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The New York of the Koch years is often romanticized, for understandable reasons. It was a bit like the Wild West of a century earlier, a seemingly lawless locale where just about anything could happen—and often did. From the East Village and the Lower East Side to Times Square and the Bronx, vast swaths of the city wallowed in near-abandonment. This created a kind of clear space for an up-from-the-streets vitality that resulted in the flowering of gay culture, hip-hop and punk. But the city Mayor Koch inherited from his predecessor, Abe Beame, was also an insolvent wreck, one whose decline Koch resolved to reverse. Although it took years after Koch’s final term for his policies to bear fruit, his administration laid the foundation for the safe, gleaming metropolis that is Gotham today.
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