[Music] cities are theaters for Change and Innovation seats of power and crucibles of knowledge cities are the future of humanity by 2050 68% of the global population will be living in cities that are already bursting at the seams or moving into others that are yet to be conceived never before has it been so imperative to get the recipe right to create sustainable livable cities that Inspire and excite us all this is the the media capital of the world the cultural capital of the world the financial capital of the world when things happen here it gets noticed and it matters infrastructure housing public open space roads and trains and water and power art and culture and things that move our soul we're going to have a planet of 10 billion people to me the question is how do we do that in a way that lives in harmony with the resources of the planet creates social Equity creates opportunity as we race towards a more urbanized future there is much to learn from the present and the past from the now the how and the wow of building the greatest cities in the world New York City is a place for everyone most people think of New York as this giant city of 8 to 9 million people but for those of us who live here we have have our communities and our neighborhoods and it really gives a sense of belonging in this giant chaotic urban center people think of New York as this sort of cold Brash busy kind of place but they're simultaneously are like a thousand acts of kindness every day there's this sense that we're all in it together it feels like a miracle yeah we're a little brusk but most New Yorkers will help someone in need but just don't get in our way if you're coming out of the subway don't stop at the top of the stairs to look at your phone don't walk four people across the sidewalk we will cut through you like a battleship going through [Music] butter so this is New York New York the city so nice they named it twice the so-called capital of the world it's home to more than 8 million people near 1 million of whom are millionaires New York is perhaps the premier Global City it's a kind of a a symbol as a beacon of what a capitalist market-based Society can achieve downtown Manhattan specifically Wall Street is buzzing a global Hive for business Commerce banking and finance for more than 200 years attracting investors and Venture capitalists like bees to the proverbial Honeypot Wall Street is constantly innovating constantly coming up with new ways to provide money to provide liquidity it's the grease that lubricates the American economy needless to say the pursuit of profit here comes with a sky high price tag nothing is a more visible symbol of the driver's success than the skyline itself the cost of living in Manhattan in 2019 was 148% higher than the national average to buy a home here can cost upwards of $1,371 per 30 cm square and as for five figure credit card debt it's a burden one in five New Yorkers bear to ever so slightly misquote Oscar wild anyone who lives within their means here suffers from a lack of imagination Manhattan sitting at the head of New York Bay corseted by Two Rivers ships as big as its buildings birth here the city owes much of its early success to its location at the mouth of the Hudson New York City is here because of its harbor first and foremost and so that meant that we were a place of trade and commerce Manhattan became the business Hub because that's where the port was the original seport was down near the South Street seport at the foot of Broad Street to understand the early history of New York you have to understand that it was first called New Amsterdam that created a Trading Post in lower Manhattan in the 1620s Wall Street in during the Dutch period was actually literally there was a wall the lower tip of Manhattan was essentially a kind of a medieval city protecting the Dutch the colony was established by the notorious Dutch East India Company company the world's first multinational Mega Corporation valued in today's terms over $7 trillion more than double the combined worth of Apple Amazon and Microsoft today as they amassed their fortunes and built their monopolies these Wy Merchant Kings gave rise to capitalism which in a sense birthed our modern globalized world the Dutch viewed diversity as the key to profit by 1640 there are approximately 700 Souls living in the colony they're worshiping 13 religions and they're speaking 18 languages if you want to make money you diversify diversity equals Commerce it's a little tongue and cheek but Commerce is the god of Manhattan and nothing accelerates the building of a City faster than the religion of money economic success brings more people which generates more economic success and if you look at the lower tip of Manhattan after the Civil War it was a magnet for railroad Shipping Lines Stock bonds trading law firms or printing presses newspapers the corporations need to be near the finance people the factories need to be near the port for The Rail lines and the shipping they want to be near the seat of government so they can have some s say over policy it would drawn together they needed to be together to succeed in business requires you to be part of this really thick web of [Music] markets New York's the world's largest financial center in America they call it the Big Apple in 1811 the state actually working with the city decided that they needed a plan to encourage people to get beyond that because it was getting so crowded and so what they did was they came up with this idea of a rectilinear grid for the entire island of Manhattan up to 150 fth Street this master plan for Manhattan imposed a two-dimensional grid on land that was largely rural carving it up into 20028 blocks a task that would take many decades to complete the grid is designed to systematize New York repetitious and uncomplicated the grid was an urban p favored by Empire Builders since Antiquity Manhattan was swampy Manhattan was Rocky and it was probably as hilly as a city like Jerusalem or Rome but you see none of it today it was all leveled and the holes were filled in and the hills were knocked down so when you look down those long sort of Manhattan Vistas they're completely artificial you can see people you can see the sky you can see the river so I think that that just brings that sense of possibility that grid really encouraged people to invest in real estate because they knew that one day streets would be opened further north and people did they started acquiring real estate and building streets from 1785 to 1790 this city was actually the capital of America with a population nudging 340,000 little more than a century later it was overflowing with 3.4 million on January 1st 1898 the city of New York was born as we know it today 40 separate Municipal governments came together so that we could call ourselves the largest city in the world we wanted to be a little bit bigger than London so we converged all of these different communities it was hailed as the greatest experiment in municipal government the world has ever never known and even though that implies a certain level of uniformity the move never robbed the borrows of their separate identities there are stereotypical personalities to each burrow Manhattan you have the Posh stiff upper whip phenomenally wealthy Upper East Side simultaneous with the hip Bohemian Greenwich Village you've got the impoverished artist of the Lower East Side with the the internationally renowned multi- gazillion dollar Gallery owner of Soho 20 minutes away Brooklyn is amazing you've got the hipsters of Williamsburg living with the hdic Jews living nearby to Bedford styes and one of the most important African-American communities in the entire city second only to Harlem that L says we want out of New York City it's a lot of people that left Brooklyn mostly Italian and Irish but now there's a growing community of people from Sri Lanka and from India and wealthier Southeast Asians who've gone from Manhattan's Chinatown to Brooklyn's Chinatown to Staten Island the Bronx is the only burough that's connected to Mainland America so you've got this incredible connection to America for Commerce is where our giant fish market is our produce market our Meat Market that feeds New York City and then there's Queens Queens is the most diverse county in the United States more languages are spoken in Queens than any other place in the United States you can get food from every part of the world there you can walk out onto that sidewalk right now and you'll hear virtually every language known to mankind every accent America at the turn of the century men women and children streaming to her Shores from country R around the world for 16 million immigrants Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the golden [Music] door New York's Prosperity was and still is inextricably linked to immigration this is the most diverse place in the world and that's because we are so welcoming to everybody of course we have problems with gentrification and segregation today in New York but there's still this fundamental ethos of people from lots of different cultures and mindsets colliding and creating this kind of friction and energy in the city 3.2 million New Yorkers are immigrants they own half of the businesses in the city and contribute 228 billion dollars to its GDP immigration is something that New Yorkers I think are particularly proud of there's something about the Synergy the energy that you get by having all these cultures together we are connected to the world through our immigrants through our food through our theater through all of these incredible things that make us both Global and intensely provincial all at the same time New York at some level is a mirror and a window it both helps us see ourselves better and helps us understand the world better I want my city to always welcome Strivers from around on the world the tired the poor the huddled nasses that's what's on the statue in the harbor countless thousands of youngsters have thrilled to their first glimpse of her mounted on a pedestal of concrete and granite her body fashioned out of metal she is still every inch a warm inspiring symbol of man's faith and freedom dedicated in 1886 the 93 m statue in the harbor was a gift from France on the centenery of American independ dependence the seven spikes on her crown represent the seven continents and seven oceans the universal concept of Liberty it shows the ties our countries had the abandonment of slavery thus the chain around her ankle the tablets of the Declaration of Independence for millions of immigrants looking for adventure and opportunity or more accurately a safe haven far from their War ravaged homes lady Liberty became an enduring symbol of their story admittedly by appropriation not design she has nothing to do with immigration the Emma Lazarus poem was added in the 20th century give me your tired your poor The Wretched refu of your teaming Shores it's not original it was added it's one of those wonderful historic objects that through a twist of fate has become an icon representing the cornicopia of opportunity that would give rise to the Great American Dream if you make it here you can make it anywhere there's a great saying it said uh in the Lower East Side it's a process of 10 years there's this idea in 10 years you could go from nothing to the middle class or the upper class what's in the DNA of New York City is opportunity the important thing of course is that the heart of the city has a booming beat stronger than ever before times change and you either change your City to fit them or they'll change your [Music] city neighborhoods in the Lower East Side the late 19th century were literally the densest neighborhoods on planet Earth so the business district couldn't really expand kind of hammed in and the skyscraper fundamentally is a solution to a problem which is we need more land so what do you do figure out a way to make land in the sky this solution was a technological one it was the idea of using originally iron and then steel framing uh to create a structure that essentially released the walls from burying the load and once you have this skeletal structure of iron you could just go up zoning laws implemented more than a century after the infamous Manhattan grid really determined the three-dimensional shape of the city its vertical stratification one of the things that governed was uses where you can put commercial uses where you can put residential but it also governed bulk how big a building can be and what its shape can be and at that time people were worried that there were skyscrapers going up and there'd be no light and air left for anybody so it essentially took every block in New York City and assigned it a regulation that said how much land can you build in the sky how many times can you replicate that ground plane in the sky and that continues to exist until today the rise and eyes of Manhattan continued unabated even during the Great Depression in fact 1931 was one of the industry's most active years with 32 skyscrapers reaching their Zenith including the 102 story Empire State Building which remained the world's tallest for 40 years it housed so many businesses it was given its own ZIP code The Skys Graber is a cause and consequence of what I would call the sort of the urban economic imperative it's an inevit ility it is the path to the Future the demand for urban living the demand for working in central cities today is as strong as it's ever been so you cannot deny that Urban imperative New York is the concrete jungle it was destined to be but it's also a city of trees due in no small part to additional zoning regulations introduced in the 1960s many people in New York live on top of each other we don't have the luxury of the suburbs of you know front yards backyards so the idea of creating either pocket parks where they can go and sit under a tree or a Central Park where they can recreate and walk or go on a boat or bicycle is really really important so New York City has nearly 600 of these indoor and outdoor spaces called pops which stands for privately owned public spaces and they have been built over time since the 60s through the zoning regulations which incentivized developers to build these and exchange to build a bigger bulkier building than otherwise the regulations allowed for them to build clearly a quidd pro quoe that ticks everyone's boxes to really see the theater of public life to see all of the urban life unfold in front of you every day in New York happens in our streets or plazas or Parks those kinds of spaces are what makes City so great of course the ultimate space for New Yorkers to embrace their inner aten bar is Central Park a prime example of visionary urban planning I can't imagine Manhattan without Central Park 843 Acres of green space in the middle of some of the most valuable real estate anywhere in America we were very smart when we put Central Park smack in the middle of this very dense Manhattan which has really given us breathing room this is a place with breathing space and Elbow Room and music and hot dogs and innocence for visitors and New Yorkers alike the 843 Acres of green Countryside called Central [Music] Park if New York is truly the Big Apple then this is its magnificent core attracting around 42 million visitors per year larger than the principality of Monaco it also features 93 km of hiking trails and 9,000 wooden benches to take pause and catch one's breath when you go to Central Park there these outcroppings of rock Manhattan schist which goes just miles into the Earth and Manhattan schist is incredibly hard to Dynamite especially in the 19th century New York is built on the rock of Manhattan Island and that means blasting it was cost prohibitive to remove it to build buildings by converting it to park space and enhancing the property value of the four sides of the park we made a democratic space for people of all ethnic and economic backgrounds to mingle in [Music] nature over the years this vibrant green space has had to Winter the whims of the volatile Greenback Central Park has always been at the mercy of City budgets recession and high inflation the city itself was pretty broke in the mid 20th century by the early 80s Central Park was a shambles a lawless and dangerous ruin by all means run in the park preferably by day in a few short decades this National Treasure became a National Disgrace so Central Park and other parks in the latter part of the 20th century figured out a model where they could actually bring private investment in and now much of Central Park is actually privately operated by a Conservancy it's fantastic the Central Park Conservancy have done a spectacular job of bringing private money money to restore the park for public use the city still gives it some money and still oversees it but the biggest parks in New York including Cress by Park and others are now operated privately from tarnished gem to sparkling Jewel Central Park has never looked more resplendant than it does today contributing enormously to the overall livability of the city to me the term livability it's a way of saying it's a city for people or that it's designed with people in mind it's something that makes our everyday life more [Music] complete one of the things that is really interesting about New York is that you get so many characters of neighborhoods and so you can create your own story it's Village living if you can create a city where most people can walk within 15 20 minutes to achieve 80% of their needs drop their kid off to school get fresh groceries get their mother health care that's a wonderful way to live it's really about thinking about mixed use in a productive way creating neighborhoods where residents can work and play and what that means is you're sort of bringing the mountain to Mohammad right you're you're actually starting to build places of work closer to more affordable neighborhoods with technology we're seeing uh the multi noal City really flourish this has always been true in places like London and the San Francisco bear at many nodes but in New York now you know we're we're designing an office building on the waterfront in Brooklyn where you never ever would have seen an office building even 10 years ago this Dynamic island of stone and steel and people continues to change its face as the building boom goes on it cannot fail to inspire a sense of awe at its Mighty [Music] symmetry the Waterfront used to be a place where industry happened but as the shipping industry changed and those uses went to other places in the region we've reclaimed our Waterfront and made them parks and housing and jobs repurposing public spaces is a big movement definitely has taken the Forefront in a lot of cities these days and most of the global cities are either on rivers or on coastlines New York City has more shoreline and access to water than any other city in America's our Harbor defines us our Waterfront defines us it's our greatest natural asset and we're reclaim it and learning to live uh better with it I think New York City has done a wonderful job of repurposing its waterfront and so what you'll see now is a ribbon of parks right the way around Manhattan took us till this Century to figure out that you want to have parks around the rim of water when you don't need to use it for commercial uses so that's one thing that I think New York really can bring to to other Global cities now that the water is so much cleaner than it was the Shad are swimming up the Hudson again as they haven't for decades we now have a new uh New York City fairy system that's connecting the five burrows it's really tapping and using its resources in different ways and S of re imagining how to use them that also relates to the whole idea of the Highline the Highline was something that was later to be taken down uh used to be for Freight in the meat packing district and it became the steric structure over time through Advocates and through City support they were able to save that structure and transform it into this green ribbon really in the sky opening in 2009 the Highline has become a celebration of advocacy art and nature and now welcomes over 48 million visitors a year it's definitely a unique experience compared to other Open Spaces because you're elevated so your vantage point of the city is a very different one than you see from at ground level on Parks and plazas it has really brought brought another perspective about what public space can be in New York it's a gem that we almost lost or didn't have in New York City when New Yorkers seek sanction in their pocket parks and Gardens they're most often than not trying to find an antidote to this arguably some of the most congested city streets in the world almost 32,000 km of roadway connect the five Burrows of New York 40,000 intersections 14,000 parking met 11,400 traffic lights and more than a million street signs New York City is a city of congestion and there's a seaf fairing uh Captain who said he'd rather cross the Atlantic in a Squall than broadway at noon congestion is the bane of every driver's existence in New York City something the state intends to mitigate with the introduction of a controvers commcial congestion tax the police department is installing technology to scan and photograph the license plates of all vehicles coming on to the island from 2021 if you want to drive your car in Manhattan below 60th Street you'll be slugged with a 12 to $14 fee we've seen such rapid changes in the last 10 years that we did not see in over a hundred years and there are changes in so many directions at once it's the micro deliveries it's the Bike Share pedestrian Plaza scooters Uber lift came on the scene and we saw traffic speeds all of a sudden drop from that 6 7 7 and 1/2 M an hour to 4 and 1/2 5 m an hour it's like a scene out of network screaming out their windows are mad as hell do something about it doing something about it for many many years was actually Sam's responsibility a job that gave him way more street cred than most cities plus math plus science equals traffic America still has a percentage of cars to the population far exceeding any other country which makes her problems just that much more complicated so what a boom this highway will be to the average man in New York who is also the average motorist 40 years ago 1980 uh there was a Transit strike and I said the grid could lock up we could have gridlock the word soon became one word and I became the father of gridlock I got chills up my why every time I hear a president of the United States or some leaders in Europe use the word [Music] klock in a former life gridlock Sam was a taxi driver back in the 50s I would liken a cab driver in New York to a bartender you had conversations with your cab driver your cab driver gave you advice on life back then cab licenses or rather medallions were strictly limited and worth a small fortune The Medallion at the beginning of the decade 2010 was exceeding a million dollar but in recent years ride share Services have seen their value plummet so these people's livelihoods were destroyed almost overnight Uber and lft and others have destroyed particularly taxi systems so cities should have their eyes wide open and prepare for that and have good Alternatives and don't abandon your transit systems and don't abandon your taxi cab industry to really take the pressure off these often gridlocked streets many believe the city needs to lift its game beneath [Music] them this Subway was never designed to accommodate a regional population of 20 million people really at this point the system should probably be twice as big as it is but it has only opened about two or three new stations in the last 30 years be that as it may when you crunch the numbers it's still an impressive piece of infrastructure it has a world record setting number of stations 472 in all connected by 416 km of track and it carries around 1.6 billion passengers a year this city would not exist without its Subway the subway is what allows us to be New York City to have such high density living there are many cities around the world that have built metros and yet they're for a certain class of people the best transit systems are not the transit systems built for the pool the best of the transit systems built for everybody there is no doubt that the subway needs a reand better access better lighting a better ride and the city has earmarked the congestion pricing Revenue to help pay for the long overdue upgrade just think about how a good subway system allowed us to expand allowed people to have better lives for their families they didn't have to live literally next door congestion pricing will take $1 billion a year it has to raise a billion dollar a year that goes right into Transit that 1 billion when it's bonded turns into $15 billion and we're hoping for 100 billion over the next decade and that we will have a wonderful [Music] system the subway is not the only organism spreading its multicolored tentacles into New York's alien Subterranean World there are many other entities competing for the hidden real estate it's really a spaghetti like group grouping of pipes under there which to most people are completely unknowable some of them are Telecom some of them are power some of them are water and they all lie at various depths sometimes they're very near the street and sometimes they're further down and those are all separate from the actual Subway there's over 880,000 km of cabling for telecommunications enough electrical line to reach halfway to the moon and over 12,000 km of pip for sewerage so New York City like many Northeastern cities in the United States has a combined sewer system if you were to build a city today you would separate out your storm water and your sanitary sewage your domestic sewage but back then they didn't really think about that and that has a lot of challenges when there's a particularly high intensity rainstorm thinking about rain Coastal storms and sea level rise there's more you know direct flooding right into the river so we've been investing billions of dollars in upgrading that system and reducing those overflows into the harbor one of the great strategies that we've been doing is is green infrastructure and bio swes and tree pits and other means of collecting storm water so it's diverting it from the sewer system and not causing those overflows instead of digging a hole and putting a pipe in and having that toine your sewer system using natural flow Overland stream systems retention basins that's helping to reduce flooding in certain neighborhoods but also naturally filtering uh contaminants as well as an alternative to the traditional sewer systems we've all heard the great Urban myth about alligators lurking in New York sewers but the animal you're more likely to encounter in the system is this little beady-eyed critter rats are dennissance of sewers the world over we are certainly in the York a rat trop I would never want to live on the bottom floor of an apartment in New York because I've heard that your rat problem is ridiculous we allowed ships in and we never really thought about rats being on those ships where would a rat want to live in a city all around the world sewers and rats go hand in hand it's pitch black of course down in the sewer they don't need much light their world is all about feeling and touching and smelling and of course eating you take this simple litter Bass on the street that nobody pays any attention to but the fact of the matter is if we don't choose a litter basket style correctly all night long they will be feeding the rats so here in New York City we have a a basket called the big belly and we took the old litter baskets out we put the new litter baskets in and the Rats left the park it was that successful it was no more food simple the number of rats in New York City is conserv conservatively estimated to be around 2 million possibly five or 10 they're multiplying too fast and for the city to do anything they they could take over if they wanted to I mean it's it's sick and it's ridiculous rats are public health menaces without a doubt and we can't take that lightly the latest weapon in the war against rats is technology remote sensors that detect the presence of vermin allowing for Swift and targeted extermination but that's not going to be enough either so you know to get really rid of the rats we're going to have to have increased sanitation from the city itself which as it turns out is no small ask even from the largest Waste Management agency in the [Music] world the trash capital of the nation is New York City the men in Machinery are beaten almost before they begin the cleanup job and every 24 hours another 30,000 tons hits the pavement New York's title is safe the garbage capital of the world the worst piece of infrastructure in New York is our waste management system meaning garbage your garbage goes out anytime after 400 p.m. and is generally collected before 7:00 a.m. the next morning so if you're walking around in an area that has a lot of residential tall buildings after 400 p.m. you will often see bags of garbage that are waiting to be collected you're talking about 25 30,000 tons of waste each day the average New Yorker throws away 11 kilos of trash a week over the course of a year that collectively amounts to 14 million tons costing the city $2.3 billion a year to dispose of we just generate way too much trash if we started composting you'd see an enormous reduction in the amount of solid waste the city creates we need to become a circular city where the inputs and the outputs start matching each other we're just way behind the all on us we've set a Target to to get ourselves to a zero waste commitment by 2030 which means we need to be diverting all of that waste out of landfills that means pulling out all the recyclable material and make getting that to Marketplace in a different way the Spectre of garbage is unlikely to disappear in a New York minute but on a happier note there is nothing but praise for how the city manages and distributes its [Music] water New York City made a dramatic investment in the future by building the aqueduct system building the reservoirs in upstate and securing New York City's water future New York has an amazing system of water and it gets its water from north of the city from three separate Reservoir systems that bring water down into holding tanks and it's delivered through tunnels to individual homes and businesses 4.9 billion lers of water enter the system each day with 97% of it reaching the city through gravity flowing downhill via an ingenious system of underground aqueducts the Romans themselves would envy most of it still comes to the city unfiltered it's that clean to ensure the system continues to function for another Century at least the city is currently investing in a proactive upgrade and with good [Music] reason this was the moment when Sandy struck 90 mph winds slicing through New York streets in 2012 hurricane Sandy gave New York a shocking reality check revealing its vulnerability in the face of climate change hurricanes don't often sweep through here this one took the Atlantic in with it sh low my hand under water and heran Sandy was the worst natural disaster we've ever faced 199 billion dollars in Damages 44 lives lost across the city nobody was prepared for it now we're trying to figure out how can we prepare for the next one don't mess with Mother Nature that's correct don't mess with Mother Nature the city has been thinking about big problems for its entire history but only recently have we really begun to do that in a comprehensive way in the mayor's office thinking about the challenges that we face and where we want to go we are divesting our Pension funds from fossil fuels we have sued uh big oil for the damages that we've seen here in New York City all of that is really a comprehensive climate strategy that we think other cities should undertake as well we're a city that's been built up over decades and centuries and so a lot of our infrastructure is aging and needs to be replaced whether it's our sewer and our Wastewater system whether it's our transportation Network the transit system and the Subways all of it is being rethought in this era of climate change and we have a lot of work ahead of us to to Really adapt that infrastructure for the future Fortune is currently favoring the Bold there appears to be plenty of money in the pipeline to pay for new pipelines but this hasn't always been the case in the city that never sleeps rising out of the East River the famous New York skyline a city with a budget bigger than many countries yet incredibly despite all its wealth New York within a matter of weeks may be bankrupt one of the difficulties of the 1970s is that large corporations were drawn to Connecticut and New Jersey and we lost a lot of our corporate tax base New York's Apple if you will was beginning to rot and I find no substantial sentiment to bail out New York City half a million manufacturing jobs disappeared by the middle of the decade 1 million New Yorkers were on welfare the city became if you will addicted to borrowing money from Wall Street to cover operating expenses by 1975 the city was on the verge of bankruptcy unable to pay its operating expenses or take out a loan if the city declared bankruptcy it would have been a nightmare it was in debt to the tune of $1 billion and forced to lay off 16% of the municipal Workforce policing and sanitation took a big hit as a result most Americans say that's the trouble with New York they know how to spend money but not how to handle it crime rates and economy go hand inand and which one comes first depends on the time in 1975 581,000 Park was an openair drug Market Grand Central a seedy Flop House and nobody willingly rode the subway for fear of being mugged New York is really the center of our uh civilization what we need to do is revive New York City New York is a 24-hour vibrant Rich City it may have more Crime Victims than Wyoming has people but as they'd say here who wants to live in Wyoming when Julian came about in the mid 90s with ideas about how to restore uh order maintenance to society strategies in mind comstat was uh a way to bring accountability back to local law enforcement uh Executives at the precinct level as opposed to having strategies from top down suddenly the NYPD could analyze crime data in real time and and respond accordingly so you didn't have to wait till the end of the month to figure out what the crime trend is somebody at One Police Plaza read that you had a crime Spike overnight you didn't wait till it became a trend you addressed it the next day and and we made decisions in policing based on that data how we enforced where we enforced what techniques we used another change mayor Giuliani introduced saw the NYPD working as one rather than many departments it wasn't always that way right Municipal Police and they had Regional Police throughout the Burrows and they had Housing Authority police Transit Police that went away administrations were merged so you didn't have different Chiefs with different uh goals since preventing crime was in everyone's best interest it made sense to Giuliani and Bratton that everyone contributed crime prevention through environmental design was actually adopted by a lot of planning organizations government planning uh real estate planners private stakeholders started taking actions to uh improve the environments that they were responsible for lighting made streets and parks safer Hedges instead of fences enhanced appeal and lo and behold the situation improved New York regained its Mojo I don't think you can compare NYPD to any Police Department in the United States there was a point where homicides in New York City topped 2400 I think last year was under 300 that's a huge difference in crime rates when crime goes down we see we see real estate values go up when real estate values go up then governments see Revenue Stream New York City has made an extraordinary turnaround from one of the most notoriously dangerous cities in America to one of the safest in the world the economy improved and tourism didn't just flourish it boomed the Iowa of New York campaign New York as the Big Apple the idea that you can come here and fit this beautiful red object in your hand take a bite out of it and it's tart and sweet and savory all at the same time was an utterly brilliant campaign over 60 million tourists came to New York City in the last year 60 million people we're hosting people from all over the world constantly and that's a good influence I think so for every resident there are three tourists I mean that's how exciting New York is to people in the 21st century big parts of New York like Bradway theater would die without tourism tourism is absolutely crucial it's one of the most important industries in New York it is employing hundreds of thousands of people if not more there will always be tourists who come to a city like New York to shop there'll always be tourists that will come to a city because they want the Michelin three star restaurant experience but there also a number of tourists who want to come to a place to just experience that qu and at the top of their list is Times Square what do tourists come to see they come to see light and action and so that's what the zoning code really caters to you can see how much real estate has been devoted to them if you look it's now practically all pedestrianized for them by law all the buildings in Times Square must be brightly lit and even though the Billboards utilize the latest in energy efficient LED technology it still costs a ball dropping 24,71113 per day to Dazzle the lights are so bright even astronauts can identify the hot spot from space you couldn't pay me any amount of money to go there under Year's Eve I've Had The Good Fortune to be there once and never again when 9/11 happened New York was physically and emotionally shattered process what happen deal with the aftermath and support each other it affected um many New Yorkers I think most with a sense of uh togetherness Community resolve and resistance to that type of uh violence New York City has put itself on a a brand new trajectory and we have figured out how to recover from that event and to really be stronger in the face of the kinds of threats that that we know are coming the struggle in the post 911 world has been how to create a secure City that's still a public city and I you know I think we've gotten there the city has really gone back to its normal Cadence and its normal Rhythm we're all trying to figure out how do you create a city that's safe and is resilient in the face of terrorism but also something that still feels like a city that feels like you know the place you wanted to come to and not a fortress the reinvention of the World Trade Center and the landmark Oculus building which Services the Subway have clearly achieved this designed to resemble a bird flying from the hands of a child it brings a sense of hope to a sight of tragedy a functional Memorial that truly reflects the resilience of the city and its citizens the Oculus has been a demonstration that we can do inspiring places for infrastructure sure in New York we actually connected that place that used to feel very insular back into the City and you can go and have lunch and you can go and remember and you can go and reflect about life and the city it's such a striking place it's a place of innovation and I think that that's what the original WC Center was but also a place now of remembrance and a place that feels part of the city and that everyone has access to New York continues to step into the spotlight to show the world what it takes to endure uniting as one to create solutions that potentially help us all the future is working with each other working in teams developing new ideas we can't just sit back and wait uh to see what the trend is going to be we need to be out in front helping drive that Trend it's a bit like watching the sausage being made you know the the outcome is going to be fun you just don't want to see what goes into it human beings have a natural desire actually to be with one another and learn from one another and live together and I think cities are really the outcome of that desire so whether that's new business opportunities whether that's new ways of collaborating whether that's the way that we bring ideas all across the globe and launch them out back across the globe it's because we're all so close together and interacting so often and so much that makes this such a dynamic place to be