In September 2001...
...New York City suffered a tragedy that rocked the world
Twenty years later it’s been devastated by covid-19
Yesterday was the deadliest day in New York...
...with more than 700 coronavirus deaths
The crisis in New York reaching a critical mass
After 9/11 the city came back stronger
What lessons can be learned from this revival...
...to help New York recover from covid-19?
I’m Jon Fasman...
...The Economist’s US digital editor...
...and I’m also a New Yorker
In September 2001 I lived in Brooklyn
From this side of the river you get a perfect view of the financial district...
...where the twin towers once stood
The towers were right there where Freedom Tower is now...
...where that gap is now
The 11th of September that year started off as a beautiful day
But when I arrived on the east side of Manhattan...
...on my way to work, like many others, I saw a plane flying screamingly low
Shortly after I reached my office, the first plane hit
On that day, around 3,000 New Yorkers were killed
Many of the bodies were never recovered
Many of the scars will never heal
One of the many businesses hit hard by the tragedy was O’Hara’s Irish pub
One of the closest bars to the twin towers
It’s been here since 1983
Co-owner Mike started working here not long after it opened
When O’Hara’s was a popular happy-hour destination...
...for local office workers...
...including many that worked in the World Trade Centre
There were about six of us in here when the first tower collapsed
In an instant this place was covered in dust and debris
It was like a snowstorm at night it was pitch black
And what was it like in the days that followed?
It was pretty miserable
You were devastated that your business was pretty much gone
And then it was tough finding out constantly that...
...guys you knew were killed
On top of the emotional and human toll...
...the physical damage was immense
O’Haras is here
One block south from the World Trade Centre
After the attacks, buildings all over this area were either destroyed...
...or severely damaged
This area housed 30% of Lower Manhattan’s office space
100,000 workers were temporarily displaced
The city was given $20bn of federal funding...
...to rebuild Lower Manhattan
And two months after the attacks a new city administration...
...headed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was elected into office
New Yorkers have always made the sacrifices necessary...
...to achieve a better tomorrow
And there will be a better tomorrow
Dan Doctoroff was deputy mayor for economic development
We have to take this opportunity...
...and turn it into something that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to do
The team didn’t want to just re-build the 16-acre plot of land...
...that had been destroyed...
...but re-develop the whole city
It marked the start of a new era of huge municipal ambition
I’ve come to meet Dan...
...at the jewel in the crown of New York’s re-development programme...
...Hudson Yards
What we found was New Yorkers wanted to make the city...
...greater than ever
They wanted to rebuild...
...and it was that attitude that when Mike Bloomberg and I and others...
...came into City Hall, I think we drove to try and transform New York
Built on the west side of Manhattan...
...on top of a storage yard for Long Island Rail Road trains...
...Hudson Yards is a 28-acre mixed-use development of shops...
...homes and businesses
So this right here is the headquarters...
...Warner Media now, KKR, Wells Fargo in New York
...as you go further down...
...it’s a headquarters for BlackRock and Facebook in the next building...
...and then Pfizer in the building after that
And there have been literally, I think, maybe 70 or 80 buildings...
...built in this area over the last 15 years
This right here is a building I’m particularly proud of, The Shed...
The Times of London called it the coolest building in the world...
...and it’s almost like a transformer
So what was here before...
Nothing, it was an empty, open rail yard
Transforming a derelict no man’s land...
...into a glossy new neighbourhood wasn’t cheap
Hudson Yards cost $25bn
To fund it Dan and the team had to get creative
We got money to rebuild lower Manhattan...
...but nothing for the rest of the city
The city was facing a massive budget crisis, I mean huge
And so we created the largest tax increment financing district ever...
...in the United States
...basically going to bondholders and saying, trust us, if you build it...
...they will come and they did...
...and you can see the results
There’s been a massive amount of buildings built...
...which will generate the city an enormous profit into the future
But as the most expensive private property development...
...in American history...
...critics have accused Hudson Yards...
...of catering to a global elite rather than the local community
What do you think you got wrong?
You know, I think the biggest thing was the city became less affordable...
...more people came to this city than we accommodated...
...in terms of housing production
That’s still the biggest problem New York has today
From 2010 to 2019, for every five new jobs created in New York...
...only one new unit of housing was built
Prices skyrocketed
You’d need to be a millionaire...
...to buy a one-bed apartment in Hudson Yards today...
...yet close to one in five people in the city live in poverty
This inequality was laid bare during the pandemic
Poorer communities suffered much higher covid-19 deaths...
...than their wealthier neighbours
And so we need a new model of inclusive growth...
...that actually responds to the inequities that we certainly...
...knew were here before covid, but are even that much more evident
But stimulating growth...
...is more of a challenge today than it was after 9/11
In the past year the city has received $14bn from the federal government...
...which is less than what it received after the terror attacks
Yet more than double the amount of jobs have been lost
Over by Ground Zero, businesses like O’Hara’s have been hit hard
So what’s it been like over the past year or so...
...since the pandemic for you guys?
Yeah, this one was a little tough...
It wasn’t just our little area that was destroyed...
...the whole world that was down
What about government support during the pandemic?
Do you think there’s been enough...
...do you wish the government had done something else?
I’m sorry what?
What about government support?
I’m sorry? Government support, truthfully, we really haven’t had...
...anything out of that
At the start of the pandemic...
...the federal government launched a $944bn fund...
...for small businesses: the Paycheck Protection Program
But initially, only 12% of eligible businesses in New York City...
...actually received it
Many more have since...
...but those who got the loan didn’t always see the benefits
You got the PPP loan to pay your employees
But nobody was open...
...so it just kept people off of unemployment...
...which they would have been getting...
...with the extra bonus the same money anyway
So it didn’t help anybody in that respect
And then they came out with the big restaurant relief fund
You know, most people didn’t get anything
Since the start of the pandemic...
...more than 3,000 small businesses in New York City...
...have been forced to close their doors for good
One area that has been especially hard hit is Chinatown
...a neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan...
...where nearly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line
It’s an area that is often overlooked in times of crisis
After 9/11, roadblocks and subway closures...
...made it impossible to access Chinatown
For weeks, 75% of the workforce was out of a job
But at the time, loans were only given to those closer to Ground Zero
And many here waited months before receiving aid
Stop helping the rich
You know with the money going to the buildings...
...and the businesses and all
And stop robbing us, the poor
During the pandemic...
...the city did not learn from these post-9/11 failures
Parts of Chinatown were again left out of a loan programme...
...for small businesses...
...due to its shared ZIP code with more affluent neighbourhoods
Support didn’t come until July 2021...
...well over a year into the pandemic
But there’s another challenge facing Chinatown
Since the pandemic began an age-old problem has reared its ugly head...
...anti-Asian hate crime
In 2019, there was one case
In the first half of this year, there have been 102
Wellington Chen is the head of the Chinatown Partnership
A non-profit that supports businesses and the local community
And he’s had first-hand experience of this rise in anti-Asian racism
Just a couple of months ago...
...about straight down the block at the end of this block
...a Chinese young man was walking home
And I see this stranger way in the back come running up to him...
...and he plunged an eight-inch butcher knife straight into his back
Today, Wellington is going shop to shop...
...handing out whistles to Asian-Americans...
...so they can alert others if they are attacked
We consulted crisis-management expert...
...and they said to us every time after a crisis...
...they need to find who’s the devil...
...and they need to find a scapegoat to blame
And unfortunately, this time it’s us with the Asian faces
After 9/11, it was Muslim-Americans who suffered
Across America, recorded anti-Muslim hate crimes increased from 28 in 2000...
...to 481 the year of the twin towers attacks
They started talking about terrorism and so on...
...and they started looking at me as if I was the one that did it
Back then, the NYPD launched mass surveillance programmes...
...targeting Muslims...
...often without proof of wrongdoing...
...a practice that has since been widely condemned
This time, however, the NYPD has created a task-force...
...dedicated to stopping anti-Asian hate crimes
But many in the local community still feel unsafe
It’s causing a vicious cycle because the more anxiety you create...
...the less chance of people wanting to come out...
...and it cause the business additional hardship
So we now have a second virus that we have no vaccine for
To help communities survive tough times...
...it’s clear affordable housing, support for small business...
...and effective policing are all essential...
...but that takes money
And it’s here that the city faces another challenge
The outpouring of community after 9/11 kept people in New York
But this time many of the city’s wealthiest residents have left
By February 2021, a year after the pandemic started...
...almost half the residents in New York’s business hubs...
...had moved away
Just a 5% loss of New Yorkers making six figures...
...would result in an annual loss of $933m in tax revenue...
...roughly the amount allocated for the city’s health department
New York has some huge challenges ahead
And while some post-9/11 re-development was a success...
...the city needs to learn lessons from what its leaders got wrong
In November 2021...
...New Yorkers go to the polls to elect the next mayor…
The likely winner will be the Democratic candidate, Eric Adams
An ex-cop, he has vowed to reform the police department...
...and help fight crimes against the Asian community
I’m not new to this fight
I’m not new to standing up on behalf of people
It doesn’t matter of the ethnicity, this is still our city
He wants to expand local tax credits for low-income families...
...invest in underperforming schools...
...and improve public housing...
...and he has a pandemic aid relief plan...
...that aims to cut the red tape stopping people getting money today
But funding is going to remain a challenge
Mayor Adams, assuming he gets elected...
...is going to have to be really creative in coming up with resources...
...to make the kinds of investments...
...that give people confidence in the future of the city
What lessons did you learn from 9/11...
...that you think would apply to Mayor Adams’s first year in office?
Leadership really matters
Having a vision that inspires people really matters...
...bringing people back to this city matters
New York always comes back. It’s just a question of how long it takes
Thanks for watching
To read The Economist’s coverage...
...of the 20th anniversary of the September 11th Attacks
...click the link and don’t forget to subscribe