Bloomberg makes last speech as mayor: 'New York has never been stronger'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/18/michael-bloomberg-new-york-final-speech-mayor

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Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire entrepreneur who led the post-9/11 recovery of New York and reinvented the role of mayor over three terms in office, on Wednesday paved the way for his exit by pitching himself as the figurehead of a global urban renaissance.

In his final speech as mayor, a post he took up less than four months after the World Trade Center attacks, Bloomberg contrasted the fortunes of America's most populous city today with its paltry state when he took up residency there in 1966. For the first time in more than 60 years, he said, more people are moving into New York City than are moving out.

“New York City has never been stronger than it is today and our future has never been brighter,” he said. “The golden age of the suburb is over and it's being replaced by a renaissance of the city.”

The speech was the climax of a legacy tour this week in which Bloomberg, 71, has visited all of New York's five boroughs to highlight what he sees as his transformational impact over the past 12 years. Stung by criticisms of his polarising influence aired during the election of his replacement, the billionaire has been openly billing his administration as “the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities”.

Certainly, there are several striking achievements to point to. New Yorkers' expected life span today is 2.2 years longer than the US national average – thanks in part to the pioneering smoking ban in bars and restaurants and the mayor's war on obesity.

The murder rate has halved during his mayoralty, a sharper decline than in most other US cities. Bloomberg also rezoned huge parts of the city, allowing Manhattan's skyline to soar again and the much-neglected waterfronts of Brooklyn and Queens to be reclaimed with walkways and parks. Hundreds of miles of bike lanes were introduced, sometimes to the pique of out-of-borough drivers, as well as the largest bicycle share scheme in the US, CitiBike.

But for all these evident strengths, Bloomberg leaves office vulnerable to the accusation that he presided over a divided city. Having wrested control over education from New York state, he leaves behind the largest school system in the US still struggling from poor standards, demoralised teachers and failing schools.

His controversial ramping up of stop-and-frisk provoked complaints of victimisation from minority communities. That, and the rising inequality that marked the era, allowed the Democratic liberal Bill De Blasio to run a successful bid to succeed him by directly criticising Bloomberg, whose personal wealth now stands at $31bn, under the rubric of “a tale of two cities”.

Much of Bloomberg's last speech – delivered appropriately around the corner from Times Square, which he turned into a pedestrianised plaza – stood as a thinly-veiled warning to De Blasio not to unpick the advances made during his term in office. “I'm hopeful that the next administration will succeed as I plan to live here for the rest of my life,” he said archly. “But that requires all of us to understand there are no free lunches.”

Bloomberg devoted most of the address to exhorting De Blasio to stand firm on public sector pensions, the cost of which has escalated from $1.5bn in 2002 to $8.2bn today. He said that he had presented the next administration with a firm hand by refusing to sign a new contract with labour unions unless they agreed to pension reform.

“If the city holds strong to its position, the labour unions will come to the table,” Bloomberg said.

Without mentioning him by name, Bloomberg implicitly appealed to De Blasio to stand above the immediate cut and thrust of party politics. “The future that most elected officials worry about is their own. But we cannot afford for our elected officials to put their own futures first. We need them to look ahead."

Bloomberg's swansong was in equal measure a justification of his past and marketing for his future. When he steps down from public office on New Year's Day, a mere untitled billionaire once again, he will devote much of his time to a new venture in which he plans to export his style of leadership to cities across the US and around the world.

Bloomberg Associates, as he is calling his private consultancy, will be what the New York Times has called an “urban SWAT team” that will be called in by struggling cities to help solve their knotty problems absolutely free of charge. It will be staffed by many of his top advisers from city hall, including Amanda Burden, who spearheaded the city's building boom, and Janette Sadik-Khan, who oversaw its transformation into a Mecca for cyclists.

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