When he visited The Bronx for the first time as mayor on Jan. 4, Zohran Mamdani spoke about the new leadership at City Hall and how it would fit into his larger vision for the Big Apple over the next four years.
“Leadership unafraid to confront those who have mistreated our neighbors for too long,” Mamdani said, “leadership that travels to every corner of our city to expose wrongdoing, and leadership that understands that no longer can the Bronx be a forgotten borough in this city of five.”
It is no secret to many of the 1.4 million people who call the Bronx home that they have felt as if the rest of the city had seen the Bronx much as Mayor Mamdani said, a “forgotten borough,” over the last six decades.
Being forgotten often leads to ignorance of needs critical to a community. “Undersourced” is a term often used by Bronx residents, community advocates, elected officials, and others to describe critical issues such as police protection, air pollution, education, healthcare, and business opportunities.
But we believe the Bronx should not be called a “forgotten borough” any longer, and we intend to do something about it.
The time has come, at long last, for change in the Bronx — and it begins with a close examination of where the Bronx is now, how it got here, and how the city can end the cycle of neglect in the years to come. This examination begins today with the launch of “Our Forgotten Borough,” a joint project between amNewYork and the Bronx Times.
Over the next 12 months, we will put the Bronx under the microscope like no one else has before. We will take a closer look at how Bronx residents live, what the city has succeeded and failed to do to improve lives, and what can be done in the years ahead to ensure that the 1.2 million people who call the Bronx home are given every resource and opportunity they deserve to have.
The Bronx is beautiful, but too often overlooked. This is the greenest borough; about a quarter of the land is public park space. The Bronx is the birthplace of hip-hop and home to people from every corner of the world; no fewer than 27 different languages are spoken on the borough’s streets every day.
And yet, the images that define the public’s perceptions about The Bronx are too often negative. This dates back to the 1970s, when the city and country witnessed parts of the Bronx engulfed in flames as arsonists ran wild amid the fiscal crisis.
Promises have been made in the years since to rebuild the borough’s housing stock and reputation, but progress has often been too slow, or lacking.
How did the Bronx get to that point? Look no further than the Cross Bronx Expressway — the infamous seven-mile-long, traffic-filled trench that has filled Bronx ears with noise and Bronx lungs with diesel fumes.
When master builder Robert Moses rammed this traffic machine across the Bronx six decades ago, it ravaged entire neighborhoods and tore asunder communities that people had built over entire lifetimes. It forever scarred the borough and, over the next few decades, condemned it to miseries that have yet to be fully remedied.
The Cross Bronx helped fuel negative perceptions outsiders have of the Bronx today. The road, after all, put the needs of travelers before the needs of the communities through which they traveled. Beyond the off-ramps, communities where the road was constructed were plunged into staggering rates of poverty, setting the stage for the urban blight that would follow.
No single thing can undo the damage the Cross Bronx has caused, or reverse the decades of ignorance and neglect that The Bronx and her residents have endured. But through the “Our Forgotten Borough” series, we intend to reset the conversation, champion what the borough needs, and make sure that the people in power at City Hall, in Albany and in Washington, hear the borough’s voices and act in kind.
Each month, we will examine these key issues impacting The Bronx:
- Healthcare
- Transit
- Housing and Gentrification
- Emergency Response
- Politics
- Schools
- Green Spaces
- Food Access
- Street Vendors
- Music
- Infrastructure
At the end of our series in December, we will have told as complete a story of the borough as anyone has in decades. It is our hope that by then, we will have brought many of the critical issues facing the Bronx to the forefront of public opinion, and more importantly, gained the genuine interest of City Hall.
We seek not to focus on the negative, but rather to start a public movement among New Yorkers to no longer treat the Bronx as a “forgotten borough” that most only care to travel to while heading upstate or to New England, or to watch a Yankees game.
No other publication in New York City is so committed to telling this Bronx tale. Our team of reporters and editors is dedicated to showing the entire city how special the Bronx is, and how deserving its people are of the same resources, investment, and quality of life as every other part of New York.
And we hope the light we shine on the Bronx will be one too bright to ignore.
