[inaudible conversations] hello. Everybody. Excuse me. Hello, everybody. I hope you enjoyed your lunch. Were going to start. Good afternoon and welcome. Im sarah some snyder, the program ticketyear the william e. Simon foundation and absolutely delighted to introduce todays speaker, kay hymowitz. Shortly i will sit in attention with you as she discusses her latest book, the new brooklyn. What it takes to bring a city back. Foundation started supporting kay 13 years ago and i know that i speak on behalf of the foundations president , jim peerson, and my colleague, janice, and all those who couldnt join us today, in saying that supporting kay as the william e. Simon fellow the Manhattan Institute continue to be one of the proudest invests we make each year. A quick overview. She writes on childhood, family issues, poverty, and cultural changes in america, and has authored five very successful books. She has written for the New York Times, the washington post, the wall street journal, newsday. A highly south after presenter at conferences and sits on the board of National Affairs and the future of children. She holes degrees from brandeis and columbia universities and with a real estate may like that i dont know when she has free time but i know she makes it now that she is adoting grandma. Back when kay was thinking about what would become her previous book, manning up issue was in the throes of being on the new york single scene. I told her i was so perplexed by the radio silence i was now getting from the fellow is thought i was get along with that i was even checking the obituaries to see if his name popped up. Thankfully his name was not there and hasnt shown up and i wish him well. I did find mr. Right. And he worked through the manchild phase of life as kay coined in last book and were working on expanding our family for a second time. Thank you. But more than a year after i had mentioned my dating woes, kay asked if some could use the example in her book. That the point of my lite story. Its kays still to pick up on throwaway endses like my obituary store, collect them and weave them into a bigger puke tour of a trend in society that makes her an interesting scholar. Able to step back and see trends, negative and positive, that the larger public is taking for granted, too being to notice or doesnt want to acknowledge. Kay knows how to identify a problem in society, and make recommendations how to best address the trend with the interest of families the core. She developed recommendations that resonate across the aisle, across the sexes, across skip tone and fiscal brackets that is not an easy feat. Perhaps some of you share my inclination to drift off into a daydream when reading our listening to something that is too technical. I promise you wont do that today or anytime you have the pleasure to engage with kays work. That is another beautiful aspect of her writing. She seamlyless weaves evidence for policy recommendations into a story story that her audience is actually interested. In the new brock lynn paps they change of brooklyn and what impact that has on the local population. She helps the audience understand how this renaissance. The difference this time brooklyns change is based on Creative Construction rather than struggles industryization. E work ethic of the chinese in suns park, thehange manufacturing in the navy wards from goods to ideas, the slow but steady mobility of the jamaican population, the ghetto stigma, the hipster pop laying and theupies in park slope. She uses these to steer the policy so norms that can foster upward mobility. Housing, transportation, and education options. Its a page turner and youll be transported across the river but before i hand the mic over i encourage anyone who does not have a copy of the book to stop in the back and get one end of the luncheon, and a very favorable review will be published in the february 5th february 5th edition of the New York Times book review. So, as youll learn, anything with the name brooklyn in it is bound to please, and kay will be happen to sign them. Join me in welcome can somebody i greatlied admire, kay hymowit. [applause] well, im speechless. Fortunately i have some notes in front of me. That was much, much too kind, sarah. It has been such a pleasure to work with the simon foundation. In addition to being very generous towards me they are just great fun, and i feel very, very warmly towards the entire crew there, including sarah, of course. In 1982, my husband and i bought a house in the park slope neighborhood of brooklyn. When i tell people that these days, new yorkers in particular, or wanna bee new yorkers, guess this look in their eye and it looks a little bit to me like envy. So, i can understand why. Park slope, in 2010, the statistics guru, nate fisher, called it the best neighborhood in all of new york city. It is an amazing place to own a home but i really have to admit to you that we dont feel that lucky. Luckis the guy down the street who bought two houses. Of course in 1982, when i tell people i knew i was buying a house in brooklyn think didnt look envious. They looked alarmed. It was not the kind of place that a jewish girl from. Philadelphia should aspire to live in. People who could were leaving brooklyn for the suburbs, not vice versa and there were many moment of the next few years wondered what we had been thinking. I think of a moment in 1990 when the mother or my younger daughters class meat had a gun put to her head after exiting the q train. We took the q train a lot and still do. In a lot of respects the story off how brooklyn came to this state resembles what we heard during the past election season about the failing cities and towns of Trump Country in the rust belt and appalachia and i dont bring this up just because i, like everyone else, cant stop talk about the election. The parallel is real. For 100 years, from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th, brock lynn was thriving Industrial City. If you look with the way, eachoff you each of you has a map which doesnt show you where the east river is but you can imagine where it is. And if you look, you will see in the to the left of the middle is Prospect Park and just to the left of that this is park slope. Which is where i live all these years later. At any rate, brooklyn was a thriving Industrial City, and if you think of this waterfront from sunset park to red hook, going up the coast with me, all the way into the navy yard, williamsburg and green point, this part of brooklyn was really where the story was, because in the days before there were planes and trains, and automobiles, we were, off course, dependent on boats and brooklyn became a center, even of trade, even before we had the even before there were, you know, motor boats anything like that. All ships. The waterfront was crawling with bustling piers, warehouses and factories. Nearby were a variety of tenement neighbors, characterees is be irish, german, italian, or jewish immigrant residents and brooklyn was an Industrial Power house, something i had no idea of when i moved there. It had a multitude of coffee, shoe and textile factories, sugar refineries, dozens of brewers. Innovative trip to trip entrepreneurs, brooklyn invented chiclets, the teddy bear, benjamin and moore, paints and domino sugar, and in 1849, a chemist named charles pfizer, he invented such essential products of zoloft, lipitor, and viagra. Over the years, Like Companies like pfizer, employed millions of immigrants and brooklyn neighborhoods and businesses grew to accommodate them but the gulf of history is fixle and brooklyns fortunes shift in the second half of the 20th 20th century. The factories that sustained so Many Americans started to leave, not for china and mexico, as in the case today, but for far less crowded and more truckfriendly american suburbs and exus. In 1956 when the dodger owner broke the heart of every redblooded brooklynites dodgers to los angeles. By the 1960s the waterfront was becoming a sad, empty using shell of it former self. In 1966 the navy yard, which had during world war ii the largest and best known employer, was decommissioned. By the time i moved to park slope, about a mile away from the navy yard, it was home to a few operate can warehouses but mostly acres acres acres of emp, ferrell dog and the occasionol body reportedly dumped by one of brooklyns legendary wise guys. There were still plenty of holdovers at the time we moved in. Our next door nab were an elderly irish couple who had taken no borders, as so many did in the brownstone areas of brooklyn during the depression and in the decades following. They were now being paid by the city of new york to house elderly. Many of. The sick and moaning and that was the musical accompaniment of my childrens early years. Hopefully they cant remember it. In fact, brooklyn was actually losing population. Years later the writer hamel, who drew up in working class park slope would say about this time you heard it over and over in those days. We got get out of brooklyn. And you know what . A lot of people did. So, the question that i had in my mind as i approached this book was, how did the old brooklyn become the new brooklyn . The place that gq magazine called, and i still cant get read this without laughing the coolest city on the planet. How is it that when i moved to park slope, Liquor Stores havent bulletproof cages to protect the casheers and now have picture windows. How could we have got ton a point in history as we did in the fall of 2015, when the fabled bon marche spent a month celebrating brooklyn main ya with an exhibit called brooklyn gauche. How could they buy products made in brooklyn or worn or eaten by a brooklynite or a parissan idea of arooklynite. One final question. Why should anyone care what happened to brock brooklyn, its not a city. Its a borough. Has 2,600,000 people in a city of 3 million and a country of 330 million, whats the big deal. But i try to show in the book the reason is because brooklyn is a microcosm the decline of crime was really brought the the trickification second, the second domestic change that is worth noting is that the knowledge economy, as the name suggests, demands higher levels of education from workers as well as early Career Training in form of internships and associate positions. That was leading young men and women to delay marriage and parenthood until they were well into their 20s and 30s. These educated singles, who dont need much living space and dont care all that much about their scol districts test scores gravitated to Center Cities with interesting jobs, bars, christians, Art Galleries and Large Population of suitable roman romantic partners. The the same knowledge economy and educated young people are reshaping cities and ways of life in most advanced economies. From london to copen vancouver vancouver to washington, dc. Theyre moving into highrises with a roof top Swimming Pool and a gym. General theification as gentrification has launched a global esthetic. You can go to any western capitol and fine your gentrified neighborhood and will have the same kinds of wine stores, farm to table infusion restaurants, music clubs, and, again, Art Galleries. Its to be honest at times for travel, it its a little interchangeable. So, easy enough to poke fun the new class of urban folks, especially those hipsters, with their endless number of signifier, bark lane bike leans, pickles, slouchy wool hats and statement facial hair and i engage in a lot of that mockery myself. But the caricature misses sothing. They bringing innovation back. In brock lynn we are seeing the creative dynamism had disappeared from borough from the 1930s. Some moved into the spaces built by earlier generations of entrepreneur. Green point, pencils factually, for instance, has been transform into the headquarters of kick starter. In brooklyns navy yard where cap at thes and welders built battleships, makers or watching hightech manufacturing ventures. Look at, againat that waterfront i messenger evidence earlier. Along mentioned earlier, along the east river and new york harbor from green point in the north to sunset bark in the southwest. This is brooklyns socalled creative crescent where abandoned and underused warehouses are crammed with offices for 3d prisoner companies, biotech and Digital Design Companies with fantastic views of manhattan and the harbor. Many of these young Business People are what i call artist entrepreneurs. Theyre artists of all kinds who with the help of computers found a way to pursue they why making a decent living. Businesses designing, making and selling clothe ricer, jewelry, soaps and stationery and maps. And also a stunning number of new substances that are centered new businesses centered on food. Restaurants, beer halls, tea shops, small batch chocolates, grandknoll la, pickles mustard, syrups a takeout din tore service a welltraveled population with an adventurous pallet and little time to cook. Thats the good news. As they say. But the transformation from an old to a new brooklyn, from an industrial to a knowledge economy and gentrification itself hayes november been so kind to urban working class and the poor. Though you would never know it from the popular media coverage, almost a quarter of brooklyn lives below the poverty line. A similar number are on food stamps, while 32 have an income low enough to qualify for medicaid. In the past, an Industrial City like brooklyn could absorb these lower skilled immigrants into a Large Network of manufacturing and port companies. Dirty, tedious and sometimes dangerous jobs. But you didnt need an education to get one. In places like brooklyn you didnt even need to speak english or brooklyns idea of english. As tough as the jobs were, they gave a foot up on the ladder to the middle class. The question that i try to explore in this book is whether brock lip can off brooklyn can off the same foodhold to this generation as it did previous generations. Its a central theme. Brooklyn today is saying what is sometimes described as a manufacturing revival but unlikely to perform the same services as the old manufacturing. Traditional smokestack Assembly LineCompanies Require worker busy the hundreds or thousands. Todays tenologyically companiesed in only a small fraction of the number. President trump needs to take notice. The jobs in the wanted as require skills not in repertoire of the people most in need of work. Lowwage jobs, few benefits, up predictable hours, wait staff, hospital order earlies and janitors, thats the job mostly available now. Now, immigrants often take the jobs if not happily, then eagerly. Some 39 of brooklyns population is foreignborn. This is something you can easily forget again if youre just read about the histories of brooklyn. Like the boroughs immigrants most arrive very poor. Along the major avenues from the east river waterfront to the Atlantic Ocean you can find people from pakistan, afghanistan, bangladesh, haiti, trinidad, jamaica, to nick only a few. Will they thrive . I profile the two largest groups in brooklyn in two very different neighborhoods. The jamaicans in the southeast, and the chinese in sunset park to the west. And i try to address that question. The chinese are now the Largest Immigrant Group in the borough, a fact that would stun the folks who rooted for dem bums. In sunset park, newly arrived chinese are frequently living four to a room and working in restaurants inner in feudal conditions and i dont exaggerate. The devotion of the entire community towards education is so notable that newcomers learn the first word, harvard. The second word, stuyvesant. What i find in the chapter on. The jews did not flee, at least at first. Brownsville became an experience and integration, the failure of that experiment and the continuing it distress of the neighborhood are well worth understanding of more detail. That should give you a sense of the breath of the new brooklyn. I would summon up this way. Thirtyfive years ago after i moved to transitional park flow, much of brooklyns prospering presented a remarkable brooklyn vitality as a new well fed educated class takes full advantage of the knowledgebased hightech economy. Important workingclass immigrant neighborhoods the pictures cloudier. Its inaccurate to reduce this is a tale of two cities as a mayor has done. Their groups and individuals who will find pathways to the middle class, and who are not part of the inner city. The. The major task is for all of us to ensure that many more can move up in the future. Thank you very much. Pplause] that was terrific. She is happy to take some questions. Please wait for the mike. Heather. Thank you so much, you mentioned policing as a precondition for this transformation, were there other Government Policies that were necessarily only use the free market because its so loaded but how it other cities go about in my part of brooklyn, and the brownsville area it really was from the ground up. It was grassroots. This people like me moving in and finding ways to renovate their homes. So that was certainly not planned. However, there has been more planning going in as both city officials and developers began to realize what was happening. It took a while. One thing that the city did in the 90s was to give money and put money into the Brooklyn Navy yard. The buildings were in terrible disrepair. The elevators didnt work and nobody could do business there. They decided to upgrade the infrastructure. This was under giuliani. It took a little while but by the late 90s they were full. They were full, in part because of this a grassroots thing happening in williamsburg, a nearby creative communities where you had lots of young people who are intereste in going into the maker business, as they call it. It was a synergy in cases like that. There has been, as many of you probably know, some zoning drama in brooklyn, particularly in williamsburg which i described. One of the problems that brooklyn faces, and i think it is true for all of new york city and for cities all around the country that are similarly crowded, is that the zoning makes it impossible to really expand and create more