Chicago vs. New York (Westchester, Lincoln: transplants, real estate, 2015)

[jdiddy]

Cool, bro.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Drover

Jeez. Nearly 10 years on and dementor is still at it...

Originally Posted by MassVt

I don't think that Dementor was an international traveler, though. At the time, he seemed pretty young, too...

Dementor was banned before I started around here. I have heard the name mentioned before. Is this what he/she was like?

[Gantz]

Just correcting some factual misconceptions some people have here, not really gonna argue one way or the other about which city is better.

Originally Posted by 4122

I guess NYC vs. Chicago is a matter of personal preferences. I haven't been to NYC, but here's some of the differences I've heard of from people who've been there:
NYC

-subways instead of metra (this is a negative for NYC to me)

Subway is the equivalent to Chicago El, but bigger (More ridership than all subway systems in the US combined), and consists of 468 subway stations. In addition, NYC does have its version of Metra, its huge, and is split into 3 separate agencies - Metro North, LIRR, and NJT with about 400+ stations combined.

Originally Posted by Beardown91737

On that same thought of being away from people, in Chicago, you can leave some of the densest areas by foot, and get that solitude. Chicago has parkland all along the lakefront. I haven't been to NY since the late 70s, but at that time, businesses in Manhattan were putting their garbage out front for collection, and I think their waterfront was more industrialized, but Lake Michigan is a better waterfront than the Hudson River in any case. Chicago also has a lot of park land in its interior.

NY has museums, Chicago has a museum campus in a park.

New York City has a lot of parkland. Actually, as a % of total city area, NYC has more parkland than most cities in the United States, and about double of what Chicago has, complete with various wild life including wild deer and American bald eagle, all within city limits. New York City also has more beach miles than any other city in the United States, more than Chicago, Miami, Long Beach, SF, Honolulu, etc. This is not that surprising if you know the geography of NYC.

One more thing... Chicago has land borders with many suburbs and the State of Indiana. If you need to get out of the city to buy cheaper gas, or cigarettes (if you still do that), or even a 32 oz soda, you can leave the city and do that. NY is surrounded by water in most directions, so the jurisdiction is more closed around you and you have less relief from city conditions.

New York City is located right across the river from the state of New Jersey, which is easily accessible by various bridges and tunnels, and public transportation including buses and subways. The gas in NJ is very cheap. Besides New Jersey that has cheap gas and takes about 5 minutes of driving, you can get to CT and PA from Midtown Manhattan in about the same time you can get from Chicago loop to Indiana.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Gantz

New York City has a lot of parkland. Actually, as a % of total city area, NYC has more parkland than most cities in the United States, and about double of what Chicago has, complete with various wild life including wild deer and American bald eagle, all within city limits. New York City also has more beach miles than any other city in the US, more than Chicago, Miami, Long Beach, SF, Honolulu, etc.

The common misconception is that it doesn't have a lot of park land and it does. You'll feel it more in other boroughs outside of Manhattan though but Manhattan has a number of parks other than Central Park. The difference for me though is in a lot of areas of Manhattan, the number of trees on a normal street. You can easily go down some streets where there's nothing in areas like Midtown. I like Chicago more in that regard.

As far as the coast line goes, that's true - though the beaches are really not in Manhattan. if I were to put Chicago versus just Manhattan for this, I'd pick Chicago. The stuff on Long Island though for beaches are nice (i.e. Long Beach) though so including all of NYC, I prefer those beaches to the one in Chicago. Unfortunately for those living in Manhattan, getting to Long Beach is a lot less accessible than someone living in Lakeview and wanting a beach.


Unfortunately for NYC, most tourists only spend time in Manhattan and when they speak of NYC, they only speak of Manhattan. There's some really great parts of NYC outside of Manhattan that are clean, not super expensive (still not cheap but not terrible), with a lot to do. I guess in some ways it's not that much different than people visiting Chicago and only staying downtown. It's just on a much bigger scale for NYC.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by marothisu

The common misconception is that it doesn't have a lot of park land and it does. You'll feel it more in other boroughs outside of Manhattan though but Manhattan has a number of parks other than Central Park. The difference for me though is in a lot of areas of Manhattan, the number of trees on a normal street. You can easily go down some streets where there's nothing in areas like Midtown. I like Chicago more in that regard.

As far as the coast line goes, that's true - though the beaches are really not in Manhattan. if I were to put Chicago versus just Manhattan for this, I'd pick Chicago. The stuff on Long Island though for beaches are nice (i.e. Long Beach) though so including all of NYC, I prefer those beaches to the one in Chicago. Unfortunately for those living in Manhattan, getting to Long Beach is a lot less accessible than someone living in Lakeview and wanting a beach.

I thought this was about NYC as a whole, not just Manhattan. Why narrow this down to just Manhattan, which is a downtown area of NYC, when talking about parks and trees? Surely we are talking about the whole city here to get apples to apples objective comparison. I live in NYC, inside city limits, I live literally 5 minutes walking distance away from the beach, I can see the ocean from my windows and my balcony. I use the boardwalk as a normal street to do my grocery shopping. Its like me saying "wow I have been to Chicago as a tourist and between the 50th floor of the Sears tower and the observation deck, I saw no trees and beaches, therefore Chicago has no trees"... Manhattan as a whole is like 20 sq miles, and the touristy area everyone visits is half of that, below Central Park... thats like what? 2% of NYC city limits? I don't think most tourists appreciate the scale of the city and talk of "NYC" when they only visited a tiny fraction of it.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Gantz

I thought this was about NYC as a whole, not just Manhattan. Why narrow this down to just Manhattan, which is a downtown area of NYC, when talking about parks and trees? Surely we are talking about the whole city here to get apples to apples comparison. I live in NYC, inside city limits, I live literally 5 minutes walking distance away from the beach, I can see the ocean from my windows and my balcony. I use the boardwalk as a normal street to do my grocery shopping.

No, that was my point. When most people who don't live in NYC talk about NYC, they are talking about Manhattan in the same way that when people talk about Chicago they talk about downtown. I thought that should have been pretty obvious from what I was saying.

Brooklyn has some nice beaches though - so I was also saying that if you were to only say Manhattan coast versus Chicago coast, i'd pick Chicago. However, including everywhere else in the mix - some nice stuff in other areas, especially Brooklyn.

[reppin_the_847]

Wow, the troll dude's posts got removed with the quickness!

Ironically, that would never have happened in the NY forum. I've seen far more offensive stuff over there and it goes unchecked most of the time. The Chicago forum is well policed (whether that is a good thing or bad thing) heheh.

[Allan Trafton]

It sounds as if the original poster is making an assumption that all of New York is like midtown Manhattan. It sounds as if he may like Brooklyn more than Midtown Manhattan or Downtown Manhattan. Neighborhoods such as Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens would be a good fit. Easy access to Manhattan, nice scale to the neighborhoods with building only 5 or 6 stories high, beautiful brownstones and classic apartments, streets with the right amount of foot traffic(not overbearing like 5th ave or Times Square) parks nearby(Prospect). The area reminds me of the north side of Chicago.

Even in Manhattan there are areas such as parts of Washington Heights and Harlem which are really nice and not too hectic. The blocks are clean, little or no graffiti and classic architecture, great mass transit, nice parks such as Inwood and Fort Tyron which have bluffs overlooking the Hudson River - really beautiful.

[Fareed]

Originally Posted by Gantz

Just correcting some factual misconceptions some people have here, not really gonna argue one way or the other about which city is better.



Subway is the equivalent to Chicago El, but bigger (More ridership than all subway systems in the US combined), and consists of 468 subway stations. In addition, NYC does have its version of Metra, its huge, and is split into 3 separate agencies - Metro North, LIRR, and NJT with about 400+ stations combined.


New York City has a lot of parkland. Actually, as a % of total city area, NYC has more parkland than most cities in the United States, and about double of what Chicago has, complete with various wild life including wild deer and American bald eagle, all within city limits. New York City also has more beach miles than any other city in the United States, more than Chicago, Miami, Long Beach, SF, Honolulu, etc. This is not that surprising if you know the geography of NYC.


New York City is located right across the river from the state of New Jersey, which is easily accessible by various bridges and tunnels, and public transportation including buses and subways. The gas in NJ is very cheap. Besides New Jersey that has cheap gas and takes about 5 minutes of driving, you can get to CT and PA from Midtown Manhattan in about the same time you can get from Chicago loop to Indiana.

Dude get real. It can easily take up to 1 hour just to get through Holland/Lincoln Tunnel or the GWB. Manhattan is an island and every exit off of it is essentially a traffic bottleneck. Chicago is way more manageable in terms of getting in and out of the city.

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by Fareed

Dude get real. It can easily take up to 1 hour just to get through Holland/Lincoln Tunnel or the GWB. Manhattan is an island and every exit off of it is essentially a traffic bottleneck. Chicago is way more manageable in terms of getting in and out of the city.

Why are you responding to my post with a completely different argument? This is not, at all, what I was talking about. Anyway Lincoln tunnel is only 1.5 miles long... it never takes an hour to drive it.