I was watching a show about street food and they talked to a hot dog vendor in NYC. He started with one cart in the early 1980's after serving in the Marines in Vietnam, and said that by the late 1990's he had the most street carts in the city with almost 200.
Then Giuliani passed a law that each person could only have one permit, and he lost his entire business except for one cart. He set up by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and got harassed by the cops for his location. He kept moving his cart a few feet to technically comply with their orders and eventually they arrested him.
His vignette ended with a shot of his hot dog cart right in front of the door of the Met, and he said he was going to keep working till he was 90, and that the cops still give him a hard time.
I can't imagine a more horrible, anti-human place to live than NYC. The time and money they put into harassing a productive business owner instead of solving the millions of problems that plague that place- astounding.
New York has the same problem LA which as heightened version of the problem all cities have. They destroy the old to make way for the new rather than adapting and retrofitting whats there.
The architecture of a city tells you a lot about it's policies, those that simply adapt or improve what's there are focused on having links to the past while trying to make it apply to the present while those that tear down the old for new, sterile glass buildings are more focused on progress for the sake of progress not caring for the consequences.