{"id":4266,"date":"2003-08-15T12:19:46","date_gmt":"2003-08-15T12:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4266"},"modified":"2003-08-15T12:19:46","modified_gmt":"2003-08-15T12:19:46","slug":"civic-renewal-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4266","title":{"rendered":"civic renewal in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was supposed to go to New York City today for a meeting at the Social<\/p>\n<p>Science Research Council, but I found when I reached the airport at<\/p>\n<p>6 am that no flights were leaving because of the huge blackout.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/08\/15\/nyregion\/15HIST.html\">New<\/p>\n<p>York Times<\/a>, the 1965 power failure &quot;was largely characterized<\/p>\n<p>by cooperation and good cheer,&quot; whereas the one in 1977 was &quot;defined<\/p>\n<p>by widespread looting and arson.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>In 2003, we seem to be back to civility. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/US\/Northeast\/08\/15\/otsc.greenfield\/index.html\">Jeff<\/p>\n<p>Greenfield<\/a> of CNN says he &quot;saw tourists pouring off those double-decker<\/p>\n<p>buses looking dazed and confused. People were offering them free glasses<\/p>\n<p>of water and restaurants were putting out food that was spoiled for<\/p>\n<p>free. I saw police officers politely asking New Yorkers, &#8216;Would you<\/p>\n<p>mind please getting out of the street.&#8217;&quot;<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"3\">When I was deputy director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.puaf.umd.edu\/civicrenewal\/\">National<\/p>\n<p>Commission on Civic Renewa<\/a>l, I developed an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/civic%20work.htm\">Index<\/p>\n<p>of National Civic Health<\/a>. INCH, as we called it, declined sharply<\/p>\n<p>in the early 1970s and then rebounded in <\/font>the 1990s. I have to<\/p>\n<p>wonder whether the three great NYC blackouts are evidence of the same<\/p>\n<p>trend. Three scattered events do not really make a trend. Besides, I<\/p>\n<p>have no specific data for New York City, and no INCH data at all for<\/p>\n<p>2000-3. Still, it&#8217;s interesting that New York has fared so much better<\/p>\n<p>in emergencies when the national civic health is higher. More than 1,037<\/p>\n<p>fires burned while the lights were out in 1977. In 1965, and again in<\/p>\n<p>2003, people took care of each other instead.<\/p>\n<p>(Incidentally, we couldn&#8217;t run INCH back through the 1960s, because<\/p>\n<p>we didn&#8217;t have enough data from those early years. But if you make an<\/p>\n<p>index out of the variables that we do have, then INCH declines throughout<\/p>\n<p>the sixties. That means that it was much higher in 1965 than in 1977.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was supposed to go to New York City today for a meeting at the Social Science Research Council, but I found when I reached the airport at 6 am that no flights were leaving because of the huge blackout. According to the New York Times, the 1965 power failure &quot;was largely characterized by cooperation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}