I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, you had me laughing out loud.
However, there's something you're missing: just how dynamic this city is. And I'm afraid part of that is the Manhattan bubble that makes it hard to see what goes on outside of there.
Namely, you mentioned a list of neighborhoods earlier that matched the litter-strewn image you alliterated to here. It's true that many are shitholes from an aesthetic perspective. Some of the local neighborhoods also have your common element of suspicious, aggressive people who seem to pay no mind to tossing litter, etc. And Brooklyn drivers seem to have this 'Neglectful Psychopath' sort of persona. And teenagers ride around on dirtbikes, shuffling zombies yell and moan in line in front of the methadone clinics, etc. We can continue forever painting these sorts of images.
But these places were neglected for so long, with a poverty rate so high. Meanwhile there's a breakneck pace of change. You didn't mention Cobble Hill, which was a shithole, or Fort Greene, which was a bang-bang shithole recently, nor Prospect Heights before Barclays Center, unrecognizable and cheap a decade ago, nor (let's keep going backwards), Williamsburg with its empty Bedford Ave (as little as the early 00's there was little of what there is today, as I recall going there for music lessons). Let's keep going backwards: the East Village was a litter-strewn shithole where you had to walk in the middle of the street to avoid getting mugged (Alphabet City, I'm talking about), now you have multi-million dollar condos going up between aves B and C! Let's keep going backwards: Soho, and even Greenwhich Village?
This city changes, and that's one of the themes of the article we're referencing. Some of the areas in Brooklyn making a comeback were once where the wealthy specifically lived (some of most beautiful, custom-stoneworked brownstones are around Putnam and Hancock in southeast Bed Stuy where investment bankers are now moving). Now that the city's attracting so many residents, there's outward pressure to expand and finite supply of housing in which to do so.
Bushwick will never be a Connecticut Country Club (unfortunately, because then I wouldn't have to avoid walking on dog poop all the time). But it's becoming more and more an area like the affluent parts of Brooklyn (slowly but surely), which themselves have met or exceeded your comfortable little corners of lower Manhattan (where I also lived 10 years). Even places with 40% poverty rates have condos going up and NYU grads moving there.
In fact, the pace of change is so breakneck that DeBlasio got elected on a platform to protect those most affected by the change. And that's a constant theme of the City Council too. Demand is so high, the demand is pushing these 'shitty' areas to improve. Gentrification is a topic on people's minds and a source of arguments all day, every day here.
I'm going long on your detested outer boroughs: I've bought a place. And yes, in the meanwhile I have to clean up the garbage of my neighbors as it floats into my yard.