Tag Archives: New York City

With fewer fire escapes, where do NYC residents escape to?

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Fire escapes are not needed in newer buildings but a number of New York City residents enjoy having them:

New York City’s 1968 building code no longer allowed fire escapes in new buildings. Modern buildings are equipped with sprinkler systems and interior stairwells.

Yet fire escapes are so woven into the urban fabric of the city that the Landmarks Preservation Commission is often called on to decide whether an old building that is being renovated should keep its metal appendage, as the commission did in March, when residents protested a developer’s plan to remove fire escapes from two buildings on Greene Street in SoHo. (The commission allowed the change.)…

Introduced in the mid-1800s, the iron Z’s that still cling to thousands of city apartment buildings became so synonymous with New York life that they made cameos in “West Side Story,” “Rear Window” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Since then, air-conditioning and modern fire prevention have chipped away at the necessity of fire escapes. But the romance remains: In a city of people starved for space, light and air, fire escapes double as storage closets, front porches and back gardens, a perch of one’s own above the bustle of the street…

Even then — to say nothing of now — fire professionals had their doubts about fire escapes. The National Fire Protection Association noted in 1914 that they were often hard to reach; poorly designed and badly maintained; lacking ladders or stairs from the ground to the second floor; and blocked by residents’ possessions. (People often aired their mattresses and chilled their perishables there.)

While fire escapes may be on the way out outside of protected buildings, I want to know about the effect of their disappearance: where exactly do New Yorkers go now to get their moment alone? In a city with some of the highest real estate prices in the world and a booming luxury market, space is at a premium. Cities often have a reputation for bombarding the individual with all their activity and potential social interactions. Georg Simmel made such a point in his famous piece “The Metropolis and Mental Life” where he suggested people respond by developing a blase attitude to block out all the stimulus.

Perhaps city residents have traded older versions of private spaces – like fire escapes – for new ones like smartphone screens and headphones which allow the user to be more private in public settings such as a park or Starbucks.

Fight NYC inequality with more expansive subway options

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One writer suggests Mayor DeBlasio could address inequality in New York City by improving the subway:

To see how that works in practice, de Blasio should spend a week commuting on the subway from various points in the city: taking the No. 7 train from Flushing, the L train from Greenpoint, the F train from Fort Hamilton Parkway.

Such an exercise may remind de Blasio that while a few rich people can bail out of mass transit by taking ever-cheaper black cars, most New Yorkers are stuck on a subway system that is creaking under record ridership.

The mayor should do some weekend, night and borough-to-borough commutes, too, so he can see how hard it is for lower-paid, off-hours workers to get around when the MTA cuts its service.

Then, the mayor should agree to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s request to put $3 billion into investments in subways and buses over the next five years, helping to pay for the next few stops on the Second Avenue Subway, plus better technology on existing subway lines.

The mayor should think seriously, too, about funding his own transit project. He mentioned a subway on Utica Avenue, and then never talked about it again. With China’s economy cratering, it’s a good time to build — steel and concrete are cheaper.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s extension of the 7 train to Manhattan’s Far West Side will open soon — and New Yorkers will remember that Bloomberg did it.

What will they remember about de Blasio?

Powerful politicians often like to enhance their legacy through the construction of massive buildings or public works projects. And mass transit can easily become an issue tied up with social class and race as mass transit in theory is supposed to be more democratic. But, how many would like their legacy to be underground subways in a city that already has an extensive system? Such projects often take billions of dollars, cause all sorts of disruptions, and can be lengthy. This might only work in New York City, a place so dependent on daily subway usage (particularly compared to other large American cities).

If pushed by the mayor, can a new line be called the de Blasio line? I can’t help but think of the “Rod Blagojevich, Governor” signs every time I pass through the open road tolling facilities on Chicago area tollways…

Another person walks all 6,000 miles of New York City

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The urban walking trend continues: a professional walker (seriously) meets the sociologist who walked all of New York City’s streets.

I was, therefore, amazed to learn that there was another person walking the five boroughs: a thirty-something man named Matt Green. Green isn’t a sociologist; he’s more like an inexhaustibly curious visitor. He, too, has walked more than six thousand miles within the city limits. Unlike Helmreich, who records what he sees in his capacious, near-eidetic memory, Green takes photographs with his phone. He posts the photos to a blog, ImJustWalkin.com. Before he decided to walk all of New York City, Green walked across the United States, from New York to Oregon. Helmreich commutes into the city from his house on Long Island. Green, by contrast, has no apartment or job. He walks full-time and stays with friends. His venture is funded by donations.

Obviously, we had to introduce Green and Helmreich. The film that resulted, directed by Riley Hooper, touches on many subjects: nature, race, identity, gentrification. In some ways, it captures the difficulty every New Yorker faces in comprehending a city which is always beyond us as individuals. It’s also a classic New York romance. These two big-city wanderers are kindred spirits. Now—with a little help—they’ve found each other.

A nice little story. The film touches on some of this but I would want the two to compare walking notes in an academic way. What had they each noticed? How much did their interpretations align or differ? How do their field notes compare? Putting their heads together, I’m guessing they could come up an interesting back and forth on both NYC’s famous and less famous areas. This could end up as a good example of group qualitative work – maintaining the rich detail of the methodology but limiting the subjective bias of an individual researcher – that came about serendipitously.

See these earlier posts on the sociologist who published a book on his efforts and gave tours based on his knowledge.

NYC Council to Google: mark truck routes, no left turns

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Two members of the New York City council have two recommendations for the routes provided by Google Maps:

Council members Brad Lander, deputy leader of policy for the council, and Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the council’s transportation committee, wrote a letter to Google on July 1 suggesting two enhancements to the company’s maps. One would create a “stay on truck routes” option for truck drivers. The other, which has a much broader application, would allow users to select “reduce left turns,” minimizing the number of such turns required on a given trip.

Why reduce left turns? In their letter, Lander and Rodriguez cited an extensive report from WNYC reporter Kate Hinds about the danger of left turns by motor vehicles in an urban environment where lots of people travel on foot and by bicycle. According to data compiled by Hinds and her colleagues, 17 pedestrians and three bicyclists were killed in New York by left-turning vehicles last year. The fatality rate for pedestrians struck by drivers making lefts in the city is the highest in the nation, according to Hinds’s report…

The city’s department of transportation has been redesigning intersections to make left turns safer by changing signals and incorporating other design measures. But Lander and Rodriguez got the idea to ask Google to help by giving its map users the chance to request a “reduce left turns” routing option. “We haven’t heard back yet,” says Rodriguez. “But we hope, knowing that Google is one of those good private entities, that Google can look at this.”…

Nationally, a quarter of motor-vehicle crashes involving pedestrians occur during left turns. A 2013 study found that when drivers make “permitted” left turns—in which they do not have the protection of a left-turn green arrow—they are not even looking to see if there is a pedestrian in their path as much as 9 percent of the time. Such turns, the study found, pose an “alarming” level of risk to pedestrians.

Generally, I would be in favor of Google Maps and others programs offering more route options for those who have particular routes they might want to choose. Routes with late night gas stations? Routes that are more scenic? Routes that avoid long stretches of strip malls? Scenic routes? Routes that involve driving near fewer semis? Routes with more interesting sights along the way? Just like Google Mail has lab features you can turn on and off, why not do some of this for driving routes?

Even if Google makes the left turn information available as an option, how much of an effect would it have on safety? The average driver probably doesn’t think much about reducing left turns. So, Google could help by suggesting people might want this but I could also imagine a public campaign advising against left turns. Now, if Google started eliminating left turns without telling people, that could get interesting…

New York City’s public housing bind

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While many cities like Chicago demolished public housing high-rises with federal money, New York City did not do so to the same degree. That means there are public housing issues lurking in the near future:

But now New York City is in a bind. It didn’t have to tear down its high-rises under HOPE VI. But it also didn’t receive federal funding to improve its public housing, as HOPE VI recipients did (in the first decade of the program, the government dispersed $5 billion through HOPE VI). Now, NYCHA is left trying to figure out how to maintain decades-old buildings and reduce the number of people on the waiting list for public housing, all as federal funding for public housing continues to drop.

Popkin, with the Urban Institute, worries that this means that certain high rises in New York’s public-housing system are becoming as bad as the worst projects initially targeted in HOPE VI. Brownsville, in Brooklyn, is now the largest concentration of public housing in the country, for example. Brownsville also has the lowest median household income in New York City. In many other areas of the country, an area of one square mile of public housing would not be allowed to exist anymore. In New York, it still does, even as violence worsens and gangs take over. And the city doesn’t have the funds to change that, let alone improve other public housing buildings.

Public housing in New York City hasn’t received as much attention from scholars and the press as it has in other cities – particularly compared to Chicago. Perhaps this is because the situation was never quite as bad, whether due to lower levels of isolation (as noted in the article) or because the NYCHA was better managed than the chronically mismanaged Chicago Housing Authority. Or perhaps the urban sociologists in NYC focused on other topics. Or maybe the glittering portions of New York City are overwhelming – don’t forget the current luxury construction boom in the city.

In the long run, New York City is not immune to the same issues of inequality and a lack of affordable housing that many major cities face. If the city wants to avoid facing bigger problems down the road, it would be prudent to take action on housing now.

Boom in skyscraper construction may mean less light for city residents

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New skyscrapers add to a city’s skyline and help boost its prestige. But, those same buildings can block light and this is an ongoing concern in New York City and several other major American cities.

For cities, shadows present both a technical challenge — one that can be modeled in 3-D and measured in “theoretical annual sunlight hours” lost — and an ethereal one. They change the feel of space and the value of property in ways that are hard to define. They’re a stark reminder that the new growth needed in healthy cities can come at the expense of people already living there. And in some ways, shadows even turn light into another medium of inequality — a resource that can be bought by the wealthy, eclipsed from the poor.

These tensions are rising with the scale of new development in many cities. As New York’s skyscrapers set height records, Mayor Bill de Blasio has also proposed building 80,000 units of affordable housing over the next 10 years, much of which the city would find room for by rezoning land to build higher. Boston wants to find space for an additional 53,000 units. Toronto in the last five years has built more than 67,000. All of which will inevitably mean more shadow — or even shadows cast upon shadow, creating places that are darker still…

In New York, legislation was introduced in the city council this spring that would create a task force scrutinizing shadows on public parks. Lawmakers in Boston in the last few years have repeatedly proposed to ban new shadows on parkland, though they haven’t succeeded. In San Francisco, the city has tightened guidance on a long-standing law regulating shadows in an era of increasingly contentious development fights. In Washington, where the conflict arises not from luxury skyscrapers but modest apartments and rowhouse pop-ups, the zoning commission voted in April on rules that would prohibit new shadows cast on neighboring solar panels…

As a result, multimillion-dollar apartments in the sky will darken parts of the park [Central Park] a mile away. Enjoyment of the park while actually in the park — a notably free activity in a high-cost city — will be dimmed a little to give millionaires and billionaires views of it from above.

This is an ongoing issue, one that helped prompt zoning laws in the first place and still gets at the basic question of whose city is it anyway? I’m reminded of the suggestion from New Urbanists that there is a proper ratio of building height to the street in order to limit this issue (and also boost street life rather than dwarf it – this is a whole other issue that parts of Manhattan could deal with) but in places where land is incredibly valuable – New York City, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc. – these design guidelines don’t satisfy the interest in density and the money that can be made.

One drastic thought: shouldn’t all tall buildings in American cities be oriented to the north of major streets or parks or features so as to limit shadows? This is a problem with Central Park: if the tall development was mainly to the east or north, the shadows wouldn’t be as much of an issue (though they would fall elsewhere). Yet, settlement patterns didn’t originally occur with these guidelines in mind.

Storing wealth in New York apartments, contemporary art

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According to one asset manager, the wealthy are now storing their wealth in apartments and art:

“Historically gold was a great instrument for storing of wealth,” the chairman of BlackRock Inc. said at a conference in Singapore on Tuesday. “Gold has lost its luster and there’s other mechanisms in which you can store wealth that are inflation-adjusted.”…

“The two greatest stores of wealth internationally today is contemporary art….. and I don’t mean that as a joke, I mean that as a serious asset class,” said Fink. “And two, the other store of wealth today is apartments in Manhattan, apartments in Vancouver, in London.”…

The median sale price for existing condos in Manhattan jumped to a six-year high of $1.3 million in the first quarter, driven up by buyers seeking alternatives to out-of-reach new developments, according to Corcoran Group, a brokerage. In the U.K., asking prices for property climbed to a record in April as values in London rose 2.5 percent, Rightmove Plc said on Monday.

Three quick thoughts on this:

1. Good thing New York City has a boom in luxury building. Those underground expansions in wealthy London neighborhoods don’t hurt either.

2. What is the point where these apartments turn into a luxury housing bubble? There are only so many uber-desirable locations and only so many people who can afford these luxury places. If this part of the housing market collapses, what happens?

3. I recently read 33 Artists in 3 Acts by sociologist Sarah Thornton and this trend among the wealthy certainly has had an effect on the art world. There are some interesting discussions amongst artists involving money, commodities, and related topics.

What motivates people to document the “urban ruins” of New York City?

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There is the glittering New York City, capital of the world, and then there are the urban ruins:

From the creepy to the bizarre, Ellis’ exploration of the derelict and decrepit has lead him to document nearly 50 locations across New York City and beyond. The images chronicle forsaken schools, asylums, and forts, along with railroads and waterfronts. He updates his popular blog constantly, and a collection of 150 images has been published in Abandoned NYC.

Ellis has become somewhat of an expert at discovering the city’s hidden ruins. He gleans a lot of information from other “urban explorers” who post their findings online. He also uses Google Earth — if he sees a building with a collapsed tree outside or what look like abandoned cars, it’s a sure sign no one’s inside. In three years of urban spelunking, he’s somehow avoided being arrested. There are occasional run-ins with security guards, but he usually leaves when they tell him to and that’s that. “Getting in is easier than you think,” he says.

Wired runs stories like these regularly and you can find lots of such pictures online (particularly from Detroit). What is the appeal? My guesses at the moment:

1. It contrasts with the glittering/branded images most cities want to present.

2. It fits in with those interested in darker things like deviant activity (not necessarily illegal, but at least out of the mainstream), horror films, and post-apocalyptic stories. And all of this may be down the block or around the corner in the city! And there are such artistic opportunities!

3. It strikes me that it may be relatively easy to find these sites. Some of the pictures here are from larger sites but some could be from relatively small buildings. It may not be clear from the outside how ruined it looks inside.

4. Perhaps this is some reaction to the orderly middle- to upper-class presentation of the world where everything has to be in its right place. Sites like these present an opportunity to revel in disorder.

5. Humans can survive in such spaces? Again, we are used to seeing the more upscale settings in which the rich and famous live but seeing how the lower half lives may just be more hidden and/or blocked.

6. This is about preserving history. Without such photos, it is easy for buildings to quickly or slowly disappear.

All the world’s people could fit in NYC

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The world’s population may be at record levels but everyone could fit in New York City if they all stood really close together:

Urban’s core assumption is that 10 humans can fit in a square meter. If you watch this video of nine journalists squeezing themselves into a square meter, you can see that while this would be cozy, it’s definitely possible. This especially true given that about a quarter of the world’s population is under 15.

At 10 people per square meter, that means we can fit 1,000 people in a 10-by-10-meter square. 54,000 people can fit in an American football field, and 26 million people – about the population of Scandinavia – can fit into one square mile, Urban writes. Central Park, which is 1.3 square miles or 3.4 square kilometers, could hold the population of Australia or Saudi Arabia. All 320 million Americans could huddle together into a square that is 3.5 miles or 5.7 kilometers on each side.

And what if we found a piece of land for everyone on Earth – all 7.3 billion of the world’s people? Urban calculates that we would need a square that is 27 km, or 16.8 miles, on each side – an area smaller than Bahrain and, yes, New York City.

Urban calculates that we could fit 590 million people in Manhattan — that takes care of North America. We could fit 1.38 billion people in Brooklyn, equivalent to the population of Africa, South America and Oceania. Queens could hold 2.83 billion — roughly the equivalent of India + China + Japan. 1.09 billion could fit in the Bronx, taking care of Europe, while 1.51 billion could fit Staten Island, making room for the rest of Asia ex-China, Japan and India.

Of course, this isn’t a long-term possibility. But, it does lead me to a few thoughts:

1. This suggests there is a lot of land where few people live. Some of this land is simply uninhabitable. But, there still must be more land where population densities are really low.

2. This reminds me of the sorts of calculations done by those who observe rallies and protests. Calculations of crowds on the National Mall utilize estimates of how close people can stand together for such events.

3. A more abstract question is what is the highest level of population density that can still support decent lives? If technology allowed people to live closer together in the future, would people choose this?

Interpreting dreams about New York City real estate

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At the center of the world, what do dreams about real estate mean? One dream specialist looks into real estate dreams of New Yorkers:

“I dreamt that I found a door in my apartment that lead to this massive extra room no one knew about and suddenly our 300ish-square-foot one bedroom was big! And we didn’t have to move to have kids! Just don’t tell the landlord! I woke up and searched for that door. It did not exist. Dammit, Narnia!”Anne Cutler: The dream image of finding a hidden door that opens into a room one didn’t know was there could be a metaphor for discovering a new aspect of oneself that you didn’t realize existed. In this dream, the expansion of the apartment with the new room could be both literal: room to start a family, and metaphorical: a psychological readiness to have children and expand the family…

“After our first meeting with our broker—which, by the way, was very positive—I had a dream that he was like, “Rebecca, I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to look on Staten Island.” (My parents are assisting with the buying; that’s why I said “we.”) I was very depressed when I woke up. I’m sure the dream interpreter will say I have financial anxiety about buying an apartment but who knows what else this means.”

AC: This dream was most likely triggered by something in her initial meeting with the broker. Possibly the dreamer was trying to manage her expectations about what they could afford. The dreamer is most likely engaged in an internal weighing of her own fantasies about her dream apartment/house versus her fears about how far her finances will go. The dream does have an anxiety component. Given her depressed mood when she woke up, I’ll assume the dreamer doesn’t want to live in Staten Island. But the specifics of why not can only be gleaned from further discussion with the dreamer. The specific images we choose in dreams all have significance. So, in this case, why Staten Island instead of Queens or the Bronx or Brooklyn?

The neuroses of New York City life – perhaps this should have been the focus of a Woody Allen film?

I can’t help but want more data on such a topic:

1. Do New Yorkers dream about real estate more than people in other cities, particularly those in cities with less expensive housing markets?

2. Compared to others, do New Yorkers always want to move up (bigger place, better location, etc.) in their dreams? Given the consumerist nature of American life and what we think real estate signifies about us, is this limited to New Yorkers?

3. Do people have positive dreams about where they live? The examples presented here are more about anxieties dealing with home. Yet, psychologists and others have argued that certain dwellings can be designed to provide a better fit with the resident’s personality.