5 ms·

The U.S has come a long way since then. I wonder what happened to all those drug addicted people - where do they live now?

kloncks 16y ago
There are still significant parts of New York City where these sights are common. [edit] By "these sights", I am responding to the question on where "Drug Addicted People" go. "These sights" = "Drug Addicted People" not the specific content of these pictures.
- catshirt 16y ago
  care to elaborate? new york city is fascinating.
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  I live in New York and I've never seen anything as gruesome as this photos.
  - kloncks 16y ago
    Someone asked where these druggies moved after these photos were taken. I just said there are still areas in New York City that can have these characters. I was responding to that specific question. It's not like you can't find druggies on the streets anywhere in NYC. Just because a lot of the city has cleaned itself up doesn't mean there isn't anywhere that's still in ruins. An example: Some areas of The Bronx are still run-down, no?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - sudonim 16y ago
    Agreed. I live in New York too. I go all over the city. I have not sought out the "Worst Neighborhood", but I have been to sketchy neighborhoods in all the boroughs and nothing looks like those pictures.
  - danbmil99 16y ago
    I lived in NYC during the entire period these pictures cover. Obviously not every block was like this, but the presence of 'urban decay' was undeniable. The incidence of street crime was much higher, and the general sense of potential danger was palpable. "Taxi Driver" is an excellent depiction of the mood of the city during this era.
quinndupont 16y ago
That's not true. American economic disparity is at its worst point since the 1930s. It made a slight recovery in the 1980s, but has been slipping ever since. The rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. This is not unique to New York city.
- nazgulnarsil 16y ago
  no, the rich and poor are getting richer. it's just that the rich are getting rich faster.
- cletus 16y ago
  This depends on your timescale. The fact is, if you're going to be poor or work a menial job there is no better time in history to be that way than now. The standard of living amongst even the poorest in the developed world is better than that of the richest just a century or two ago. Life expectancy, literacy, access to technology and financial freedom are unparalleled. Does that mean the gap between rich and poor isn't widening? No it doesn't. But rather than focus on the disparity between the poor and the mega-rich, why not just examine the circumstances of the poor? Who really cares if there are more billionaires than ever (a function largely of inflation)? What's more, society is far less classist than it has ever been. Throughout history you've had the aristocratic classes. If you weren't born to them, too bad (with very few exceptions). Now? Some of America's richest people were born to nothing (Gates, Page, Brin, Buffett, etc). There are certainly advantages to being born to parents who are better off than poor: better access to education, the fact that the right choices made by parents tend to be repeated by their children and so on. So maybe we should have less hand-wringing about how badly the poor have it in the developed world and look at a real problem like how badly the poor have it in the developing world where diseases than are for us either extinct or simply nuisances routinely kill and many can't even get access to clean drinking water.
  - quinndupont 16y ago
    There are statistical challenges for determining a good metric for poverty, but it doesn't take a lot of insight to recognize that poverty in United States is considerable: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbers.html http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbe... Levels of inequality are important for many reasons: notions of justice and respect, regressive taxation, access to quality education, etc. The Nation commissioned a symposium on the matter: http://www.thenation.com/article/36894/inequality-america http://www.thenation.com/article/36894/inequality-america Many developing nations have far worse poverty than United States, but the cause is often rather unsurprising: US and global destabilization of economies, forced "liberalization" and economic reform (that end up tipping the already vulnerable citizens into extreme poverty), etc. Class is, in fact, as entrenched as it ever has been. The list of rich people you mention (white men, all of them) were all born of considerable privilege (parents were millionaires or at least upper class). Even a quick look on Wikipedia will tell you this much. This is a common misconception about wealth in the US. The old Horatio Alger story that Americans' want to believe in. Here's a few examples of just how bad some Americans have it (no one with a conscience should need such a reminder, but evidently some do): http://www.pbs.org/klru/forgottenamericans/ http://www.pbs.org/klru/forgottenamericans/ http://southernspaces.org/2010/worst-times-children-extreme-poverty-south-and-nation http://southernspaces.org/2010/worst-times-children-extreme-... This list of examples could, of course, go on forever.
mschwar99 16y ago
I don't know about New York, but in DC gentrification is pushing many of the urban poor to the older suburbs like Prince George's County in Maryland. As the process continues it might be that some of the first suburban areas built in the 50s and 60s become the new "inner cities." Transportation costs serve as a pressure to drive people back into re-developed spots in the city and next lowest cost of living are many of these first suburbs that haven't seen development and investment keep up with the times.
- Duff 16y ago
  That process started happening in NYC decades ago, depending on how you define suburb. Suburbs are awful places to be poor, as you need to be able to maintain a car to get by. Parts of Nassau county and even Westchester (ie. Southside of Mount Vernon) have been rough for a long time. Ditto any of the cities in North Jersey, which have been swallowed up and discarded by the greater New York metropolis.
- peterwwillis 16y ago
  Portraits of the 16 people killed last month in PGC: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/31/AR2011013106019.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...
- petercooper 16y ago
  This has already happened in a significant way in many European cities (often fuelled by downtown destruction during or post WW2). The suburbs of St Denis, Sarcelles and Aubervilliers in Paris are good examples or the manufactured suburb of Thamesmead in London.
watchandwait 16y ago
A lot of the physical decay in New York in the 1970s was the result of rent control, which led to abandoned buildings as landlords could not operate the buildings at a profit. At one point the city owned 70% of Harlem.
- danbmil99 16y ago
  Blaming the state of affairs in NYC in the 70's on rent control is simplistic in the extreme. Rent control (and rent stabilization) are questionable policies for sure, but they were around since WWII, and every tenement owner was aware of the state of the rent roll when they bought the apartment buildings (so the ramifications were built into the price). The truth is that a confluence of bad policy and economic conditions converged to create the mess our cities were in during that time. Some cities (Detroit, Baltimore?) have yet to recover.
jorgem 16y ago
Well we do have over 2M people in jail in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

kloncks 16y ago

There are still significant parts of New York City where these sights are common. [edit] By "these sights", I am responding to the question on where "Drug Addicted People" go. "These sights" = "Drug Addicted People" not the specific content of these pictures.

catshirt 16y ago
care to elaborate? new york city is fascinating.
chrisaycock 16y ago
I live in New York and I've never seen anything as gruesome as this photos.
- kloncks 16y ago
  Someone asked where these druggies moved after these photos were taken. I just said there are still areas in New York City that can have these characters. I was responding to that specific question. It's not like you can't find druggies on the streets anywhere in NYC. Just because a lot of the city has cleaned itself up doesn't mean there isn't anywhere that's still in ruins. An example: Some areas of The Bronx are still run-down, no?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- sudonim 16y ago
  Agreed. I live in New York too. I go all over the city. I have not sought out the "Worst Neighborhood", but I have been to sketchy neighborhoods in all the boroughs and nothing looks like those pictures.
- danbmil99 16y ago
  I lived in NYC during the entire period these pictures cover. Obviously not every block was like this, but the presence of 'urban decay' was undeniable. The incidence of street crime was much higher, and the general sense of potential danger was palpable. "Taxi Driver" is an excellent depiction of the mood of the city during this era.

quinndupont 16y ago

That's not true. American economic disparity is at its worst point since the 1930s. It made a slight recovery in the 1980s, but has been slipping ever since. The rich are getting richer, and the poor poorer. This is not unique to New York city.

nazgulnarsil 16y ago
no, the rich and poor are getting richer. it's just that the rich are getting rich faster.
cletus 16y ago
This depends on your timescale. The fact is, if you're going to be poor or work a menial job there is no better time in history to be that way than now. The standard of living amongst even the poorest in the developed world is better than that of the richest just a century or two ago. Life expectancy, literacy, access to technology and financial freedom are unparalleled. Does that mean the gap between rich and poor isn't widening? No it doesn't. But rather than focus on the disparity between the poor and the mega-rich, why not just examine the circumstances of the poor? Who really cares if there are more billionaires than ever (a function largely of inflation)? What's more, society is far less classist than it has ever been. Throughout history you've had the aristocratic classes. If you weren't born to them, too bad (with very few exceptions). Now? Some of America's richest people were born to nothing (Gates, Page, Brin, Buffett, etc). There are certainly advantages to being born to parents who are better off than poor: better access to education, the fact that the right choices made by parents tend to be repeated by their children and so on. So maybe we should have less hand-wringing about how badly the poor have it in the developed world and look at a real problem like how badly the poor have it in the developing world where diseases than are for us either extinct or simply nuisances routinely kill and many can't even get access to clean drinking water.
- quinndupont 16y ago
  There are statistical challenges for determining a good metric for poverty, but it doesn't take a lot of insight to recognize that poverty in United States is considerable: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbers.html http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbe... Levels of inequality are important for many reasons: notions of justice and respect, regressive taxation, access to quality education, etc. The Nation commissioned a symposium on the matter: http://www.thenation.com/article/36894/inequality-america http://www.thenation.com/article/36894/inequality-america Many developing nations have far worse poverty than United States, but the cause is often rather unsurprising: US and global destabilization of economies, forced "liberalization" and economic reform (that end up tipping the already vulnerable citizens into extreme poverty), etc. Class is, in fact, as entrenched as it ever has been. The list of rich people you mention (white men, all of them) were all born of considerable privilege (parents were millionaires or at least upper class). Even a quick look on Wikipedia will tell you this much. This is a common misconception about wealth in the US. The old Horatio Alger story that Americans' want to believe in. Here's a few examples of just how bad some Americans have it (no one with a conscience should need such a reminder, but evidently some do): http://www.pbs.org/klru/forgottenamericans/ http://www.pbs.org/klru/forgottenamericans/ http://southernspaces.org/2010/worst-times-children-extreme-poverty-south-and-nation http://southernspaces.org/2010/worst-times-children-extreme-... This list of examples could, of course, go on forever.

mschwar99 16y ago

I don't know about New York, but in DC gentrification is pushing many of the urban poor to the older suburbs like Prince George's County in Maryland. As the process continues it might be that some of the first suburban areas built in the 50s and 60s become the new "inner cities." Transportation costs serve as a pressure to drive people back into re-developed spots in the city and next lowest cost of living are many of these first suburbs that haven't seen development and investment keep up with the times.

Duff 16y ago
That process started happening in NYC decades ago, depending on how you define suburb. Suburbs are awful places to be poor, as you need to be able to maintain a car to get by. Parts of Nassau county and even Westchester (ie. Southside of Mount Vernon) have been rough for a long time. Ditto any of the cities in North Jersey, which have been swallowed up and discarded by the greater New York metropolis.
peterwwillis 16y ago
Portraits of the 16 people killed last month in PGC: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/31/AR2011013106019.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01...
petercooper 16y ago
This has already happened in a significant way in many European cities (often fuelled by downtown destruction during or post WW2). The suburbs of St Denis, Sarcelles and Aubervilliers in Paris are good examples or the manufactured suburb of Thamesmead in London.

watchandwait 16y ago

A lot of the physical decay in New York in the 1970s was the result of rent control, which led to abandoned buildings as landlords could not operate the buildings at a profit. At one point the city owned 70% of Harlem.

danbmil99 16y ago
Blaming the state of affairs in NYC in the 70's on rent control is simplistic in the extreme. Rent control (and rent stabilization) are questionable policies for sure, but they were around since WWII, and every tenement owner was aware of the state of the rent roll when they bought the apartment buildings (so the ramifications were built into the price). The truth is that a confluence of bad policy and economic conditions converged to create the mess our cities were in during that time. Some cities (Detroit, Baltimore?) have yet to recover.

jorgem 16y ago

Well we do have over 2M people in jail in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...