Supersize NYC, Apartment Buildings Scale Up

When you live in a city or visit often, it's hard to notice how rapidly things are changing. NYC used to always have a whole lot of apartment buildings, averaging between 12 and 25 stories with a relatively small number of really tall ones. Even so by looking at the skyline one could usually know with confidence that most of the tallest buildings of 30 stories and up were office buildings, located in the two main office districts--downtown and midtown. Also, many large areas were mostly made up of much smaller residential buildings. In the last 15 years or so this has radically changed with a new emerging skyline in which both apartment and office buildings regularly top 40 stories.

Spotting the apartments is somewhat easy, since most of these new buildings have tall needle like forms or other tricks meant to maximize window space as opposed to office buildings in which large block floor plans are more desirable.

There are two main factors, the first being that Manhattan as basically the only urban area with a fully supported high capacity subway system and mostly unbroken street grid is just seeing a massive amount of demand.

Another factor is that city government in the Bloomberg era has made a concerted effort to maximize development and tax revenue per dollar of transit investment.

The sum total result is a city that is both increasingly anti car, pro pedestrian and pro growth at the same time. Similar things are happening in the outer boroughs, but the story there is more complex.

When Did New York Become New York? The Street Grid

Many, if not most think New York's huge, deep, wide harbor and early founding ensured it's spot as a great city; but clearly things could have gone quite differently. The cosmopolitan and highly convenient character of at least, Manhattan is the product of a far sighted design-conceived just a little over 200 years ago.

From The New York Times,

"The grid certified by the city’s street commissioners on March 22, 1811, spurred development by establishing seven miles of regular, predictable street access. It also laid the groundwork for nearly 2,000 acres of landfill that would be added to the island over the next two centuries. The commissioners concluded that New York “is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and that straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in.”

The grid, which incorporated some existing roads, would also prove surprisingly resilient. It accommodated motor vehicles (after sidewalks and stoops were pruned). It allowed planners to superimpose Central Park in the 19th century and superblocks like those of Stuyvesant Town and Lincoln Center in the 20th. In the 21st, the grid was extended west to include apartment houses on Riverside Boulevard."

Again--you might consider this a "duh moment"--the grid concept was very ancient, perhaps dating to the very first cities. "The urban grid goes back beyond Hippodamus of Miletus, the Greek urban planner, who, like the street commissioners, viewed the matrix as a manifestation of “the rationality of civilized life.” New York’s grid inspired planners elsewhere. But nowhere, wrote Edward K. Spann, an urban historian, “was the triumph of the grid as decisive as in America’s greatest city.”" Manhattan's long shape and reasonably flat landscape also suggested this layout.

One is struck, walking around Manhattan at just how few times the simple structure of the grid is violated--usually for a very good reason- a large public building like The Central Library; Grand Central Station; the old Penn Station or parks. Even in these cases, almost all these buildings or parks are easily traversed by footpaths.

The grid places the resident's ability to navigate and interact above the needs of the occasional visitor--who can always use public transit. This has limited Manhattan as a location for certain very large research facilities and has restrained the fantasies of architects, but it has provided widest degree of social interaction and the highest degree of convenience to New Yorkers.

Several Posts About New York, History, Transit and Urbanism On The Way

Hope it isn't too annoying to Pittsburgh and Cleveland readers if a bunch of reflections about my trip in NY show up here. My stated goal here was always to not just talk about any one place but create a forum to contrast, compare and learn about all cities both inside and outside the region. Also, this was supposed to be a group blog in which many people are posting about events, opinions and experiences.

New York is sort of the Rosetta Stone of American urbanism, in that at least in part it learned many of the basic rules of being a city and applied them very well.

For starters--one must admit that some part of the city's success as a financial center in recent years has had a lot to do with corrupt, insider political connections and that a large number of it's largest banks should have failed.

Even so the city's dominance in so many fields; finance, insurance, real estate, law, accounting, publishing, film, music, theater, food, fashion, design, journalism architecture, Art, medicine, education, consulting, tourism and it's ability to both evolve and attract new people and regenerate itself over a long period is something few U.S. cities can claim.

BTW, NYC was until fairly recently also a very, very large manufacturing city and is now an important location for technology companies.

Some would say, New York's deep large harbor; solid rock for large scale skyscrapers and early settlement gave it a huge leg up, but clearly something about the way the city formed--the early adoption of a clear simple street grid, investments in transit played a huge role.

I will post some of my thoughts-as someone who knows the city pretty well. Obviously, I see some lessons to be learned in both it's life, and near death experience in the late 20th century.