Resetting and Reimagining New York City's Economy

When the economic crisis hit at the end of 2007, a raft of pundits proclaimed that New York City’s reign as the world’s leading global city was over.

Today, the degree to which New York has recovered from the recession is astonishing. In fact, it has rebounded not just from the most recent financial crisis, but from a series of blows over the past fifteen years or so—the terrorist attacks of September 11, the tech crisis of the early 2000s, and two significant hurricanes. Each time, the city emerged stronger than ever. Indeed, New York’s ability to attract investment and generate new, creative, high-tech industries has created such pressure on its real estate markets that its biggest problem is no longer an underperforming economy. Now, the city’s major concerns are its increasingly unaffordable housing market and the growing economic divide that helped carry Mayor Bill de Blasio into office in 2014.