One highlight of my recent honeymoon was an evening spent wandering Times Square with my wife. Like millions of visitors before, we came expecting lights, billboards and theaters, but also street life, which has greatly improved since I first visited in the 1990s. Breakdancers drew crowds with gravity-defying routines, drummers made concerts out of plastic buckets, and one particularly memorable moment involved a man offering two parrots. My wife held her arms out and they both flew onto them, rocking up and down. Simultaneously, a photographer—apparently independent from the parrot owner—captured an atmospheric shot of the moment. The whole experience cost $20—$10 to each entrepreneur.

The interaction captured what makes Times Square great. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of independent entrepreneurs mix with established businesses—in theater, hospitality and entertainment—to make memorable experiences for 50 million annual visitors. Times Square is America’s most recognizable attraction and known as the “Crossroads of the World.” 

But that was not the case decades ago. Older Americans remember a 1980s Times Square synonymous with urban decline: adult bookstores, peep shows, and drug deals, all of which contributed to more serious crime.

Its renaissance is linked to a few highly-visible interventions. The first was New York City’s quality-of-life policing and subsequent crime decline under Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s. Giuliani made Times Square central to his civic cleanup. 

Around that time, Disney made what proved to be one of the........

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