I'm from Detroit and everyone says "Detroit is Different".

Maybe that's true - but Detroit is also 85% black. And I'm white.

Something went wrong in NYC back in the day. I think the LCN was too blatant and shameless. Guys showed up on construction/union jobs with no tools or no idea how to use tools. That couldn't go on forever. Forget about it.

Organized crime is meant to be 'one step ahead' at all times. Something fucked up in the Big Apple, ages ago. Where is the best city now? Chicago? LA? Vegas (LOL!)? Miami?

To answer the question in your thread title, I'm not sure about particular locales, but as far as industries go, military contracting is ripe for corruption. Look at what those guys Diveroli and Packouz were doing (basis for film War Dogs, which is a true story). The Department of Defense was handing out contracts like candy and looking the other way from where weapons came from. Literally anyone could have slinged rifles and ammo by the boatload to the US DoD and made millions doing it. This is akin to what Vegas was in its early days. Just get a front man, and boom, you're off and running. They finally cracked down on the weapons contracting but you'd have to be a fool to believe the laxed oversight stops there. War is big money, and the fix is in.

The mob played both sides of the fence. They had their hooks into non-union companies, too. Anyplace they could get over on someone.

Any place they could get control, or leverage. With the unions, they could force companies to buy their supplies, like the cement Castellano and Salerno sold to the 80's developers like Trump. If any of those builders decided to go elsewhere for their materials, the mob would have their unions delay everything. If they bought mob cement, the mob would call off the unions, and even let the builders use non union labor.