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Very interesting topic. The question is how do you slow down the growth that is fueling the lack of space. It appears that those in power think that the answer is simply to shift the problem to downtown Brooklyn. Unfortunately Brooklyns proximity to Manhattan has made it a prime target for gentrification. All of the sudden the Brooklyn skyline is changing into a replica of Manhattan.....which in my opinion is not a good thing. Brooklyn has always had its own unique flavor......the driving forces behind what is changing it threatens its lifelong residents who just like Harlem residents can no longer afford to live there. Building owners have been greedy for years and that greed to capitalize on the demand to live in NYC has always gone unstopped.
This problem is drawn along racial lines. Many of the neighborhoods in downtown Brookyn just like Harlem were long ago abandoned by white residents. They decided that they wanted to live in Midtown and lower Manhattan.........leaving behind the Brooklyn and Harlem neighborhoods for low income Blacks and Hispanics. That was until the prices in Midtown and lower Manhattan became ridiculously expensive......now those same upper middle class white people have learned that even their income is not enough to afford unregulated Manhattan addresses.....add to that problem the fact that there has always been a fight in NYC over rent stabilization and affordable housing. Now the same people who never wanted to live in ethnic Harlem or Brooklyn are running to these areas with a vengence......pushing out those who were born and raised in these neighborhoods and of course they have more money so the building owners are catering to their housing needs.
NYC real estate is a runaway train that should have been stabilized many years ago but greed kept it going now it is anybodys guess what is going to happen!
The fact that Manhattan is an island makes a huge difference and a barrier to the kind of perception shift you are envisioning.The best example of the kind of growth you are talking about would be Jersey City, where there are in fact a lot of skyscrapers just across the river and there is a subway connection( PATH).But no matter how big or tall or important Jersey City might become it will never,ever be considered part of a "greater Manhattan" as you put it.It's New Jersey,it's across the river and it's another state.
Fort Lee,NJ has also become quite built up in the last 20 or 30 years and despite the fact that it's just on the other side of the GW Bridge it's still New Jersey.New Jersey will always be another place,as will Brooklyn,Queens and The Bronx.
totally see your point, bluedog. But I, like undoubtedly you, have walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. That's no Hudson being spanned.
Admittedly it isn't what's in my town either, the Chicago River, a narrow body of water that creates a real canyon feel due to its width and the towers that rise on both sides of it. Michigan Avenue's Mag Mile was a no brainer to be physically joined to the Loop as this was no East River to cross.
Then again, in Chicago's case we're talking about a downtown area and not a huge swath of real estate that is Manhattan. So let's face it: Harlem is leap years further from lower Manhattan than is Bkyn Hts.
So I'm suggesting that in time and with need, the psychological boundary that the East River provides may disappear. That isn't so difficult when a boundary is just a small river or a street, like Market, which separates the old traditional DT San Francisco that never would have thought of crossing over into the skid row that was south of Market to today's vibrant Soma.
But still, considering the scale of Manhattan, I'm not convinced that it couldn't accomplish something similiar with the East River.
NYC real estate is a runaway train that should have been stabilized many years ago but greed kept it going now it is anybodys guess what is going to happen!
You raise outstanding points, NYB. Here's the problem...not just in New York where it plays out its biggest, but throughout American cities, at least the ones that are "hot" from a real estate and life style perspective:
we reached a point where bigger, larger, more expensive, more extravagant became the goal. The golden mean disappeared all together.
As such, many people actually believed that if New York were the Ultimate City with its present skyline, doubling its height and bulk with make it twice-as-ultimate.
If your goal is to build more and more and with each structure, become more the urban ideal, where does it stop?
Would Manhattan arguably be a better place, more mind boggling and alluring and a great place to be if it were filled with 40 buildings over 100 floors with the rest of the space from the Battery to Harlem filled with high rises, with Central Park literally turned into a valley?
Be careful what you wish for. Beware the slippery slope. And never forget that Rome was able to the ultimate global city with a mere one million citizens.
Edsg25, you are right. This is definitely a case where we should have been careful what we wished for. The problem is that many of us like myself who were born and raised here in NYC did not ask for the grand status with the high rises and all the trappings that wealth brings.....we just happened to be born here, had no voice or say so regarding what this city has transformed into. Don't get me wrong I love this city but at some point when does just getting bigger and bigger become too much where the people with the power here say enough is enough.
My grandmother spoke about what is happening in NYC years ago when she said that this city would become a place where only those with money can afford to live.....she was right! Now the middle class who once only resided in Midtown and lower Manhattan are scattering to areas around the 5 boroughs where historically they have not lived in years......which has driven up apartment rents. I really believe that the city needs to gain some control over how much money building owners can charge people to rent apartments and they also need to gain control over the developers that are running in to downtown Brooklyn putting up buildings as quickly as they can just to profit.
When they become serious about regulating the rents and the buildings then maybe some of the crowding will stop. Then again greed is fueling this problem and very hard to stop peoples greed.
Be careful what you wish for. Beware the slippery slope. And never forget that Rome was able to the ultimate global city with a mere one million citizens.
However, in 44 B.C. (the year Caesar was assassinated) the 'world' the Romans ruled consisted of Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean area of the Middle East. And the estimated population then was only 58 million or so. BIG difference. London didn't reach 1 million in habitants until 1800.
Edsg25, you are right. This is definitely a case where we should have been careful what we wished for. The problem is that many of us like myself who were born and raised here in NYC did not ask for the grand status with the high rises and all the trappings that wealth brings.....we just happened to be born here, had no voice or say so regarding what this city has transformed into. Don't get me wrong I love this city but at some point when does just getting bigger and bigger become too much where the people with the power here say enough is enough.
My grandmother spoke about what is happening in NYC years ago when she said that this city would become a place where only those with money can afford to live.....she was right! Now the middle class who once only resided in Midtown and lower Manhattan are scattering to areas around the 5 boroughs where historically they have not lived in years......which has driven up apartment rents. I really believe that the city needs to gain some control over how much money building owners can charge people to rent apartments and they also need to gain control over the developers that are running in to downtown Brooklyn putting up buildings as quickly as they can just to profit.
When they become serious about regulating the rents and the buildings then maybe some of the crowding will stop. Then again greed is fueling this problem and very hard to stop peoples greed.
Excellent, excellent post, NYB. "Greatest city" is a subjective term, but do you know what I think was the greatest city in the history of the world?
New York City, circa 1920-1970.
There never was a place like it.
The spectacular rise of your city paralleled the rise of the United States in the first half of the 20th century. A time of exuberance and creative energy with peer. Indeed the greatest "New York song", IMHO, make no reference to New York or to anything else since it is instrumental: Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, a mix and jazz and European based sound that uplifted the spirit to match the uplifting of Manhattan's skyline.
The greatest flourish of pop culture the world has ever seen was the hallmark of that old New York, with Broadway, comedy in clubs, artists of every kind in the village, and the most interesting assortment of characters any city has ever seen.
Instead of Times Square by Disney, that New York had TImes Square of Damon Runyon and Guys & Dolls. "Never so real" could have been its title.
New York has had some amazing skylines down through the years, current skylines included. But in that previous era when Midtown had not quite come to overpowering Lower Manhattan and where the spires of downtown, narrow, intricate, and pointed, projected upward...in many ways Manhattan was at its peak....a loftier place, through far lower in actual distance from the ground, than the boxy, square, corporate containers that now dominate the lower end of the island.
However, in 44 B.C. (the year Caesar was assassinated) the 'world' the Romans ruled consisted of Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean area of the Middle East. And the estimated population then was only 58 million or so. BIG difference. London didn't reach 1 million in habitants until 1800.
of course. I realize that. Our first billion came in 1800. Point was, that Rome could achieve greatness with a population with would consider small today...and Athens did so with a population that was down right puny.
i totally understand the question. the expansion of major financial institutions have spread beyong manhattan. 2 developments that come to mind are the citicorp tower in long island city and metrotech center in downtown brooklyn.
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Actually there is a ton of job growth in Upper Manhattan. A lot of this is because the big institutions (including Columbia and the hospitals) have grown consistently and continue to hire more staff. Check out this study that Center for an Urban Future did... 3 of the 5 biggest growing zip codes for jobs were Harlem:
Top 5
11245 (Downtown Brooklyn): 253%
10041 (55 Water Street): 237%
10027 (West Harlem/Morningside Heights): 187%
10030 (Harlem): 106%
10026 (Harlem): 99%
And when you consider the downtown Brooklyn shuffling and the fact that 10041 is a weird zip code for one huge office building, basically Upper Manhattan posted some of the most significant job growth during the period.
But yeah, this goes even further to prove that the entire city is being "Manhattanized" -- a process that has been going on forever and will continue to do so.
11242 is a single building in downtown Brooklyn. I should know - I work there! I suspect that 11243 is the same. Obviously, 10048 speaks for itself. I suspect that 10043 is also adjacent to WTC.
My understanding is that with rents going down, many companies that previously wouldn't have been able to have afford Manhattan are reconsidering their options.
I don't know anything about Harlem, but I highly doubt it's about to replace downtown and midtown Manhattan (or even Brooklyn or Jersey City) as a business center. You have to take into consideration the starting point when citing a 100% increase.
Edsg25, you are right. This is definitely a case where we should have been careful what we wished for. The problem is that many of us like myself who were born and raised here in NYC did not ask for the grand status with the high rises and all the trappings that wealth brings.....we just happened to be born here, had no voice or say so regarding what this city has transformed into. Don't get me wrong I love this city but at some point when does just getting bigger and bigger become too much where the people with the power here say enough is enough.
My grandmother spoke about what is happening in NYC years ago when she said that this city would become a place where only those with money can afford to live.....she was right! Now the middle class who once only resided in Midtown and lower Manhattan are scattering to areas around the 5 boroughs where historically they have not lived in years......which has driven up apartment rents. I really believe that the city needs to gain some control over how much money building owners can charge people to rent apartments and they also need to gain control over the developers that are running in to downtown Brooklyn putting up buildings as quickly as they can just to profit.
When they become serious about regulating the rents and the buildings then maybe some of the crowding will stop. Then again greed is fueling this problem and very hard to stop peoples greed.
If you want cheap rent, move to Brownsville or Newark. Ditto for a cheap house/apartment to buy.
Rent regulation is a terrible policy. By artificially lowering rent for certain individuals, you give them an incentive to continue living in the housing unit, even when the market rent for the unit would prompt them to move out. Thus, these individuals overstay in the units and remove them from the available market. This causes the market of available units to be smaller-(supply of housing units is lower) and causes the rent prices that people who are not eligible for rent-stabilization face to be higher.
The fact that non-rent regulated rent is higher is a disaster for the whole housing market. Because non-regulated rents are artificially higher, the value of all real estate and land is higher. The only people that benefit from rent-stabilization are tenants who are lucky enough to have an apartment and landlords/homeowners who already own their real estate. Anyone entering the housing market (a newcomer to the city, someone who is moving out of his parent's home, or a recently divorced person, etc.) is hurt by rent stabilization.
If you want cheaper rent/housing values, there are only two ways to have it: 1) increase supply (build more housing units, have people who currently occupy housing leave to some other metropolitan area, or build more transportation); 2) decrease demand (make the city and greater metropolitan area less desireable. This can be achieved by increasing crime, decreasing the amount of jobs available, environmental degradation, etc.).
This is related to the original post and the main topic, because "manhattan"'s expansion into new territory is what is prompting all the hullabaloo over gentrification. It is maddening to see the "solutions" that some suggest for this gentrification- namely, increased rent regulation, so I feel the need to respond. I hope that I can make the poster I am responding to here at least see the situation a bit differently even if the negative effects I identify are something he'd gladly be willing to have come to pass.
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