It became a ghost town because of the elites and their supporters like theatlantic.

Manhattan now is just a place where people from the outer boroughs, nj, connecticut, etc come to work and then go home.

For a city that pretends to "never sleep", it is just a dead city at night.

Queens, brooklyn, etc is more lively and other cities around the world like prague, barcelona, seoul, tokyo, osaka, etc are far more vibrant.

Manhattan is just a hellhole now for the world's wealthy and annoying tourists who are too stupid to realize that sbarro's isn't real ny pizza and all the worthless trinkets they buy are trash. But at least there is a bank every other corner.

The sad part is manhattan is a blueprint other cities love to copy so in 10 or 20 years, most cities around the world will be boring tourist traps like manhattan.