3 ms·

I'm not an expert on New York's history, but in a general sense, I don't find the clustering of buildings all that surprising. After all, what's the alternative

by dkrich 11y ago

I'm not an expert on New York's history, but in a general sense, I don't find the clustering of buildings all that surprising. After all, what's the alternative? Highrises built sporadically around the island in isolated areas? A blanket of highrises covering the entire island? Once an area becomes established as a center of business (for whatever reason), there's a real benefit of living and working in close proximity so consequently other developments take place in the area. Apart from NYC, it seems to me that roughly every major city I have ever visited had the exact same clustering in certain areas.

jakevoytko 11y ago
Not to mention the transportation network that has built up around these areas. For instance, Midtown is fed by multiple train stations, a bus station, multiple tunnels, and an incredible nexus of subway stations. You couldn't add a new high-density area without adding it in an area that's well-served by transportation. Reflexively, the most likely candidate for a new skyscraper patch (just weighed by transportation support) falls between the two peaks. 14th street is near Penn Station, has the usual grab-bag of uptown/downtown Manhattan subways, the PATH, is also near a tunnel, and has the L train. Not sure why this hasn't happened past zoning reasons.
- padobson 11y ago
  So we should probably start a crowdfunding venture to purchase air rights around 14th street.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    It might be more useful to crowdfund lobbying for upzoning instead - if you've bought a bunch of air rights around 14th St and the city upzones the whole area those air rights won't be worth so much...
  - epc 11y ago
    With a few exceptions, air rights can only be transferred to contiguous parcels (the two exceptions in Manhattan that I know of are the "Special West Chelsea Air Rights District" and the midtown rezoning around Grand Central). Curious quirk of NYC real estate: as valuable as air rights are, the City has no formal process to track them other than through the building permit process. There isn't an "air rights" database for example.

by dkrich 11y ago

jakevoytko 11y ago

Not to mention the transportation network that has built up around these areas. For instance, Midtown is fed by multiple train stations, a bus station, multiple tunnels, and an incredible nexus of subway stations. You couldn't add a new high-density area without adding it in an area that's well-served by transportation. Reflexively, the most likely candidate for a new skyscraper patch (just weighed by transportation support) falls between the two peaks. 14th street is near Penn Station, has the usual grab-bag of uptown/downtown Manhattan subways, the PATH, is also near a tunnel, and has the L train. Not sure why this hasn't happened past zoning reasons.

padobson 11y ago
So we should probably start a crowdfunding venture to purchase air rights around 14th street.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  It might be more useful to crowdfund lobbying for upzoning instead - if you've bought a bunch of air rights around 14th St and the city upzones the whole area those air rights won't be worth so much...
- epc 11y ago
  With a few exceptions, air rights can only be transferred to contiguous parcels (the two exceptions in Manhattan that I know of are the "Special West Chelsea Air Rights District" and the midtown rezoning around Grand Central). Curious quirk of NYC real estate: as valuable as air rights are, the City has no formal process to track them other than through the building permit process. There isn't an "air rights" database for example.