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Way to cut to the heart of the issue. Does any other city have a core that residents of the city, or even the metro at large, rarely ever venture to?
Now understand that the VERY predictable response to this is going to be "Well, there are people from the city who rarely, if ever, go to Brooklyn." And that's true. I rarely ever go to Times Square. Yet we all recognize it's a place that draws people from all over the region. The same could be said for parts of Brooklyn only to a much, much lesser extent. Places like Jersey City, on the other hand, might be a slightly larger regional draw than Staten Island. And even then it's close.
I once had a remote job, where the office was in JC. We had a three-day annual meeting that remote employees and those from regional offices were required to attend. The two of us who lived in the city were put up at the hotel for the duration of the meeting. That should give you some idea of the disconnect.
Then that would meet your more expansive definition of "core." That sounds about right to me if we're not confining this to strict CBD definitions. An argument could made for Williamsburg, Downtown, Ft. Greene and Park Slope if we're accounting for places that will draw a significant number of locals from Manhattan (i.e., BAM, Barclays, Prospect Park, Brooklyn Bowl, etc.) and even Jersey judging from the number of license plates.
Fair enough. I think of core more broadly than that and I take into account other considerations. But I see where you are coming from.
I once had a remote job, where the office was in JC. We had a three-day annual meeting that remote employees and those from regional offices were required to attend. The two of us who lived in the city were put up at the hotel for the duration of the meeting. That should give you some idea of the disconnect.
That really doesn’t mean anything, and is quite common. My father-in-law has the same thing happen to him when his company brings in people from around the country to NYC. Usually he has the option to leave because of his position, but sometimes it’s not really an option so my mother-in-law joins him. The same thing happens when they have their convention in Orange County. Those living in LA have the option to stay onsite if they choose, and they all pretty much do because it’s strongly encouraged. My wife and I have been the recipients of many nice dinners because of it. This has nothing to do with an area’s disconnect, and everything to do with productivity, networking, and team camaraderie.
I once had a remote job, where the office was in JC. We had a three-day annual meeting that remote employees and those from regional offices were required to attend. The two of us who lived in the city were put up at the hotel for the duration of the meeting. That should give you some idea of the disconnect.
That's kinda ridiculous though. My firm (an investment bank) has a secondary location on the Jersey waterfront and people go and forth all the time. Oh and we also have a morning offsite event at Liberty State Park in a couple weeks and everyone's expected to be back in the office by the afternoon.
I don't think JC even falls into the third category by that definition. Even though it's right across the river, it feels almost the same way Baltimore feels if you live in DC. That it to say, it feels totally off the radar.
In regards to Jersey city.... it's more akin to relation ship Arlington has to DC. Both cities are part of the bigger cities urban fabric, but are are very much independent of them despite their extreme physical proximity.
Geography plays a massive role in how cities are physically setup up, function and hence how they feel.
Chicago's urban/dowtown core is focused around the Loop with density spread north/south along lake Michigan so it's going to naturally feel different traversing when in NYC you have Midtown & Downtown sandwiched on an island ~2 miles wide. To that extant I'd honestly add Downtown Brooklyn into the equation as NYC's "third" hub as its becoming more and more independent of Manhattan.
The way I see Downtown Chicago, Downtown Manhattan, and Midtown Manhattan
Manhattan is different. There is nothing like it. It is unique. If in a traditional city, things are divided between the downtown core and the neighborhoods, New York presents another "level" to the mix.
New York's "neighborhoods" in the broadest sense, consist of the northern third of Manhattan and all four outer boroughs. Of course, New York's complexity gives it makes the neighborhoods quite complex: true city neighborhoods like Bay Ridge and Astoria, basically suburban "villages" in the outer portions of Queens or in Staten Island. New York is unusual in this respect, but not unique. LA has much of the same dynamic in this regard as NY. (I realize that downtown Brooklyn is not a neighborhood and Brooklyn itself is hard to classify being the most unusual of places: one of the nation's largest cities swallowed up by another...only Brookiyn fit that description among the outer boroughs)
New York differs from other cities in that it has two full fledged central business districts (as above, disregarding DT Bklyn). The city's downtown in Lower Manhattan ironically is the place that gave the name "downtown" to the CBD's across the nation, even as it ceased to be the city's true "downtown" when Midtown overtook it in the first half of the 20th century.
So above I have accounted for both "neighborhoods" and "cores" (midtown, downtown) that you see in all cities. But New York adds one in-between that no place else has: the lower two thirds of Manhattan which is an extended nerve center for city (and nation) from the Battery to the upper reaches of Central Park. As I said, nothing really like it. LA has a "true city" portion being the Basin (as opposed to both the SFV and the harbor), but the Basin is nothing really like the lower 2/3 of Manhattan.
I don't know if anyone ever gave "the lower two thirds of Manhattan" a name, but whatever you want to call it (but I'll call it L2/3 from this point on), it produces a different kind of downtown, midtown as well. More so than anywhere else, both downtown and Midtown are neighborhoods. In other cities, downtown dominates the neighborhoods and one speaks of money going toward downtown and not to the neighborhoods. In L2/3, you have a parity that exists nowhere else. In their own right, Midtown, Downtown, Upper East Side, Soho, and the Villages are "equals" In New York, you can literally pull the two CBD's districts out as true CBD's. Lincoln Center can be built in the UWS in a way that other cities would not place their PAC's outside of the designated downtown area.
Chicago to me, in so many ways, is the opposite of New York. Chicago is the ultimate, the most single cored center city in America. Arguably perhaps in the whole world. Chicago is spokes-and-wheel, Chicago is concentric rings. Chicago's core, once the Loop (although in essence the Loop itself is not downtown but a downtown neighborhood in the sense that River North or Streeterville or the South Loop are the same). I can't put a border around downtown Chicago, but for many, it stretches north from the intersection of State & Madison some 16 blocks to North Avenue (where Lincoln Park, the park not neighborhood, begins). South from State & Madison, its reach probably goes at least 22 blocks south to McCormick Place. West is fuzzy, but some say that the areas to the United Center and the medical center are part of the core. I will plead "guilty" for being fairly liberal on how I extend DT Chgo's boundaries.
In Chicago, all roads, all trains, all everything, takes you to the core and out again. The transportation system is built (not the best of ways, I would admit), on a core-to-periphery system.
Unlike Downtown and Midtown Manhattan, downtown Chicago, to me, does acquire real estate. Amoba like, it spreads. Even the city's pattern of density makes this stand out and evident. Chicago is extremely dense in the core. Its density continues along the lakefront, primarily on the North Side, but the South as well (like Hyde Park/Univ of Chicago). For the North Side, the lakefront carries a high degree of density all the way up to the northern end of Lincoln Park, close to 60 blocks (Loyola Univ. campus) north of State & Madison. The city's density drops noticeably as one goes to the west, but its density there remains a thing of beauty: lower scale, but alive and energetic, dense enough but not overrun by high rises.
Unlike Midtown or Downtown Manhattan, downtown Chicago attracts its landmarks, serves as a true central hub. The Loop traditionally was the businesses of the CBD, the department store strip of State Street (largest of its kind the world has ever seen), hotels and restaurants serving the area, the seat of government. Transportation saw a number of downtown rail terminals, four in operation to this day.In the Loop's current incarnation, residential has become a huge component, new as well as the conversion of old office space.
At one point in the 20th century, they were using the term "Super Loop" to describe the spread of downtown into the Magnificent Mile/Streeterville area, into the redeveloped South Loop, the conversion of River North warehouse into prime urban space (spearheaded by the galleries that moved from Michigan Avenue to the less expensive land to the west).
In Chicago then, along with what is in the Loop, downtown is where things go. And in general downtown area, you get Millennium Park and Grant Park, arguably the Museum Campus, Soldier Field, and McCormick Place, the nightlife that traditionally was built around Rush Street but spreads out throughout the near north area, the shops of the Magnificent Mile, Navy Pier, beaches like Oak Street, even the charm of Old Town, Greektown's changes as it now finds itself "forested in" by high rises that now have jumped west of the Kennedy Expy. Chicago's Chinatown is an oddity as it is located at the far south end of the general downtown area and its location, much more open than NY's or SF's traditional Chinatowns, defies the trend: Chicago's Chinatown is still growing.
Chicago's downtown may be the largest "pleasure zone" of delights of any in the nation, not because New York doesn't offer the same (quite frankly to be honest: it offers much more), but due to the nature of New York's "lower 2/3" which creates a different dynamic than what one sees in the Monster Downtown Chicago that gobbles up adjacent neighborhoods. The pleasure keeps growing since this is boom town....and the boom is explosive with a whole string of large scale projects planned or under construction, the locust of which is along the ever more desirable banks of the Chicago River, the city's "second lakefront", an area we have the same kind of pride about as we do about our Lake Michigan shoreline
This is my paradigm, nobody else's and many will disagree with what I wrote here. But this is the way I frame it.
In regards to Jersey city.... it's more akin to relation ship Arlington has to DC. Both cities are part of the bigger cities urban fabric, but are are very much independent of them despite their extreme physical proximity.
It's not really akin to DC's relationship to Arlington though. For Washingtonians who want to go to a real mall, they go to Pentagon City in Arlington. Before gentrification in DC really took off, and there was no Target in Columbia Heights and few good grocery store options in the city, a lot of people would drive out to Potomac Yards (even Michelle O made a trip there). Manhattan doesn't have that type of relationship with Jersey City because the Hudson is a much more significant physical barrier than the Potomac is. I feel like the only people who would say these situations are comparable probably haven't lived long in either DC or NY.
So above I have accounted for both "neighborhoods" and "cores" (midtown, downtown) that you see in all cities. But New York adds one in-between that no place else has: the lower two thirds of Manhattan which is an extended nerve center for city (and nation) from the Battery to the upper reaches of Central Park. As I said, nothing really like it. LA has a "true city" portion being the Basin (as opposed to both the SFV and the harbor), but the Basin is nothing really like the lower 2/3 of Manhattan.
I'm not sure I agree with the "nothing else like it" thing, except when it comes to intensity. Outside of Midtown and the Financial District, most of lower Manhattan is primarily residential with commercial mixed in. What sets NYC apart from most (not all) other American cities is the CBDs are not surrounded by a "ring of ruin" - highways, industrial zones, warehouse districts, institutional uses, parking lots, occasional stands of bad mid-20th century remuddled housing projects, etc. This moat of underdevelopment (particularly from a population density standpoint) is absent.
However, NYC isn't alone here. Boston, Philly, DC, and San Francisco all have the same dynamic. Walk out of the CBD in a few different cardinal directions and you'll stroll right into a traditional urban neighborhood, same as NYC. That's part of what makes them the widely-seen "beta cities" to NYC's alpha in terms of urbanity in the U.S.
I'm not sure I agree with the "nothing else like it" thing, except when it comes to intensity. Outside of Midtown and the Financial District, most of lower Manhattan is primarily residential with commercial mixed in. What sets NYC apart from most (not all) other American cities is the CBDs are not surrounded by a "ring of ruin" - highways, industrial zones, warehouse districts, institutional uses, parking lots, occasional stands of bad mid-20th century remuddled housing projects, etc. This moat of underdevelopment (particularly from a population density standpoint) is absent.
However, NYC isn't alone here. Boston, Philly, DC, and San Francisco all have the same dynamic. Walk out of the CBD in a few different cardinal directions and you'll stroll right into a traditional urban neighborhood, same as NYC. That's part of what makes them the widely-seen "beta cities" to NYC's alpha in terms of urbanity in the U.S.
True, New York is anything but traditional. That "ring of ruin" as you describe it has no place in Manhattan. And one of the chief factors to make this so is topography: that long, very narrow island is not a place for a ring of ruin. Two of the cities you mentioned, San Francisco and Boston, have some of the same dynamic. San Francisco in particular. SF being the tip of a peninsula packed in to some 49 square miles has but three ways to exit the city going west (which you can't do), north, and east: the Bay & GG Bridges and BART. That's it. Period. So land in SF was going to prime throughout. SF, as a city, has the least "ring of ruin". If it exists, it is only on the bay side of the city running south from downtown, Soma, Misson Bay all the way to candlestick point. SF amazes....one could drive from the Ferry Building down Market and turn west onto Geary....and drive clear across the city, bay to Pacific, without once leaving the city grid.
Boston itself was once almost an island with a narrow strip of land connecting it to the mainland. With fill, of course, it is different. But it is still confined by both bay and river. Philly is a bit like Chicago. Both have a density in Center City and the Loop due to those areas beginning closed in by water as well. For Philly, it is its two rivers, for the Loop, it is two branches of the river and the lake.
While your city, Pittsburgh, isn't exactly the same, the Allegheny and Monogahala certainly box in the downtown area. On a smaller scale, Madison, a city between two lakes on a narrow peninsula, has the same dynamic.
It's not really akin to DC's relationship to Arlington though. For Washingtonians who want to go to a real mall, they go to Pentagon City in Arlington. Before gentrification in DC really took off, and there was no Target in Columbia Heights and few good grocery store options in the city, a lot of people would drive out to Potomac Yards (even Michelle O made a trip there). Manhattan doesn't have that type of relationship with Jersey City because the Hudson is a much more significant physical barrier than the Potomac is. I feel like the only people who would say these situations are comparable probably haven't lived long in either DC or NY.
I lived in between Baltimore & DC for a smidge over 18 years lol, and most of my immediate family lives in NYC.
I'd a agree with you to an extent on the dynamism of DC/Arlington relationship
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