4 ms·

As a born and bred country person, I've always found pretty much all cities claustrophobic for me. My son, I guess as part of his youthful rebellion, told me a

As a born and bred country person, I've always found pretty much all cities claustrophobic for me. My son, I guess as part of his youthful rebellion, told me at the age of five that he was going to go to school in NYC, and he followed through on the threat. This past summer we drove down to the Bronx a few times in preparation for his attending Fordham University, and I found the Bronx very uncomfortably busy and loud. Well, this past weekend I went down to parent's weekend at the school, and stayed in Manhattan, which I hadn't been to in at least 25 years. After an evening in Manhattan, I took the train up to the Bronx and suddenly thought, "wow, this is so quiet and nice!" Clearly perspective is very important.

senkora 11mo ago
Midtown Manhattan is “too much” even for a lot of New Yorkers. I try to minimize my time there.
- indoordin0saur 11mo ago
  I work in Midtown and live in (a still very dense) part of Brooklyn. When I come home in the evenings and come up those subway stairs I always breathe a sigh of relief.
  - rayiner 11mo ago
    That’s interesting. When I lived in Manhattan I didn’t mind the density at all. But I was apartment hunting in Brooklyn one day and literally had a panic attack at how chaotic it was. I made it two blocks from the 4/5/6 station (I forget which one) before heading back.
    - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
      > made it two blocks from the 4/5/6 station (I forget which one) 4 or 5. If you fall asleep on those, you go to Brooklyn or the Bronx. If you fall asleep on the 6, you always wake up in the Bronx. (Well, or City Hall. But then you can get dumplings.)
nopalito 11mo ago
The fact you present this obvious distinction as meaningful insight suggests your preconceptions about the city were not based in reality that even the most basic differences apear revelatory.
- deinonychus 11mo ago
  what were his preconceptions about the city other than "they're all loud and claustrophobic?"
mtalantikite 11mo ago
I've been living in Brooklyn for just shy of 20 years and I'm very comfortable in dense cities. After spending about a month in India, primarily in Delhi and a bit in Jaipur, I remember getting back to Manhattan and thinking "wow, look at all this space, there's no people here! What a peaceful, relaxed city".
- lelandfe 11mo ago
  Something that surprises often is that NYC used to be far, far denser. See the second image: https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhattans-density/ https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhat... I recommend to people the Tenement Museum for their second trip to NYC - it was eye opening (but pretty grim)
  - shermantanktop 11mo ago
    What amazes me is that people did not flee. I assume the hand-to-mouth existence they had in these slums was apparently a little better than their prospects elsewhere. Or perhaps they were moving out but immigration and reproduction was more than making up for it…
    - crazygringo 11mo ago
      To where? You have no money, very little skills, you don't speak English. Even if you cobbled together money to take the train to some small town in Ohio or Iowa or something, what are you going to do as a complete social outsider who doesn't speak the language? The idea was to stick around in the LES where you had an actual community. Try to make some money, learn English, develop some skills, and then move out. Which is exactly what people did. And the new immigrants took their places. Also -- they had already fled. This was the fleeing. From Ireland, from Italy, from Poland, etc.
      - kridsdale1 11mo ago
        Their kids were the ones who were better educated and could move on. It’s still happening today.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
FooBarBizBazz 11mo ago
When I have been in NYC recently, it's seemed remarkably quiet to me. In particular, I don't see many cars. (Only the subway is loud. But that doesn't stress me out, because I don't have to do anything. You get on, you let your mind wander, you get off, you take a little walk.) When I was a child, I saw movies set in New York, and the streets were always choked with traffic. The sound of a car horn was almost a shorthand for the city. You'd hear it in music. They'd use it in establishing shots in films. Always yellow cabs. Even a decade or two ago, you'd stand, as a pedestrian, at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Now, often you look both ways and the street is clear for a whole block. You don't wait, you just cross. Sure, there's a rhythm to it. Even decades ago, the Financial District, choked during rush hour, was spookily-empty on the weekends. So maybe I have more recently walked around in the places and times that are at the troughs of that rhythm. But I suspect there is also a longer-term trend, or perhaps a step change, caused by COVID: Cities just seem quieter now. To an extent it is good. I'm happy to see a city by for and of people, rather than ditto for cars, their manufacturers, and their buyers (who lack alternatives). By all means, let restaurants build decks on the street; decorate them with flower boxes; let people meet there for brunch or after work. There is also a negative aspect. There is still, I think, a suburban hangover. I see this in friends who it is now difficult to drag out of their apartments and away from their video games; in other people who one might frustratedly describe as "suburban women voters" who, in rare acts of personal courage, mask up and use the subway (they stand out from the people who actually live and work in the city. ... I shouldn't mock them; at least by seeing the reality they will overcome their fears); and in the rhetoric of the political Right, which seems more grounded in Escape from New York than in reality. So I suppose several forces have made the city quieter. Some positive, some negative. And popular perception lags (as it must; this is the nature of information transmission).
- foobarian 11mo ago
  Apparently the surge tolls they implemented recently contributed to less traffic, in Manhattan at least
- MSFT_Edging 11mo ago
  The loudness of cities is generally a product of cars. Very busy areas of cities without many cars are fairly quiet. Tire noise, exhaust noise, horns, etc all make a ton of noise. Living near a highway in the suburbs is probably inherently more noisy than many cities.
Arrath 11mo ago
Its funny for me, born and raised in the endless river valleys of the PNW, that I am so used to this topology that I'm much more comfortable in cities with an "opposite valley wall" (even if it's a building facade on the other side of the street and not the next row of hills a couple miles distant) in sight, than I am in Florida, on islands, or other big flatlands areas with nothing at all to break up the great sweep of the horizon.
- kridsdale1 11mo ago
  I’m the same. Land that isn’t mountainous is terrifying to me. It’s like an instinct that The Horde could approach from any angle. The Midwest creeps me out. I come from a part of North America as jagged as Norway.
  - paganel 11mo ago
    I'm the opposite, I'm always more at ease in the great plains (I'm from Eastern-Europe, for context), while when I'm at the mountainside I feel like there's something that's just about to "fall on my head" or similar, something that hangs over me.
    - bombcar 11mo ago
      The sun either rises way too late or sets too early if you’re right up against the Rockies. It IS weird to now live where there aren’t noticeable mountains as landmarks.
da02 11mo ago
What he is studying at Fordham? Is he and his friends worried about the job market after graduation?

senkora 11mo ago

Midtown Manhattan is “too much” even for a lot of New Yorkers. I try to minimize my time there.

indoordin0saur 11mo ago
I work in Midtown and live in (a still very dense) part of Brooklyn. When I come home in the evenings and come up those subway stairs I always breathe a sigh of relief.
- rayiner 11mo ago
  That’s interesting. When I lived in Manhattan I didn’t mind the density at all. But I was apartment hunting in Brooklyn one day and literally had a panic attack at how chaotic it was. I made it two blocks from the 4/5/6 station (I forget which one) before heading back.
  - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > made it two blocks from the 4/5/6 station (I forget which one) 4 or 5. If you fall asleep on those, you go to Brooklyn or the Bronx. If you fall asleep on the 6, you always wake up in the Bronx. (Well, or City Hall. But then you can get dumplings.)

nopalito 11mo ago

The fact you present this obvious distinction as meaningful insight suggests your preconceptions about the city were not based in reality that even the most basic differences apear revelatory.

deinonychus 11mo ago
what were his preconceptions about the city other than "they're all loud and claustrophobic?"

mtalantikite 11mo ago

I've been living in Brooklyn for just shy of 20 years and I'm very comfortable in dense cities. After spending about a month in India, primarily in Delhi and a bit in Jaipur, I remember getting back to Manhattan and thinking "wow, look at all this space, there's no people here! What a peaceful, relaxed city".

lelandfe 11mo ago
Something that surprises often is that NYC used to be far, far denser. See the second image: https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhattans-density/ https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhat... I recommend to people the Tenement Museum for their second trip to NYC - it was eye opening (but pretty grim)
- shermantanktop 11mo ago
  What amazes me is that people did not flee. I assume the hand-to-mouth existence they had in these slums was apparently a little better than their prospects elsewhere. Or perhaps they were moving out but immigration and reproduction was more than making up for it…
  - crazygringo 11mo ago
    To where? You have no money, very little skills, you don't speak English. Even if you cobbled together money to take the train to some small town in Ohio or Iowa or something, what are you going to do as a complete social outsider who doesn't speak the language? The idea was to stick around in the LES where you had an actual community. Try to make some money, learn English, develop some skills, and then move out. Which is exactly what people did. And the new immigrants took their places. Also -- they had already fled. This was the fleeing. From Ireland, from Italy, from Poland, etc.
    - kridsdale1 11mo ago
      Their kids were the ones who were better educated and could move on. It’s still happening today.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

FooBarBizBazz 11mo ago

When I have been in NYC recently, it's seemed remarkably quiet to me. In particular, I don't see many cars. (Only the subway is loud. But that doesn't stress me out, because I don't have to do anything. You get on, you let your mind wander, you get off, you take a little walk.) When I was a child, I saw movies set in New York, and the streets were always choked with traffic. The sound of a car horn was almost a shorthand for the city. You'd hear it in music. They'd use it in establishing shots in films. Always yellow cabs. Even a decade or two ago, you'd stand, as a pedestrian, at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Now, often you look both ways and the street is clear for a whole block. You don't wait, you just cross. Sure, there's a rhythm to it. Even decades ago, the Financial District, choked during rush hour, was spookily-empty on the weekends. So maybe I have more recently walked around in the places and times that are at the troughs of that rhythm. But I suspect there is also a longer-term trend, or perhaps a step change, caused by COVID: Cities just seem quieter now. To an extent it is good. I'm happy to see a city by for and of people, rather than ditto for cars, their manufacturers, and their buyers (who lack alternatives). By all means, let restaurants build decks on the street; decorate them with flower boxes; let people meet there for brunch or after work. There is also a negative aspect. There is still, I think, a suburban hangover. I see this in friends who it is now difficult to drag out of their apartments and away from their video games; in other people who one might frustratedly describe as "suburban women voters" who, in rare acts of personal courage, mask up and use the subway (they stand out from the people who actually live and work in the city. ... I shouldn't mock them; at least by seeing the reality they will overcome their fears); and in the rhetoric of the political Right, which seems more grounded in Escape from New York than in reality. So I suppose several forces have made the city quieter. Some positive, some negative. And popular perception lags (as it must; this is the nature of information transmission).

foobarian 11mo ago
Apparently the surge tolls they implemented recently contributed to less traffic, in Manhattan at least
MSFT_Edging 11mo ago
The loudness of cities is generally a product of cars. Very busy areas of cities without many cars are fairly quiet. Tire noise, exhaust noise, horns, etc all make a ton of noise. Living near a highway in the suburbs is probably inherently more noisy than many cities.

Arrath 11mo ago

Its funny for me, born and raised in the endless river valleys of the PNW, that I am so used to this topology that I'm much more comfortable in cities with an "opposite valley wall" (even if it's a building facade on the other side of the street and not the next row of hills a couple miles distant) in sight, than I am in Florida, on islands, or other big flatlands areas with nothing at all to break up the great sweep of the horizon.

kridsdale1 11mo ago
I’m the same. Land that isn’t mountainous is terrifying to me. It’s like an instinct that The Horde could approach from any angle. The Midwest creeps me out. I come from a part of North America as jagged as Norway.
- paganel 11mo ago
  I'm the opposite, I'm always more at ease in the great plains (I'm from Eastern-Europe, for context), while when I'm at the mountainside I feel like there's something that's just about to "fall on my head" or similar, something that hangs over me.
  - bombcar 11mo ago
    The sun either rises way too late or sets too early if you’re right up against the Rockies. It IS weird to now live where there aren’t noticeable mountains as landmarks.

da02 11mo ago

What he is studying at Fordham? Is he and his friends worried about the job market after graduation?