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You're missing the point of the original post, though. It's not a question of whether they should or should not get a car. They CANNOT drive, because they are both visually impaired. That will be true no matter where they live. The question is, can two people who can't drive raise a family in NYC? The answer is yes. Would it be easier to have a car? Of course. But that is not an option for this particular couple.
Exactly.
Most of Brooklyn and Queens it's easier for a family to own a car. Can a family get by without one? Does it need one? No and maybe not. Posters may dismiss me as an out of towner, but I will dismiss them as someone who should spend more time in the rest of the country. Almost everywhere in NYC has frequent bus service with good coverage. Compared to Long Island or almost any other city, the difference is enormous. I think the OP will be able to find a neighborhood that fits them.Not sure, but I suspect many families own only one car and have neither the ability nor time to pick up their kid(s) so having their child walk or take transit might be a good choice.
As for the OP, I'd suggest Forest Hills and Bay Ridge. Subway nearby (Forest Hills is faster to Manhattan, though) and lots of buses and most local amneities should be in walking distaance. Some other parts of Queens and Brooklyn may help. Budget and workplace location would help.
I would say for Middle Class areas you can live without a car would be in Forest Hills, Flushing,Kew Gardens, and Rego Park in Queens and Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst in Brooklyn.
Thanks; this is the kind of info I'm looking for. I lived in Brooklyn (as you might guess from my handle here) until my parents moved to the Long Island suburbs. Finding part-time jobs in high school, and really doing anything socially, became almost impossible. Even out in easternmost Queens there are driveways in front of every house -- not something we want. Even if the commute is doable, if going to the supermarket requires a car, and half your friends have cars, it really makes you feel like you don't belong.
And this will go double for the Mrs., who will be moving to what is for her a foreign country!
(Patrix542, I think that in the outer boroughs, while you can get by without a car, not many people do.)
Private is out of the question; I hear it's up to $40k now! I shudder to think of how much it will cost five to ten years from now when our kid is ready. We're going to want to live somewhere where the public schools are decent.
I'll do just that; thanks! I made this post just to talk about the tribulations of being car-less and what non-rich folks do about that. Let me make another one where I can talk about our situation in more detail.
I'm going to give you bit more advice. Purely my opinion but before I do here is my background so you can take my advice with grain of salt. I grew up in NY. Queens, Long Island, went to public school in Queens and then Long Island. I spent 2 months in Kobe at Konan Daigaku during college years and part of that time was spent traveling Japan, including Kyoto so I know what you mean by something like Kyoto. If I recall, Kyoto had building restriction so couldn't have tall buildings, so almost all low rise, spread out, and was very walkable. More suburban feel than urban like Osaka. I also used to work in Education sector (Ed Tech specifically).
Now. To answer your questions about good public school district, etc. I really hate to burst it to you but the very few good school districts in NYC aren't all that good and the area isnot cheap to get into. Also due to your impairment, that list also narrows Keep in mind that despite what people say yes NYC school improves and so forth...it takes a while because while neigbhorhood may gentrify pretty quickly now in matter of 5-10 years. School doesn't move at speed of gentrification and fall behind. Also takes years for NY board of ed to decide to open new school zones, and change things around. By the time it happens, you probably wont benefit. Downtown Brooklyn, Hunters Point for example. DoBro is in middle of major gentrification and more families are coming in near by. hence school talk is on-going (will take years). Hunters Point gentrified years ago but I believe new public school is now opened up (took years).
Even then, I'm a strong beliver that public education in NYC still sucks. Even the best like tech high schools are meh and comparable to good schools in burbs. Also what I've learned is that K-3 is critical for child's education so early years are quite important just as much, if not more than high school, college years. K-3 forms education behaviors and patterns for time to come and if you fall behind K-3. It takes years to close the gap and some students never close the gap.
Lastly. Be very specific about your needs by listing out priority when you start a new thread with more information. If your kid's education through public school system is the highest then you may need to sacrifice some of things you are looking for and move out of NYC. For example, Syosset has express train that runs to city and there are plenty of houses near the train station. Also there are plenty of shops right near by train station like Rite Aid, and others you can shop. If you need to get a ride, you can use taxi service.
Nei, do we know each other? Your screenshot of Nishi-no-toin (西洞院) Street is really, really close to where we live! That area is west of the former Imperial Palace, and we're south of there, where the numbered streets are and where things are more lively. Kyoto is the opposite of Manhattan -- the north-to-south streets are the thin ones, with big numbered avenues going east to west. There are many streets that are only 2 to 3 meters wide and where if one of those dreaded automobiles tries to get through, they have to drive with caution lest their side mirrors break off.
My wife understands that there are very few places in the USA that are as pedestrian-oriented as any major Japanese city, but doesn't quite understand just how frighteningly expensive Manhattan is. Here, even single-family houses (if they were built before about 1960) go right up to the street line with no garage or driveway. I'd say that the average person here is a 'paper driver' who once learned to drive but never does. Plenty of people have never driven, and we don't feel the least bit out of place in never driving.
From my experience, only Manhattan and northern Brooklyn are like this. From what I know of NYC -- and I admit that I haven't lived there since around 1984 -- even in the outer boroughs there's a critical mass of car-owners, meaning that most public services presuppose automobile ownership.
BTW, if anyone wants to simulate what my eyesight is like, and you have a Mac, set your browser to the default font size (Command-0) and then press Command-+ four times. That's how big I need fonts to be to read them. There are far worse handicaps to have, but this one locks people out of a huge number of employment and social opportunities.
@livingsinglenyc - 4 or 5 years at most, but we wouldn't mind moving sooner. I'd move next year if it was possible. But we think we want to have our baby here, where costs wouldn't be a problem (we both have paid in for years to Japan's national system; moving to the US and having a child immediately without health insurance arranged would be stressful).
Now here's one thing that makes most of America unlivable for us: we both have impaired vision (that's how we met each other) and neither of us will ever be able to drive a car. There are plenty of places where you can still get by without a car, but because most people have cars, everything is built around automobiles. The last thing we want is to be socially ostracized when our child's friends' parents casually ask us to go pick someone up at school, or whatever. We want to replicate what we've got now, which is a neighborhood where everything is within walking distance, almost no one uses a car on a daily basis[/url]
Much of NYC isn't built around the automobile and have lots of people walking places. But there will some people, maybe the majority, using cars on a daily basis. Most shops in the outer boroughs don't have their own parking and the bigger more auto-oriented shopping centers have transit service (Queens Center has a subway nearby, Kings Plaza bus and maybe a subway, Atlantic Ave Mall isn't even auto-oriented, has nearly a dozen subway lines, underneath). You might have to orient your shopping more towards Manhattan and certain outer borough hubs.
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But the further out you get, the more cars you see. Anyone have any data (it's city-data.com, after all) on lowest rates of car ownership? And I mean non-poverty-related non-car-ownership, if that make sense.
Excluding Manhattan, the non-car owners will tend to be either:
1) Poor
2) Childless
The wealthier outer borough neighborhoods have more car owners, but not necessarily more car commuters. But many people walk at times, no one's going to be suprised to see a family walking on the street doing shopping.
Most of Brooklyn and Queens it's easier for a family to own a car. Can a family get by without one? Does it need one? No and maybe not. Posters may dismiss me as an out of towner, but I will dismiss them as someone who should spend more time in the rest of the country. Almost everywhere in NYC has frequent bus service with good coverage. Compared to Long Island or almost any other city, the difference is enormous. I think the OP will be able to find a neighborhood that fits them.Not sure, but I suspect many families own only one car and have neither the ability nor time to pick up their kid(s) so having their child walk or take transit might be a good choice.
As for the OP, I'd suggest Forest Hills and Bay Ridge. Subway nearby (Forest Hills is faster to Manhattan, though) and lots of buses and most local amneities should be in walking distaance. Some other parts of Queens and Brooklyn may help. Budget and workplace location would help.
Compared to the rest of the country, LI and NJ have excellent bus service. Yet people in those places typically have cars as well.
It really depends on factors that the OP cannot answer. Not all bus routes are 24 hours. You don't have frequent bus service all the time. Out in Queens, depending on where, you could wait 30 minutes or more for a bus depending on the route. Does the OP want to do this in the freezing cold of the winter?
If someone was never going to be able to drive, I would X out huge parts of Queens from consideration. Find areas within walking distance to the train stations, which also tend to have drug stores, grocery stores, etc within walking distance. People in the more suburban parts of Queens typically drive to do their shopping, but that isn't an option for the OP.
Boliqua's suggestions are okay. "I would say for Middle Class areas you can live without a car would be in Forest Hills, Flushing,Kew Gardens, and Rego Park in Queens and Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst in Brooklyn."
You might consider Inwood in Upper Manhattan. But since a lot of things can change in 4 to 5 years, why bother worrying about this at all? In 4 to 5 years you may no longer want to come to NY. Things we say about NYC neighborhoods now maybe completely irrelevant, as I've seen neighborhoods go through rapid changes in 4 to 5 years or less.
I spent 2 months in Kobe at Konan Daigaku during college years and part of that time was spent traveling Japan, including Kyoto so I know what you mean by something like Kyoto. If I recall, Kyoto had building restriction so couldn't have tall buildings, so almost all low rise, spread out, and was very walkable. More suburban feel than urban like Osaka. I also used to work in Education sector (Ed Tech specifically).
Despite being in Japan for over a decade, I've only been to Kobe once.
Kyoto has the rare combination of being mostly low-rise but still being very walkable; I think one reason is the very narrow streets. You probably remember the big avenues and big skyscrapers surrounding them in Osaka. Here we still -- despite the best efforts of the evil developers -- still have many pre-war buildings, since the US military never touched this cultural capital in WWII. There are subway lines but most transportation within the city center is by bus. I ride a bicycle to work every day, BTW.
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Even then, I'm a strong beliver that public education in NYC still sucks. Even the best like tech high schools are meh and comparable to good schools in burbs.
To be honest, school is the thing I've thought about the least. I'm more concerned with being in a safe neighborhood (the Mrs. is not ready for American crime levels) and getting a job that pays enough to live well. (Plenty of people under 40 make six figures in NYC; here almost no one does -- age stratification is a big deal -- but a middle-class salary goes further than it does in New York.)
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Lastly. Be very specific about your needs by listing out priority when you start a new thread with more information. If your kid's education through public school system is the highest then you may need to sacrifice some of things you are looking for and move out of NYC.
Forum etiquette question: should I post about our entire situation in a new thread, or make a post in the sticky at the top?
Much of NYC isn't built around the automobile and have lots of people walking places. But there will some people, maybe the majority, using cars on a daily basis. Most shops in the outer boroughs don't have their own parking and the bigger more auto-oriented shopping centers have transit service (Queens Center has a subway nearby, Kings Plaza bus and maybe a subway, Atlantic Ave Mall isn't even auto-oriented, has nearly a dozen subway lines, underneath).
This makes me very happy indeed. This may sound a little irrational to some people, but it erally makes me angry to buy things in the suburbs and see all those automobiles parked there for free, with the cost of the parking built into the prices of the goods, with everyone paying those costs whether they use the parking lot (or whether they can use the parking lot) or not.
And this info is exactly what I started the thread in order to find! Let me reproduce this one here, as it's very informative while still being a manageable size:
Washington Heights (includes Inwood; the map could use some more granularity neighborhood-name-wise)looks like a winner here. I've only been up there once -- the western half looked a lot nicer than the eastern half -- but it seemed safe enough and there were families around. And there's even that long bike path that I could take to work if my job is down in the Financial District (I'm in banking/securities, though that might change.)
(I see that Mott Haven includes Riker's Island. All those car-free prisoners are beinging the average down!)
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