a mixed blessing...

...Finally, the fortunes of Manhattan will outer boroughs are for the ordinary people whose incomes are doubtless rise or fall with the imperium to which it is wedded: declining, whose jobs have been exported abroad, who live if America retains its global hegemony in the twenty-first cenin deteriorating neighborhoods replete with crime, inade- tury, Manhattan will be at the forefront of global capitalism...

...strategies were pursued: (1) the "deindustrialization" of Geography and the absurdities of Canada's "winner-take-all" Manhattan...

...But suppose the prob- fattened the "deals" of Manhattan developers in the 1980s...

...their perceptions about what can and, at the same time, provide an expansive array of services be accomplished through government are somewhat more op- to support and sustain the New York workforce (schools, city timistic than either their predecessors' or the opposition in the universities, hospitals, housing, health care, welfare...

...There was, on October 25, a near-consensus form liberalism fragmented the Tammany machine without to the effect that the country is a mess...

...WALLACE KATZ and racial conflict, as the principal cause of these ugly symp- Wallace Katz is president of Community Business Consultants, toms-a government inattentive to the needs and common in- a Washington consulting firm specializing in political research terests of ordinary New Yorkers-gives way to an urban regime and economic development...

...cases they have overcome both political fragmentation and Experts on immigration generally agree that newcomers cregovernment overload by replacing their old governmental bu- ate jobs rather than steal them...

...and Haitians, Doreconstruction...

...And the Reform party, with 20 Of course these plans of New York's leading citizens had percent, got fifty-two seats...

...But the Catchfate of the world city does not depend upon nor is it the pri- 22 situation, from which the mayor must liberate himself, is 6: 19 November 1993 Commonweal this: beset by so many interest groups and lacking an effective of for, and by ordinary New Yorkers...

...The new agenda will likely lessen ethnic city that will be...

...Reversing priorities, rebuilding New York by focusing on Underneath the promises, charges, countercharges, its identity as an ordinary city, will not be easy...

...quate schools, and rotting infrastructure, and who survive by if America falls behind, so will Manhattan...

...But because these cities understand themselves ture promise is still to be found in its ethnic neighborhoods, as ordinary places for ordinary people, they have focused on some of which are now reviving thanks to the arrival of Koreans indigenous economic development and on communal and civic in Queens...

...To this end, three move from the symbolic to the real will pose difficulties...

...But the truth is ified professional direction, and progressive constituencies...

...According to the celebrated New York Regional forty-three seats...

...The "competitive" comparable to the city's public-sector unions...

...The Reform party had high hopes of becoming oughs, supported by comprehensive rail lines and working-class more widespread geographically, but it has only one seat east housing...

...Los Angeles...

...In Canada, the transi- providing an alternative form of political authority...

...But renew Parliament...

...The danger he faces is that his foreign policy instincts are being judged by the secondary cases (Bosnia, et al...

...and, after one or two generations, meld happily if nance: coalitions (composed of business, government, not seamlessly into the mainstream of American society...

...The Liberals' only constraints city (bridges, tunnels, mass transit, parks, cultural centers) are the limits of the possible...

...Manothers...

...Global elites don't have the time nor the under1. Leave Manhattan to its own devices...

...sive issues of foreign policy, the rela- plaining foreign policy do not fit any The three themes are multilateralism, intionship with Russia, the Middle East, longer...

...The irony of the gage U.S...

...Let the ations, and religious groups) that develop a cooperative agen- mayor of New York stay at home and cultivate the indigenous da to improve the city and that assume many of the city industries-small and midsize today but capable of growthgovernment's traditional functions (economic development, that are starved for capital and that could sorely use the billions long-term planning, educational reform, even care of the in city, state, and federal dollars that agencies such as the Urban homeless), and that also operate like political parties of yore Development Corporation or the Public Development Corporation (providing the point of access for new groups and a public poured into sometimes unsuccessful projects in Manhattan...

...The critique extends beyond his policies to the national security team upon which he depends...

...Corruption tion to a new government takes about ten days and is accom- and bossism persisted, but without a canny and disciplined plished rather quietly...

...basic themes which do have to be adjustdeficit-and it is real in the eyes of many The administration's basic position has ed to new realities...

...The Tories got 17 per- al use of government funds and services to support the worldcent of the popular vote but only two seats...

...As a result, they are cities on the mend...

...The challenge which the policy, vision, or tactical choices adequate...

...percent of the vote, got nine...

...Rather than being asked in October to debate and defend his broad vision of world order, Clinton spent the month defending his specific choices in Somalia and Haiti...

...Otherwise, the four kers, and legal services...

...By comparison, in the most re- unforeseen consequences and many of the city's current ills recent Parliament the NDP had 20 percent of the vote but only sult from them...

...enhance our culture rather than reaucracies with an innovative and effective form of gover- diminish it...

...Manhattan (below 125th Street, plus a few "gentrified" hattan's skyscrapers will be built even without tax incentives sections of Brooklyn and Queens) provides an arena for the for their developers, and global corporations will continue to successful and highly-paid managers and professionals who locate in Manhattan because of its transnational banks, brosteer and structure the global economy...

...The consequences are recurrent fiscal crises, bloated bureaucracies, "balkanization," REPORT FROM NEW YORK CITY and ethnic conflict...

...Since Canada does not have a system of proportional repre- Reform or "fusion" liberalism was supposed to replace the sentation, pre-election fears of an Italian-style Parliament with Tammany political machine with an honest, efficient, and profive strong parties have vanished...

...But neither rail lines nor working-class housing maof Manitoba...

...This most expansive attempt CLINTON'S FOREIGN POLICY to explain the administration's view of the RIGHT DESTINATIONS, WRONG MAPS world was quickly overtaken by events...

...In the twenty-first century, New York's coser version of ordinary cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Balti- mopolitanism may serve it better than its current monopoly on more, and Philadelphia...

...The test for Rudolph Giuliani ors use government funding to rein them in...

...litical and bureaucratic power...

...These are large, older northeastern financial services...

...Perhaps unskilled workers...

...dint of menial service to the Manhattanites, "mom and pop" 2. Encourage and rely upon the immigrant sources of New stores and small businesses, city employment, welfare, or the York's creativity...

...This doesn't mean standing to deal with the needs and problems of ordinary folk...

...The five boroughs vide the occasion for the creation of a new agenda...

...The fact that the Tories retain only two seats in terialized, and postwar highway construction and suburbanization all of Canada may be Mulroney's last testament to the party he confirmed the decentralization as well as "deindustrialization," took over in 1984...

...The Bloc may be something more than a protest New York-as-world-city has a long, interesting, and probvote, and it rankles some English Canadians that a separatist lematic history...

...Now that represent a geographical embodiment of the thesis of Mickey Rudolph Giuliani has been elected, let me propose the follow- Kaus's recent book, The End of Equality, which argues that ing agenda: after almost an entire century spent creating New the new global economy will no longer produce a society in York as a "world city," the government, civic leaders, and cit- which "a rising tide lifts all boats," but rather one in which izens of New York should reverse their priorities and begin to economic growth and prosperity for some may coincide with, Commonweal 19 November 1993: 5 indeed produce, economic decline, inequality, and poverty for mary responsibility of New York's city government...

...non-profits, universities, neighborhood and minority associ- 3. Concentrate on indigenous economic development...

...The decisions confronting the United States on Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti have enormous human significance, but limited geopolitical consequences...