15 ms·

Downside of Lower Manhattan’s Boom: It’s Too Crowded

132 points by dankohn1 10y ago

jakozaur 10y ago
Another less sensational, but lengthier and more informative read on that: http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/transportation/td_fulllowermanhattan.pdf http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/trans...
- blitzkrieg3 10y ago
  It's also a 20 year old read. Edit: Many of these proposals in that have either been followed or exceeded, largely as a result of the September 11th attacks. Most notably Broad street is completely a pedestrian plaza, closed off to traffic.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
> Just to get to his apartment in the financial district, he has to contend with hordes of commuters and selfie-snapping tourists clogging narrow sidewalks. So make the sidewalks wider. I can think of nowhere in the US more appropriate to allocate more space to sidewalks than Manhattan. > Ms. Starr, for one, has all but stopped using the Citi Bike system to commute. She used to ride from her apartment in TriBeCa to her office on Maiden Lane in the financial district nearly every day. But as more pedestrians and cyclists filled the streets, she had to concentrate to avoid running into anyone or being run into. Sounds like they need separated bike lanes then. Manhattan is the densest major city* in the country. The amount of space allocated to cars on the roads should be the bare minimum: enough for emergency vehicles, business deliveries, surface transit, the handicapped, a limited number of taxis. With only a tiny amount of space per person, you really have to push for denser forms of transportation. Personal vehicle use should be at a minimum in Manhattan. > In Lower Manhattan, people are not the only obstacle. Construction on streets and buildings is everywhere. A labyrinth of imposing metal scaffolding hems in available walkways and forces pedestrians closer together, or into the street. The solution here is to cut into space on the road to provide more walking space. * I know it's only part of a city but you know what I mean
- BorisMelnik 10y ago
  Have you seen the streets in lower Manhattan? If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. There are also already tons of bike lanes. Most New Yorker's don't drive - they walk, bike, take the train, or taxi/uber. Don't you think if the answers were this simple someone would have done this already?
  - marxidad 10y ago
    The problems may be more political than technical.
    - the_gastropod 10y ago
      As uncommon as car ownership is in NYC, it's incredible how much friction there is around reducing roadway for cars. Every bike lane added in the city is a hard fought battle. So I think you're absolutely right—the solutions are well understood. Changing car culture is difficult.
      - superuser2 10y ago
        Perhaps because while most people don't own cars, they do depend on them (even if only in special circumstances) in the form of cabs.
        bradleyjg 10y ago
        If that were what was mostly going on there'd be a heck of lot less on street parking. Essentially none of Manhattan should have any on street parking at all. Some standing zones for deliveries and pick up / drop offs (but not loitering forever, I'm looking at you black cars) and that's it. You'd be able to cut width of a typical street by 1/3.
      - duaneb 10y ago
        You don't understand why people might like cabs, trucks, busses, and emergency vehicles? People don't drive their own cars already.
eternalban 10y ago
We never had these problems before the disneyfication of Manhattan. This city wasn't designed to be a tourist destination. Manhattan was already over burdened by sucking in most of the other boroughs' residents and the bridge and tunnel crown in for work. Add to that the hordes (literally) of tourists who walk around as if this working city is a park or a shopping mall and you get what we have now. [p.s. For years I heard the old saw about "loving Paris and hating the French" and wondered as a (yep) tourist why do the Parisians hate us so much? :) Since the past decade I have nothing but sympathy for Londoners and Parisians. Now I get it.]
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Oh please, Manhattan has always been a tourist destination. That is not new. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, Grand Central, The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, 5th Ave, Rock Center. The high concentration of tourist sites predates the "Disney-fication" of Times Square which was too seedy for many years to be a tourist destination. That old trope about French hating Americans is a bad stereotype. As a long time visitor I can tell you this is simply not true. People in London, Paris and New York get annoyed by inconsiderate people whether they be local inconsiderate people or inconsiderate people from abroad. And there is no shortage of inconsiderate residents in any of those places.
  - eternalban 10y ago
    > The Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, Grand Central, The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, 5th Ave, Rock Center. Exactly. Designated tourist areas. The rest of the island was ours.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  That's funny, I thought I would hate Parisians, but they were incredibly kind and warm. You just have to talk to them the way you speak to New Yorkers: to the point, and about the city or food. New Yorkers have the same reputation for the same reasons: we're busy and you're the 500th person to ask me how to get to Times Square. If you ask me about the best place to get food in Flushing or how the subway was built? Love to help out. Parisians seem the same. I guess that's your point about tourists, but they just need to be more respectful I guess.
than 10y ago
Nobody goes there anymore.
onion2k 10y ago
If where you live changes you have the choice of either staying and accepting the change or leaving to live somewhere else. Trying to hold back progress (for some value of 'progress') is futile in the extreme.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > you have the choice of either staying and accepting the change or leaving to live somewhere else The third option is trying to effect another change.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  If you were right we'd never have stable communities, we'd just wipe away everything extant every time it was inconvenient to keep it around. That's insane.
- astrodust 10y ago
  You're describing the "white flight" phenomenon.
dankohn1 10y ago
I commute from Tribeca to the WeWork Charging Bull via Citibike along the busiest [0] and one of the best separated bike lanes in America. I do have to deal with lots of tourists walking on the bike lanes (which might be improved with better signage), but I still feel incredibly privileged to have such a pleasant commute. Within the Financial District, the solution is to de-prioritize cars and make more room for people. The initiative of closing off FiDi to all through traffic and sharing streets equally between people, bikes, and cars [1] is incredibly promising, but was poorly marketed and executed. I rode along the streets with my 7 and 9yo sons and we had cars honking at us, even as we moved at a reasonable speed. [0] http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/10/19/at-riverside-park-looking-to-more-bike-lanes-to-soothe-bikeped-conflict/ http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/10/19/at-riverside-park-look... [1] http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/06/16/new-twist-for-summer-streets-this-year-a-low-car-zone-way-downtown/ http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/06/16/new-twist-for-summer-s...
davidw 10y ago
"Nobody goes there any more - it's too crowded" - Yogi Berra.
- jraines 10y ago
  it becomes non-paradoxical if you tweak it to: "Nobody goes there by choice any more - it's too crowded" Obviously it's still not "nobody" for LM - or anywhere - but things change and people get stuck with the new reality sometimes.
  - davidw 10y ago
    I don't think anyone's ever gone to Manhattan with the expectation that it would be a staid, static and relaxed kind of place. Change is a constant in big cities like NY.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
kingkawn 10y ago
It is new. York. City. Stop whining. No for real though if you come to the city and are overwhelmed by everyone else you are quite literally failing at the point of nyc.
- CDotDot 10y ago
  No one is suggesting getting rid of the people. They are suggesting getting rid of the problem. Why would you not try and improve the city in which you live?
- astrodust 10y ago
  If it's too crowded for New Yorkers it's probably really fucking crowded. Like if someone in Tokyo says the subway is over capacity they probably mean it. This isn't some hayseed from Kansas complaining that there's three people on the sidewalk.
  - bradleyjg 10y ago
    Of the people quoted in the article complaining it is too crowded it appears one is from Detroit, one is from Egypt, and one is from rural Illinois.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      New Yorkers come from all over the world.
      - bradleyjg 10y ago
        ... and then complain about how NYC isn't like whatever it is they are from. The whole point of the place is that it isn't like the other places.
bobbyadamson 10y ago
This is mainly a problem during rush hour, when traffic is always a problem everywhere. It might be exacerbated in that area but so much so that an average resident feels like they should be complaining about it? If your commute is from TriBeCa to FiDi (adjacent neighborhoods) and you're upset about losing 10 minutes to 'tourists' (even though, more often than not, people holding me up are clearly people who live here who don't know what common courtesy is) then talk to my coworker who lives on Staten Island and has to traverse water and take four forms of transportation to get to work, or my old boss who comes down from the tippy top of Washington Heights through some of the biggest tourist traps in the city and has to deal with more stops than you can count on your fingers. I live in the Lower East Side and we like to go to the Financial District every now and then because NO ONE IS THERE. Go there for dinner or drinks on a Friday night or go walk around and make your way toward Battery Park on a nice Saturday afternoon. It's almost creepy, like a ghost town. > It means never getting that babysitter on a Saturday night, or abandoning hope of ever getting tickets for Shakespeare in the Park. Ok then don't have kids? Move to Jersey? Well-to-do people are displacing less fortunate people all over the city, talking down to them about not being able to afford to rent or buy groceries, and then they're complaining about problems like this? I also used to ride CitiBike and yes there are people but there are also people if you drive a car, there are bikes and cars if you walk. This is a commute not a Sunday stroll or trail ride. You're participating in traffic, it can be dangerous and you need to pay attention which is true everywhere in the world. Obviously there are crowding problems in New York City, I take the train like four stops to work and I absolutely hate the traffic as much as anyone, but the anecdotes in this article are pathetic relative to some of the other living issues people are facing here.
rumayor 10y ago
Barcelona has the answer: close many blocks to cars. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-rescue-barcelona-spain-plan-give-streets-back-residents https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...
- ng12 10y ago
  That's not the problem. The FiDi has no throughways, only local traffic. The only vehicles down there are taxis doing pickups/dropoffs and delivery trucks. It's just massively more dense than Barcelona.
  - chris_7 10y ago
    No more taxis, then, deliveries and access-a-ride (shudder) only (and deliveries only at night). The bankers can walk.
baron816 10y ago
I live in the area. Right outside my building is one of the heaviest trafficked areas in the city. A building across the street is being demolished, which means that side's sidewalk is closed off. On this side, a wheel chair ramp in front of a coffee shop eats up half the sidewalk. So on trash days, there is only enough space one person to pass through the bottleneck. In other places, you have very precious sidewalk space taken up by signs in front of restaurants, sidewalk sheds, lamp posts, panhandlers, mailboxes, people smoking cigarettes, and of course, piles of trash. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to live, but there definitely needs to be some big changes. I think we should remove street parking to expand the sidewalks.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
Megalopolises continue to be hellish to actually live in, news at 11.
schlagetown 10y ago
One obvious answer here: makes far more sense to increase population of NYC outside of Manhattan. Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx combined (excluding Staten Island since it's not accessible by subway) are TEN TIMES the size of Manhattan. Not all this space is a quick commute to Manhattan…but there are plenty of neighborhoods in these boroughs that are nowhere near as densely populated as lower Manhattan, and are still within a ~30 minute commute to downtown.
hasbroslasher 10y ago
I suggest that we build elevated walkways covering every busy street in (lower) Manhattan. You know it's going to happen someday, so why not get it over with. And then we'll be one step closer to Coruscant. I'm envisioning something like an extrawide catwalk built over some of the busier streets with either ladders or stairs down to the next floor of the city. They'll either attract tourists or they'll become the pedestrian superhighways of the city.
- nashashmi 10y ago
  And truck/delivery/car service entrances working at ground level. There is a location or two where that could work. I also have been thinking of the same.
  - hasbroslasher 10y ago
    I have a feeling the stores on 5th Ave would be less optimistic. Like I said - I think this idea is an eventuality in such dense urban centers.
- f_allwein 10y ago
  Something similar was done in the Olympic Village in Munich: the ground level is reserved to pedestrians, with cars undergound. http://www.heinlewischerpartner.de/Olympic-Village-Munich.73.1.html http://www.heinlewischerpartner.de/Olympic-Village-Munich.73...
bane 10y ago
Not a New Yorker, but living in the middle of the East Coast I've been to, done business in, and toured NYC many times. The Financial District is cool, but why anybody would want to live there who doesn't work there is beyond me. It's a short walk from any of the residential areas to any of the major financial firms, it's a miserable slog anywhere north of Chinatown. And it's not like it's cheap, 800sq ft 1 bedrooms run well above a million dollars. There's other problems which, at this point, seem to matters of inertia rather than planning: - NYC is one of the few, dense, major cities without service alleys for trash pickup and delivery. A casual observer might notice that NYC blocks are solid, not hollow, the middle is still full of building. In other cities, with other designs, an access alley allows for service vehicles to enter a mid-block courtyard to provide service functions. As a result both delivery vehicles and waste vehicles block the street with both their presence and the materiel they move in and out. - The regulations around inspection scaffolding are absolutely out of control rent-seeking. I would be comfortable in saying that there isn't a highrise block of the city that's doesn't have this scaffolding present on it. While it does provide some minimal protection from the elements, it's more like walking through a construction site than a an arcade. The regulations should either be changed to get rid of this nonsense, or to make formal arcades a requirements, thus presenting new facades to the city. I'd actually be in favor of the later since NYC suffers from pretty much the worst of all seasons: cold and wet in the winter, and hot and miserable in the summer. I love love love NYC, but it's not without its imperfections.
- krschultz 10y ago
  The requirements around scaffolding are kind of an annoying middle ground of rent seeking. You are required to put them up, but then you aren't charged enough for them while they are up to incentivize anyone to take them down. In some cases the scaffolding goes up and the company that owns it goes out of business or the contractor goes bankrupt and it just gets left there.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    who is doing the rent seeking though? For years they would leave the scaffolding up so they sell advertising on it and the fine was laughably small compared to the revenue generated from selling ads. That was outlawed a few years back though. This is an interesting look at the phenomenon: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160124/REAL_ESTATE/160129960/scaffolds-are-everywhere-in-new-york-city http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160124/REAL_ESTATE/16...

132 points by dankohn1 10y ago

Another less sensational, but lengthier and more informative read on that: http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/transportation/td_fulllowermanhattan.pdf http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/trans...

blitzkrieg3 10y ago
It's also a 20 year old read. Edit: Many of these proposals in that have either been followed or exceeded, largely as a result of the September 11th attacks. Most notably Broad street is completely a pedestrian plaza, closed off to traffic.

TulliusCicero 10y ago

> Just to get to his apartment in the financial district, he has to contend with hordes of commuters and selfie-snapping tourists clogging narrow sidewalks. So make the sidewalks wider. I can think of nowhere in the US more appropriate to allocate more space to sidewalks than Manhattan. > Ms. Starr, for one, has all but stopped using the Citi Bike system to commute. She used to ride from her apartment in TriBeCa to her office on Maiden Lane in the financial district nearly every day. But as more pedestrians and cyclists filled the streets, she had to concentrate to avoid running into anyone or being run into. Sounds like they need separated bike lanes then. Manhattan is the densest major city* in the country. The amount of space allocated to cars on the roads should be the bare minimum: enough for emergency vehicles, business deliveries, surface transit, the handicapped, a limited number of taxis. With only a tiny amount of space per person, you really have to push for denser forms of transportation. Personal vehicle use should be at a minimum in Manhattan. > In Lower Manhattan, people are not the only obstacle. Construction on streets and buildings is everywhere. A labyrinth of imposing metal scaffolding hems in available walkways and forces pedestrians closer together, or into the street. The solution here is to cut into space on the road to provide more walking space. * I know it's only part of a city but you know what I mean

BorisMelnik 10y ago
Have you seen the streets in lower Manhattan? If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. There are also already tons of bike lanes. Most New Yorker's don't drive - they walk, bike, take the train, or taxi/uber. Don't you think if the answers were this simple someone would have done this already?
- marxidad 10y ago
  The problems may be more political than technical.
  - the_gastropod 10y ago
    As uncommon as car ownership is in NYC, it's incredible how much friction there is around reducing roadway for cars. Every bike lane added in the city is a hard fought battle. So I think you're absolutely right—the solutions are well understood. Changing car culture is difficult.
    - superuser2 10y ago
      Perhaps because while most people don't own cars, they do depend on them (even if only in special circumstances) in the form of cabs.
      - bradleyjg 10y ago
        If that were what was mostly going on there'd be a heck of lot less on street parking. Essentially none of Manhattan should have any on street parking at all. Some standing zones for deliveries and pick up / drop offs (but not loitering forever, I'm looking at you black cars) and that's it. You'd be able to cut width of a typical street by 1/3.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      You don't understand why people might like cabs, trucks, busses, and emergency vehicles? People don't drive their own cars already.

eternalban 10y ago

We never had these problems before the disneyfication of Manhattan. This city wasn't designed to be a tourist destination. Manhattan was already over burdened by sucking in most of the other boroughs' residents and the bridge and tunnel crown in for work. Add to that the hordes (literally) of tourists who walk around as if this working city is a park or a shopping mall and you get what we have now. [p.s. For years I heard the old saw about "loving Paris and hating the French" and wondered as a (yep) tourist why do the Parisians hate us so much? :) Since the past decade I have nothing but sympathy for Londoners and Parisians. Now I get it.]

bogomipz 10y ago
Oh please, Manhattan has always been a tourist destination. That is not new. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, Grand Central, The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, 5th Ave, Rock Center. The high concentration of tourist sites predates the "Disney-fication" of Times Square which was too seedy for many years to be a tourist destination. That old trope about French hating Americans is a bad stereotype. As a long time visitor I can tell you this is simply not true. People in London, Paris and New York get annoyed by inconsiderate people whether they be local inconsiderate people or inconsiderate people from abroad. And there is no shortage of inconsiderate residents in any of those places.
- eternalban 10y ago
  > The Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, Grand Central, The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, 5th Ave, Rock Center. Exactly. Designated tourist areas. The rest of the island was ours.
JBReefer 10y ago
That's funny, I thought I would hate Parisians, but they were incredibly kind and warm. You just have to talk to them the way you speak to New Yorkers: to the point, and about the city or food. New Yorkers have the same reputation for the same reasons: we're busy and you're the 500th person to ask me how to get to Times Square. If you ask me about the best place to get food in Flushing or how the subway was built? Love to help out. Parisians seem the same. I guess that's your point about tourists, but they just need to be more respectful I guess.

than 10y ago

Nobody goes there anymore.

onion2k 10y ago

If where you live changes you have the choice of either staying and accepting the change or leaving to live somewhere else. Trying to hold back progress (for some value of 'progress') is futile in the extreme.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
> you have the choice of either staying and accepting the change or leaving to live somewhere else The third option is trying to effect another change.
1_2__3 10y ago
If you were right we'd never have stable communities, we'd just wipe away everything extant every time it was inconvenient to keep it around. That's insane.
astrodust 10y ago
You're describing the "white flight" phenomenon.

dankohn1 10y ago

I commute from Tribeca to the WeWork Charging Bull via Citibike along the busiest [0] and one of the best separated bike lanes in America. I do have to deal with lots of tourists walking on the bike lanes (which might be improved with better signage), but I still feel incredibly privileged to have such a pleasant commute. Within the Financial District, the solution is to de-prioritize cars and make more room for people. The initiative of closing off FiDi to all through traffic and sharing streets equally between people, bikes, and cars [1] is incredibly promising, but was poorly marketed and executed. I rode along the streets with my 7 and 9yo sons and we had cars honking at us, even as we moved at a reasonable speed. [0] http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/10/19/at-riverside-park-looking-to-more-bike-lanes-to-soothe-bikeped-conflict/ http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/10/19/at-riverside-park-look... [1] http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/06/16/new-twist-for-summer-streets-this-year-a-low-car-zone-way-downtown/ http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/06/16/new-twist-for-summer-s...

davidw 10y ago

"Nobody goes there any more - it's too crowded" - Yogi Berra.

jraines 10y ago
it becomes non-paradoxical if you tweak it to: "Nobody goes there by choice any more - it's too crowded" Obviously it's still not "nobody" for LM - or anywhere - but things change and people get stuck with the new reality sometimes.
- davidw 10y ago
  I don't think anyone's ever gone to Manhattan with the expectation that it would be a staid, static and relaxed kind of place. Change is a constant in big cities like NY.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

kingkawn 10y ago

It is new. York. City. Stop whining. No for real though if you come to the city and are overwhelmed by everyone else you are quite literally failing at the point of nyc.

CDotDot 10y ago
No one is suggesting getting rid of the people. They are suggesting getting rid of the problem. Why would you not try and improve the city in which you live?
astrodust 10y ago
If it's too crowded for New Yorkers it's probably really fucking crowded. Like if someone in Tokyo says the subway is over capacity they probably mean it. This isn't some hayseed from Kansas complaining that there's three people on the sidewalk.
- bradleyjg 10y ago
  Of the people quoted in the article complaining it is too crowded it appears one is from Detroit, one is from Egypt, and one is from rural Illinois.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    New Yorkers come from all over the world.
    - bradleyjg 10y ago
      ... and then complain about how NYC isn't like whatever it is they are from. The whole point of the place is that it isn't like the other places.

bobbyadamson 10y ago

This is mainly a problem during rush hour, when traffic is always a problem everywhere. It might be exacerbated in that area but so much so that an average resident feels like they should be complaining about it? If your commute is from TriBeCa to FiDi (adjacent neighborhoods) and you're upset about losing 10 minutes to 'tourists' (even though, more often than not, people holding me up are clearly people who live here who don't know what common courtesy is) then talk to my coworker who lives on Staten Island and has to traverse water and take four forms of transportation to get to work, or my old boss who comes down from the tippy top of Washington Heights through some of the biggest tourist traps in the city and has to deal with more stops than you can count on your fingers. I live in the Lower East Side and we like to go to the Financial District every now and then because NO ONE IS THERE. Go there for dinner or drinks on a Friday night or go walk around and make your way toward Battery Park on a nice Saturday afternoon. It's almost creepy, like a ghost town. > It means never getting that babysitter on a Saturday night, or abandoning hope of ever getting tickets for Shakespeare in the Park. Ok then don't have kids? Move to Jersey? Well-to-do people are displacing less fortunate people all over the city, talking down to them about not being able to afford to rent or buy groceries, and then they're complaining about problems like this? I also used to ride CitiBike and yes there are people but there are also people if you drive a car, there are bikes and cars if you walk. This is a commute not a Sunday stroll or trail ride. You're participating in traffic, it can be dangerous and you need to pay attention which is true everywhere in the world. Obviously there are crowding problems in New York City, I take the train like four stops to work and I absolutely hate the traffic as much as anyone, but the anecdotes in this article are pathetic relative to some of the other living issues people are facing here.

rumayor 10y ago

Barcelona has the answer: close many blocks to cars. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-rescue-barcelona-spain-plan-give-streets-back-residents https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...

ng12 10y ago
That's not the problem. The FiDi has no throughways, only local traffic. The only vehicles down there are taxis doing pickups/dropoffs and delivery trucks. It's just massively more dense than Barcelona.
- chris_7 10y ago
  No more taxis, then, deliveries and access-a-ride (shudder) only (and deliveries only at night). The bankers can walk.

baron816 10y ago

I live in the area. Right outside my building is one of the heaviest trafficked areas in the city. A building across the street is being demolished, which means that side's sidewalk is closed off. On this side, a wheel chair ramp in front of a coffee shop eats up half the sidewalk. So on trash days, there is only enough space one person to pass through the bottleneck. In other places, you have very precious sidewalk space taken up by signs in front of restaurants, sidewalk sheds, lamp posts, panhandlers, mailboxes, people smoking cigarettes, and of course, piles of trash. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to live, but there definitely needs to be some big changes. I think we should remove street parking to expand the sidewalks.

h4nkoslo 10y ago

Megalopolises continue to be hellish to actually live in, news at 11.

schlagetown 10y ago

One obvious answer here: makes far more sense to increase population of NYC outside of Manhattan. Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx combined (excluding Staten Island since it's not accessible by subway) are TEN TIMES the size of Manhattan. Not all this space is a quick commute to Manhattan…but there are plenty of neighborhoods in these boroughs that are nowhere near as densely populated as lower Manhattan, and are still within a ~30 minute commute to downtown.

hasbroslasher 10y ago

I suggest that we build elevated walkways covering every busy street in (lower) Manhattan. You know it's going to happen someday, so why not get it over with. And then we'll be one step closer to Coruscant. I'm envisioning something like an extrawide catwalk built over some of the busier streets with either ladders or stairs down to the next floor of the city. They'll either attract tourists or they'll become the pedestrian superhighways of the city.

nashashmi 10y ago
And truck/delivery/car service entrances working at ground level. There is a location or two where that could work. I also have been thinking of the same.
- hasbroslasher 10y ago
  I have a feeling the stores on 5th Ave would be less optimistic. Like I said - I think this idea is an eventuality in such dense urban centers.
f_allwein 10y ago
Something similar was done in the Olympic Village in Munich: the ground level is reserved to pedestrians, with cars undergound. http://www.heinlewischerpartner.de/Olympic-Village-Munich.73.1.html http://www.heinlewischerpartner.de/Olympic-Village-Munich.73...

bane 10y ago

Not a New Yorker, but living in the middle of the East Coast I've been to, done business in, and toured NYC many times. The Financial District is cool, but why anybody would want to live there who doesn't work there is beyond me. It's a short walk from any of the residential areas to any of the major financial firms, it's a miserable slog anywhere north of Chinatown. And it's not like it's cheap, 800sq ft 1 bedrooms run well above a million dollars. There's other problems which, at this point, seem to matters of inertia rather than planning: - NYC is one of the few, dense, major cities without service alleys for trash pickup and delivery. A casual observer might notice that NYC blocks are solid, not hollow, the middle is still full of building. In other cities, with other designs, an access alley allows for service vehicles to enter a mid-block courtyard to provide service functions. As a result both delivery vehicles and waste vehicles block the street with both their presence and the materiel they move in and out. - The regulations around inspection scaffolding are absolutely out of control rent-seeking. I would be comfortable in saying that there isn't a highrise block of the city that's doesn't have this scaffolding present on it. While it does provide some minimal protection from the elements, it's more like walking through a construction site than a an arcade. The regulations should either be changed to get rid of this nonsense, or to make formal arcades a requirements, thus presenting new facades to the city. I'd actually be in favor of the later since NYC suffers from pretty much the worst of all seasons: cold and wet in the winter, and hot and miserable in the summer. I love love love NYC, but it's not without its imperfections.

krschultz 10y ago
The requirements around scaffolding are kind of an annoying middle ground of rent seeking. You are required to put them up, but then you aren't charged enough for them while they are up to incentivize anyone to take them down. In some cases the scaffolding goes up and the company that owns it goes out of business or the contractor goes bankrupt and it just gets left there.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  who is doing the rent seeking though? For years they would leave the scaffolding up so they sell advertising on it and the fine was laughably small compared to the revenue generated from selling ads. That was outlawed a few years back though. This is an interesting look at the phenomenon: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160124/REAL_ESTATE/160129960/scaffolds-are-everywhere-in-new-york-city http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160124/REAL_ESTATE/16...