...New York City suffered a tragedy that rocked the world

Twenty years later it's been devastated by covid-19

Yesterday was the deadliest day in New York...

...with more than 700 coronavirus deaths

The crisis in New York reaching a critical mass

After 9/11 the city came back stronger

What lessons can be learned from this revival...

...to help New York recover from covid-19?

I'm Jon Fasman...

...The Economist's US digital editor...

...and I'm also a New Yorker

In September 2001 I lived in Brooklyn

From this side of the river you get a perfect view of the financial district...

...where the twin towers once stood

The towers were right there where Freedom Tower is now...

...where that gap is now

The 11th of September that year started off as a beautiful day

But when I arrived on the east side of Manhattan...

...on my way to work, like many others, I saw a plane flying screamingly low

Shortly after I reached my office, the first plane hit

On that day, around 3,000 New Yorkers were killed

Many of the bodies were never recovered

Many of the scars will never heal

One of the many businesses hit hard by the tragedy was O'Hara's Irish pub

One of the closest bars to the twin towers

It's been here since 1983

Co-owner Mike started working here not long after it opened

When O'Hara's was a popular happy-hour destination...

...for local office workers...

...including many that worked in the World Trade Centre

There were about six of us in here when the first tower collapsed

In an instant this place was covered in dust and debris

It was like a snowstorm at night it was pitch black

And what was it like in the days that followed?

It was pretty miserable

You were devastated that your business was pretty much gone

And then it was tough finding out constantly that...

...guys you knew were killed

On top of the emotional and human toll...

...the physical damage was immense

O'Haras is here

One block south from the World Trade Centre

After the attacks, buildings all over this area were either destroyed...

...or severely damaged

This area housed 30% of Lower Manhattan's office space

100,000 workers were temporarily displaced

The city was given $20bn of federal funding...

...to rebuild Lower Manhattan

And two months after the attacks a new city administration...

...headed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was elected into office

New Yorkers have always made the sacrifices necessary...

...to achieve a better tomorrow

And there will be a better tomorrow

Dan Doctoroff was deputy mayor for economic development

We have to take this opportunity...

...and turn it into something that we otherwise wouldn't be able to do

The team didn't want to just re-build the 16-acre plot of land...

...that had been destroyed...

...but re-develop the whole city

It marked the start of a new era of huge municipal ambition

I've come to meet Dan...

...at the jewel in the crown of New York's re-development programme...

...Hudson Yards

What we found was New Yorkers wanted to make the city...

...greater than ever

They wanted to rebuild...

...and it was that attitude that when Mike Bloomberg and I and others...

...came into City Hall, I think we drove to try and transform New York

Built on the west side of Manhattan...

...on top of a storage yard for Long Island Rail Road trains...

...Hudson Yards is a 28-acre mixed-use development of shops...

...homes and businesses

So this right here is the headquarters...

...Warner Media now, KKR, Wells Fargo in New York

...as you go further down...

...it's a headquarters for BlackRock and Facebook in the next building...

...and then Pfizer in the building after that

And there have been literally, I think, maybe 70 or 80 buildings...

...built in this area over the last 15 years

This right here is a building I'm particularly proud of, The Shed...

The Times of London called it the coolest building in the world...

...and it's almost like a transformer

So what was here before...

Nothing, it was an empty, open rail yard

Transforming a derelict no man's land...

...into a glossy new neighbourhood wasn't cheap

Hudson Yards cost $25bn

To fund it Dan and the team had to get creative

We got money to rebuild lower Manhattan...

...but nothing for the rest of the city

The city was facing a massive budget crisis, I mean huge

And so we created the largest tax increment financing district ever...

...in the United States

...basically going to bondholders and saying, trust us, if you build it...

...they will come and they did...

...and you can see the results

There's been a massive amount of buildings built...

...which will generate the city an enormous profit into the future

But as the most expensive private property development...

...in American history...

...critics have accused Hudson Yards...

...of catering to a global elite rather than the local community

What do you think you got wrong?

You know, I think the biggest thing was the city became less affordable...

...more people came to this city than we accommodated...

...in terms of housing production

That's still the biggest problem New York has today

From 2010 to 2019, for every five new jobs created in New York...

...only one new unit of housing was built

Prices skyrocketed

You'd need to be a millionaire...

...to buy a one-bed apartment in Hudson Yards today...

...yet close to one in five people in the city live in poverty

This inequality was laid bare during the pandemic

Poorer communities suffered much higher covid-19 deaths...

...than their wealthier neighbours

And so we need a new model of inclusive growth...

...that actually responds to the inequities that we certainly...

...knew were here before covid, but are even that much more evident

But stimulating growth...

...is more of a challenge today than it was after 9/11

In the past year the city has received $14bn from the federal government...

...which is less than what it received after the terror attacks

Yet more than double the amount of jobs have been lost

Over by Ground Zero, businesses like O'Hara's have been hit hard

So what's it been like over the past year or so...

...since the pandemic for you guys?

Yeah, this one was a little tough...

It wasn't just our little area that was destroyed...

...the whole world that was down

What about government support during the pandemic?

Do you think there's been enough...

...do you wish the government had done something else?

I'm sorry what?

What about government support?

I'm sorry? Government support, truthfully, we really haven't had...

...anything out of that

At the start of the pandemic...

...the federal government launched a $944bn fund...

...for small businesses: the Paycheck Protection Program

But initially, only 12% of eligible businesses in New York City...

...actually received it

Many more have since...

...but those who got the loan didn't always see the benefits

You got the PPP loan to pay your employees

But nobody was open...

...so it just kept people off of unemployment...

...which they would have been getting...

...with the extra bonus the same money anyway

So it didn't help anybody in that respect

And then they came out with the big restaurant relief fund

You know, most people didn't get anything

Since the start of the pandemic...

...more than 3,000 small businesses in New York City...

...have been forced to close their doors for good

One area that has been especially hard hit is Chinatown

...a neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan...

...where nearly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line

It's an area that is often overlooked in times of crisis

After 9/11, roadblocks and subway closures...

...made it impossible to access Chinatown

For weeks, 75% of the workforce was out of a job

But at the time, loans were only given to those closer to Ground Zero

And many here waited months before receiving aid

Stop helping the rich

You know with the money going to the buildings...

...and the businesses and all

And stop robbing us, the poor

During the pandemic...

...the city did not learn from these post-9/11 failures

Parts of Chinatown were again left out of a loan programme...

...for small businesses...

...due to its shared ZIP code with more affluent neighbourhoods

Support didn't come until July 2021...

...well over a year into the pandemic

But there's another challenge facing Chinatown

Since the pandemic began an age-old problem has reared its ugly head...

...anti-Asian hate crime

In 2019, there was one case

In the first half of this year, there have been 102

Wellington Chen is the head of the Chinatown Partnership

A non-profit that supports businesses and the local community

And he's had first-hand experience of this rise in anti-Asian racism

Just a couple of months ago...

...about straight down the block at the end of this block

...a Chinese young man was walking home

And I see this stranger way in the back come running up to him...

...and he plunged an eight-inch butcher knife straight into his back

Today, Wellington is going shop to shop...

...handing out whistles to Asian-Americans...

...so they can alert others if they are attacked

We consulted crisis-management expert...

...and they said to us every time after a crisis...

...they need to find who's the devil...

...and they need to find a scapegoat to blame

And unfortunately, this time it's us with the Asian faces

After 9/11, it was Muslim-Americans who suffered

Across America, recorded anti-Muslim hate crimes increased from 28 in 2000...

...to 481 the year of the twin towers attacks

They started talking about terrorism and so on...

...and they started looking at me as if I was the one that did it

Back then, the NYPD launched mass surveillance programmes...

...targeting Muslims...

...often without proof of wrongdoing...

...a practice that has since been widely condemned

This time, however, the NYPD has created a task-force...

...dedicated to stopping anti-Asian hate crimes

But many in the local community still feel unsafe

It's causing a vicious cycle because the more anxiety you create...

...the less chance of people wanting to come out...

...and it cause the business additional hardship

So we now have a second virus that we have no vaccine for

To help communities survive tough times...

...it's clear affordable housing, support for small business...

...and effective policing are all essential...

...but that takes money

And it's here that the city faces another challenge

The outpouring of community after 9/11 kept people in New York

But this time many of the city's wealthiest residents have left

By February 2021, a year after the pandemic started...

...almost half the residents in New York's business hubs...

...had moved away

Just a 5% loss of New Yorkers making six figures...

...would result in an annual loss of $933m in tax revenue...

...roughly the amount allocated for the city's health department

New York has some huge challenges ahead

And while some post-9/11 re-development was a success...

...the city needs to learn lessons from what its leaders got wrong

In November 2021...

...New Yorkers go to the polls to elect the next mayor…

The likely winner will be the Democratic candidate, Eric Adams

An ex-cop, he has vowed to reform the police department...

...and help fight crimes against the Asian community

I'm not new to this fight

I'm not new to standing up on behalf of people

It doesn't matter of the ethnicity, this is still our city

He wants to expand local tax credits for low-income families...