It's a Catch 22. NYC is a popular place for people to visit and to live in. That means a huge demand, but supply is limited by geography. There is a finite amount of NYC to go around. Density is already high, and can only be increased so much before you start decreasing the quality of life substantially. All that means rising prices. One way to keep the demand low is for a neighborhood to be rundown, to not be safe etc. If you fix those things and make a neighborhood more desirable, you increase demand, and thus it is no longer affordable.
I think you misspelled Corporate Banks shifted invested from inner cities to white suburbs in the 50s and 60s and the result wasn't pretty. Yes, inner cities probably never been super pretty, but decades of neglect are a problem, which self-perpetuates itself after a while. No, it isn't easy keeping everything nice, but these areas have been left to rot for unpleasant reason. And the people living there want something to improve.
Even if we assume that what you write about corporate banks is true, how is it in any way responsive to my point, which is - in a nutshell - about supply and demand, and that a scarce resource that is in high demand will command a premium price.
Socialists try to pretend that laws of supply and demand do not apply.
Yes, that is what I already said. Which is also part of the reason I don't get why there is this fear, seeing that the 'simple solutions' aren't simple and it isn't possible to enact changes like they are magic.
Just because the policies Genosse Zohran advocates are not going to work does not mean he can't implement them and cause a great deal of damage in the process. Just like how tariffs do not work in the way Trump envisions them, but he can still impose haphazard tariffs and damage our trade relationships.
Ending food deserts won't be profitable, so how do you make it work.
How do you even define food deserts? According to
Annie E. Casey Foundation, NYC does not have a major problem with food deserts.
Annie E. Casey Foundation said:
Among the states with the greatest share of residents living in low-income, low-food access areas (formerly called “food deserts”) in the United States, nine of the top 10 are located in the South, according to a 2025 analysis of historical data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas. Mississippi ranks first, with 30% of its residents living in these neighborhoods, followed by 29% of New Mexico’s population and 26% of Arkansas’s population. States in the Northeast, including New York (4%), Rhode Island (5%), Vermont (5%) and New Jersey (5%), are among the least likely to have residents living in areas with limited food access.
That's statewide. That website links to an USDA map of food deserts using different definitions.
NYC looks pretty good actually. Only relatively small patches of orange throughout the city. Which means places where people are between ½ and 1 mile from the nearest grocery store. Most of the city is <½ mile.
This is certainly not something necessitating socializing grocery stores.
How can the situation be further improved? Reducing crime against stores (shoplifting, robberies) would make it more desirable to open stores and keep them open. Educating the residents on how to cook with fresh ingredients would increase demand.
When we discussed this same issue upthread, I think it was southernhybrid who mentioned urban gardens. I think it's a great idea, esp. on rooftops, away from most of the pollution. It would improve access to fresh vegetables and it's something for kids to do to keep them off the streets.
Because I wouldn't vote for the guy trying to get the racist vote.
Why "racist vote"?
YES! Inner cities all have this problem.
Not all cities are the same.
Access to food, banking, services is problematic because they live in areas where profitability of these things is almost a certain loser. But they still need access to these things.
So what's your solution? As I said in my first statement, if a neighborhood improves, demand for it increases and so do the prices. Improving quality of life and improving affordability are in tension as it is impossible to optimize for both.
Effectively, he needs grocers to step up. Work something out. It'll cost money, but being an establishment guy, he'd know that and have the right pieces in place to forge some sort of solution. Mamdani probably won't. It'll take him a year maybe to just get the wheels rolling.
I agree. He'll probably open those five stores, but they will struggle to function well. Especially since NYC is already well covered with grocery stores according to the above map.
Life is too damn short to worry about windmills.
I'd take a windmill over a mosque any day of the week, and twice on Fridays.
