When the word “Bronx” sounds, most people imagine gray depressed streets, wrecked cars, burning trash cans, graffiti, and abandoned basketball courts. A city within a city, located in one of the five counties of New York on the northern outskirts of the state, and, as the only one not lying on the island, since the early 60s it has been one of the harshest and most violent places in the United States. Crime became equal to Bronx and Bronx became equal to death, drugs, and violence (Flood). Its southern part, the South Bronx, has a particularly ‘black’ past. There are many Black and Latin ghettos in which dysfunctional families traditionally live. The influx of homeless people, drug addicts, the mentally ill, or simply armed thugs began in the south of the Bronx, separated by the Strait of Harlem from Manhattan, and spread further north, capturing about half of the district.
The Bronx flourished in the first third of the 20th century. The population of the area has grown from 200 thousand to 1.3 million people in 30 years when houses with columns and marble staircases were built along wide boulevards (Flood). The Great Depression slowed down the growth of the city, and from the 1950s its real decline began, which continued until the mid-1980s (Flood). During a baseball game at Yankee Stadium in 1977, ABC’s television camera showed the world a live broadcast of the flaming neighborhoods of the South Bronx around the stadium, and sportscaster Howard Cosell uttered the now-famous phrase: “The Bronx is on fire” (Flood para.1). This moment appeared to be defining of final decline and further revival of Bronx.
Everyone who had the opportunity to flee from the Bronx, leaving the once posh area at the mercy of bandits did it. The homeowners, realizing that their houses were no longer worth anything, set fire to their own property in order to receive insurance payments (Smith-Kang). The situation became ominous for the whole New York community, and the fire was a catalyst for taking immediate measures. The Bronx has a bad reputation until today; however, recently, change has come. Parks began to be laid out in the district, and new houses were erected on the site of the ghetto. In the Bronx, the crime rate has dropped markedly; experts associate the “great criminal evolution” with the policy of the former mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, who ruled the metropolis from 1994 to 2001 (Efron 34-37). Under his management, the police changed the strategy of combating criminality, introducing a number of innovations.
During this period, much attention began to be paid to enabling security in the Bronx. The first innovation is the CompStat statistical system – the introduction of this versatile computerized database made it possible to respond instantly to changing operational environments (Efron 39). The second one is the so-called “theory of broken windows,” which began to be implemented by the mayor and his team (Guimond and Walker 34). It establishes a logical connection between the devastation and littering of the environment on the one hand, and the level of antisocial behavior on the other (Guimond and Walker 34-35). In other words, if a teenager is surrounded by abandoned houses with painted graffiti walls and broken windows, and mountains of garbage are piling up on the streets, then with large probability, he will enter criminal groups.
It should also be noted that in New York, gentrification has reached almost all areas. In addition to the rapidly developing Brooklyn, South Bronx, the territory of which is closely adjacent to Manhattan, is also a subject of interest. Prices are below the New York average, and the authorities are planning to develop retail and residential areas, which will boost the development of the area (Evers 3-5). Earlier, in the mentality of US citizens, the ideal was to own a house in the suburbs with a mowed lawn, a good school, and a road to work downtown by a private car or train. The multi-story housing estates earned a negative reputation – in the mass consciousness of the middle class, they were a lot of the poor, migrants, and criminal elements. Recently, however, affluent Americans have begun to return from the suburbs to downtown and adjacent areas (Guimond and Walker 98-105). Basically, it is about young qualified professionals, white collars, for whom convenient access to work and entertainment is more important than a slow-paced life in boring suburbia. Thus, the new development of the Bronx, as well as the efforts of the security forces and social services after the fire, contributed to the development, gentrification, and decriminalization of the area.
Works Cited
Efron, Al. Bronx is Burning. FAIA, 2019.
Evers, Sarah E. “Altering the Urban Frontier: Gentrification and Public Parks in New York City,” 2013. Pitzer Senior Theses, Paper 28. Web.
Flood, Joe. “Why the Bronx Burned.” New York Post, 2010, Web.
Guimond, Catherine Claire and Richard Walker. “Battle For The Bronx: Neighborhood Revitalization In a Gentrifying City.” UC Berkeley, 2013. Web.
Smith-Kang, Sonia. “NYC Forgot the Bronx. Latinos and Blacks Saved it, Says New Documentary.” Culturas, 2019, Web.