Best Downtowns in the World (price, housing projects, wealthiest)
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Tokyo is tough because there are areas of intense activity, and then very quiet areas. It isn't quite as continuous as NYC, London or Paris, I don't think. There are many areas within the Yamamote Loop, even, that are quiet, with little single family homes on side streets.
But, in aggregate, it probably has the most activity centers of all cities in the world.
Personally, of the four, I think Paris and NYC are the strongest, because they have density and intensity over a large geography. Tokyo has tons of intensity (more than any city) but it's scattered about. London has a huge and vibrant core, but not as dense or intense as Paris or NYC.
So if we are to summarize both the most inclusive and least inclusive definitions of "downtown" for the four leading international cities:
London: Central London [West End]
NYC: Manhattan south of 59th street [Midtown]
Paris: Central Paris as defined above [8th arondissment?]
Tokyo: ??? [Shibuya?]
What do we say about Tokyo?
The West End is PART of London's ''Downtown'' there's a half of Central London being excluded.
The East end counts as Central London, too so does the South bank.
You can define a downtown inclusively, in a broader sense of a city core or center city, or in stringent exclusive terms equivalent to the high rise CBDs of major international cities in general. The difference is merely semantics.
What we define as "downtown" is not set in stone. It's mainly for the convenience of exchanging ideas in this thread that we are referring to it here as the general city center.
Yep, I noticed that part of Kensington sounded like it should count, mainly near and to the south of Hyde Park. Perhaps the parts within the circle line should be added?
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The West End is PART of London's ''Downtown'' there's a half of Central London being excluded.
He was using the narrowest possible definition similar to Midtown would be the narrowest definition for New York City. Midtown is a more intense spike of activity than the West End so it makes more sense to have a narrow definition for New York City. The City (Square Mile) is very concentrated office-wise similar but not as intense as Midtown, but the City is rather single use.
Yep, I noticed that part of Kensington sounded like it should count, mainly near and to the south of Hyde Park. Perhaps the parts within the circle line should be added?
He was using the narrowest possible definition similar to Midtown would be the narrowest definition for New York City. Midtown is a more intense spike of activity than the West End so it makes more sense to have a narrow definition for New York City. The City (Square Mile) is very concentrated office-wise similar but not as intense as Midtown, but the City is rather single use.
I always thought the whole of Manhattan island was ''DOWNTOWN'' but now it makes sense.
That's Upper East Side / Uptown. Upper-middle class to Upper class residential area with a lot of museums (maybe like Kensington with high rises). The opposite of Uptown is Downtown (up on the map vs down on the map). Downtown Manhattan is the lower end, maybe south of 14th street or Houston Street. It's the oldest part. This might be downtown:
Downtown in the usual American sense of central business district in the narrowest sense refers to Midtown, the largest job center not Downtown. I think it's the most well known part of Manhattan.
But I'd say Manhattan south of 59th street is center-city like or equivalent to central London. Some might refer the whole island that way, as you did. People in the region, talk about going into "the city" which means Manhattan.
It's the same in San Francisco. In fact, many don't consider those areas as "downtown" but rather they are called the Financial District, especially in San Francisco. It's often said that the Financial District is adjacent to downtown.
Definitely disagree here. I've lived in SF for my whole life, and everyone I've ever known considers the Financial District as being part of downtown. Here's what I consider "downtown SF":
the Financial District
Union Square
Civic Center
the Tenderloin
the south/east sides of Nob Hill
part of Chinatown (around Jackson square)
large chunks of SOMA (Moscone Center, southern financial district, Rincon hill, and the area along Mission and Howard streets from south Van Ness to Moscone Center)
I've heard more than a few people call south beach/mission bay "downtown SF" too in recent years (such as every baseball announcer lol), and I can see why they do...it's a busy area with some highrises and is right next to the city's skyscraper core, so it must be downtown! But I think many people from SF wouldn't agree that it's part of downtown at this point. Maybe in a decade I could see more people considering it downtown, once all the new highrise construction down there and running up 4th street to moscone center is done. Of course I've also heard other people claim that the entire northeast corner of SF is "downtown", and others that claim that only the financial district is "downtown", both of which sound crazy to me.
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Originally Posted by nei
While San Francisco is rather affluent so are its suburbs, with many suburbs nearly as expensive. Other than San Francisco, the only other American city I can think of that's not poorer than its suburbs is Seattle.
This is true to an extent, but kind of inaccurate. Yeah the city of SF makes tons of money and there are some ultra wealthy neighborhoods and a relatively high average income (remember that SF has high pay due to the ultra high cost of housing though), but some of the poorest parts of the Bay Area are also in SF: the Tenderloin, Chinatown, parts of the Mission, the public housing projects, etc (SF has 100,000 people below the federal poverty line, and another 100,000 just above it), which are certainly poorer than the vast majority of what you'll find in SF's suburbs, let alone the average income of entire suburbs. Some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Bay Area are in SF too of course (Pacific Heights, Nob Hill, Sea Cliff, St. Francis Wood, etc), but looking at statistics for entire cities, SF is surpassed by many of its suburbs, sometimes by a huge amount (such as Atherton, Woodside, Palo Alto, Hilsborough, etc). Also, I'd say the majority of the suburbs around the bay area are solidly middle class (lower to upper), with plenty of poorer areas and very affluent areas to go along with it. Don't get me wrong, there's a huge amount of wealth around here, but I feel like a lot of people get an exaggerated idea of how affluent SF/The Bay Area is. I guess it makes sense that so many people have that image of SF when there's so much extra media coverage in recent years about the growing tech sector, silicon valley start up millionaires, our Google overlords, the construction boom (which is of course mostly luxury housing and downtown office space), insane housing prices, gentrification, etc. Not to mention it already was stereotyped by many people as a wealthy tourist/yuppie/hipster town before the recent tech boom.
How much weaker is Barcelona compared to Paris? Does it feel obviously smaller?
I know both cities and while Barcelona is an impressive city, I does not compare with Paris ... its old neighborhoods (ciutat vella) are very nice and active but its most modern neighborhoods (Eixample) are very boring and uninteresting.
In its center Barcelona does not feel smaller but overall Paris has so many more active and interesting neighborhoods.
Barcelona is one of the greatest cities in Europe though IMO, along with Rome, Florence, London and Paris.
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