Editorial comment: Entropy in the big city

Building the infrastructure that serves the city has been the work of centuries. Wearing it down has been, too.

New York can seem like an ungovernable mess and a city that’s slowly being worn away.

But in the last couple of months there have been some small signs of hope in the Riverdale and Kingsbridge areas.

The city contains more people than 42 of the 50 United States and its budget, at more than $65 billion, is larger, far larger, than many countries’ gross domestic product, let alone government funding.

There are more than 1 million students enrolled in more than 1,400 city schools within those boundaries.

The city government employs more than 280,000 people.

And all of this is contained in an area of approximately 300 miles.

Building the infrastructure that serves the city, offices, courthouses, bridges, roads, sewers, the 1,400 schools and finding people to do the jobs related to them has been the work of centuries.

Wearing that same infrastructure to the nub has also been the work of centuries.

School buildings are often ancient, and many of them have the worn look of ever-increasing entropy. Every student who fidgets and strips the smallest splinter of wood from a desk or chair, or runs down the court to make a shot in the gym, contributes to a slow decline.

The subways rumble and when ceilings fall down, they stop. Look up at those ceilings and it becomes clear what an act of optimism every sortie on the No. 1 line is. Perhaps this suspension of disbelief as we pile aboard at the 242nd Street station is what suspends those ceilings for another day.

To become mayor, or even a councilman, is to place your thumb in the dyke as the waters slowly rise over the top.

So, when a road crew shows up on Broadway, or the feeder road to the Henry Hudson Parkway at West 246th Street, complete with the not-sosweet smell of tar and detours that drive everybody nuts, it’s a sign of hope. It’s a sign that our little part of the world hasn’t been forgotten. It’s a sign that the bureaucracy that is vaster than empires, but more slow, has remembered the northwesternmost outpost of this city made from 100,000 villages. That some kind of pulse still beats in the administrative heart of the city.

So, thank you Gotham for the fresh asphalt you have given us, and the new life granted to the suspensions of our vehicles as they make the daily trek over the Broadway Bridge and into Manhattan.

And thank you for this vanishingly small sign that, despite the chaos, the city still tries, however feebly, to renew itself.

This is part of the September 3, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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