I recommend to people the Tenement Museum for their second trip to NYC - it was eye opening (but pretty grim)
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.
That aside, that there was literally no going back, given the travel to get to NY. I had an ancestor come to NYC in the 19th c. and return back to Sweden, but he was not in the desperate straits that many were. I'm sure some would have returned, given the opportunity.
You see it time and time again.
It’s still happening today.
They have a population of 6 to 7 million people in an area of 700 square kilometers, resulting in a population density of 8300 people / km^2. Substantially more than that if you account for the fact that a large percentage of the island is still tropical jungle.
Despite that fact, their city planning is so good with large open spaces everywhere interspersed with greenery, that you almost never feel claustrophobic. Even the so-called "hearland" neighbourhoods with rows after rows of high-rise residential HDB buildings are quite pleasant.
The most claustrophobic place I've been in Singapore are the few squares in the center of CBD filled with skyscrapers that almost obscure you the view of the sky.
quick funny story, my family and i were in Times Square last year for New Year's. Thousands of people everywhere as you can imagine. We're walking down the sidewalk and right as rain my wife runs into someone she knows from all the way back in Texas. Among all those people from all over the world she still manages to run into someone she knows. My wife and her talk while me and the boys hang around waiting just like we've had to do at our local grocery store back home. My kids and I still laugh at that story.
There is a good argument that San Francisco could and should be denser than it is, but its ludicrous to call it not dense at all.
(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).
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.
Of course there was heavy industry in that day so that would be loud and filthy.
How quiet was dense NYC in 1830 though?
I bet it could get pretty quiet, even with the density.
The whole visit felt weird, and eerie, and off somehow, but I couldn't figure out what it was. And then I was standing waiting for a crossing light and heard the clicking of a scooter's turn signal ~20 feet away. It stood out because it took a few seconds to realize that I shouldn't be hearing it because of other noise.
The Midwest creeps me out.
I come from a part of North America as jagged as Norway.
It IS weird to now live where there aren’t noticeable mountains as landmarks.
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.)
If you want to see well-designed cities, look at Europe. Helsinki has both deep integration with nature, and high-quality public services. Denmark does very well with cycling, which improves public health and noise and air quality. Etc. I like to focus on countries that rank highly on the World Happiness Report, and try figure out what they're doing right.
The author is trying to measure "claustrophobia" specifically, not ideal-ness. An empty parking lot would be less claustrophobic than most other kinds of places, yes. The measured claustrophobia factor appears to be just one part of a larger analysis that resulted in a NYT article, but unfortunately the article isn't linked.
Particularly happy to see scaffolding listed in there. It’s an absolute blight on the city and some scaffolding remains up for years and years for no good reason. There should be fines for leaving it up.
With drones becoming more common and robust, though, it will hopefully soon be easier and faster to do the inspections and so the scaffolding may become cheaper to remove and replace each cycle
https://thehustle.co/originals/why-so-many-new-york-city-sid...
Walking past a random 10 foot deep open hole is very unnerving to me. It’s also just one of the many ways the city is inhospitable for people with accessibility needs. But of course the NYCers probably don’t even notice.
I think they were mostly harmless :-)
“map the emotional terrain of the world’s most famous and influential urban center, New York City, and explore the effect of the city’s powerful moods on those who live and work here.”
https://urbanomnibus.net/2010/10/you-are-here-mapping-the-ps...
Psychogeography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography
Speed Levitch: The New York City "Grid Plan"
Compared to even the suburbs where 1-2 people on a sidewalk can feel like you're dangerously close to having to step into an active roadway, sidewalks in NYC neighborhoods like the upper east side feel gigantic and are bordered by parked cars that provide a buffer to the roadway.
In 1811 the grid plan designated sidewalk widths to be 20ft for major cross-town roads vs. many suburban sidewalk widths at 4-5 feet.
I'm a big fan of this sidewalk width map: https://sidewalkwidths.nyc/
Living in the suburbs is much more like living in a fish bowl. I can't leave my house and take a walk around the neighborhood without the neighborhood being aware of my presence.
I think a simpler analysis of sidewalk width plus the presence of curb parking would provide a closer representation of the lived experience. In mid-town, you have wide avenues and wide streets yet that's singled out as the worst area. Doesn't really add up IMO.
I reread it and realized I'm in too deep.
Yeah, there you have it. I wonder why the sidewalks are so narrow (/s).