Hello from Manhattan!
The crazy thing about Manhattan is that it works. Think about it. There are millions of people compressed on a tiny, elongated island living and working in really tall buildings. Millions of them.
In fact, there are some 8+ million people living in New York’s five boroughs.
Yet, it works.
Why?
Density! Yes. New Yorkers built up, rather than out like we did in Los Angeles. Facing physical constraints on the island of Manhattan, they decided to build skyscrapers rather than low-density industrial parks. They built apartments and condos rather than single family homes on a 10th of an acre of land.
Tonight I took a 10 mile round-trip subway ride in less than 20 minutes. Can anyone truthfully say the Newhall or Sepulveda pass works as reliably? I doubt it.
But here in New York, a long trip like that was a snap and only cost me $4 on the subway.
Clearly there are plusses and minuses to living in a place like New York City. And, to be honest, I miss the friendly people of the SCV, tree-lined McBean, motorists who are only a little bit rude (and not outright hostile) and nice, open green parks.
But I’ve been in Manhattan for 24 hours now and I’m really glad I didn’t rent a car. A car is a curse in a place like this, dooming the driver to look for parking spaces and committing him to a fight with traffic. In New York, you really don’t need a car -or insurance, gasoline, and maintenance- and yet life is very livable. In Santa Clarita, the opposite is true. It’s very difficult to conduct your daily affairs without a car in the SCV, and that’s why we build ocean-sized parking lots and 55mph freeways masquerading as roads (Newhall Ranch).
And that’s what the high density vs low density debate really boils down to: mobility. On the one hand, you sacrifice personal space and your timetable for the Metro by living in a high density place, or you pay through the teeth to enjoy personal freedom and fight everyone else’s personal freedom in the form of traffic in a low density place like Santa Clarita.
Santa Clarita will never look like New York…of that much I am certain. But I hope it continues to offer some good alternatives to driving. We’ve already got the Metrolink, commuter bus service, some trails, and local transit, but it’s not enough. We need more if we’re going to survive a future in which gas prices are $4+ a gallon (if the 2008 gas price surge is any indication) and the population expands.
Check SCVTalk on Saturday when I’ll be liveblogging John Stewart’s and Stephen Colbert’s rally in Washington DC!
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“One hand in the air for the big city/
Street lights, big dreams all looking pretty/
no place in the World that can compare/
Put your lighters in the air, everybody say yeaaahh
come on, come, /yeah,
[Newhall, Newhall, Newhall] ”
- file this under shameless Newhall boosterism for me will ya
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Pingback: October 28, 2010 – Daily Brief, We miss Jeff edition | SCVTalk.com
Earthquakes dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think you should spend a few months there. It is great for a short trip, but I think you will quickly find that the hostile attitudes and crowds will soon turn you into a Petz style curmudgeon. For those of us who prefer breathing room, ‘Don’t tread on me’
New York City works precisely because of its density. That density makes viable and the mass transit needed to move residents around fairly efficiently. Manhattan has 70,824 people per square mile. That makes constructing things like subway’s more rational. It also allows other modes of transportation like buses to run very frequently. Nothing like the 30 minutes to 1 hour waits in the SCV. We can’t create that kind of density in the SCV. Without very high density, significant and costly improvements to public transportation are not economically viable.
Doubling the population (OVOV) will significantly impact our roads with the average intersection seeing a 20+ percentage increase in wait times. The 14 and Newhall Pass will be in failure mode meaining that the average speeds will be 25% of the speed limit or less during peak times. The 5 will be similarly impacted but will have slightly higher average speeds. And this will be after all the planned road improvements are made. How many times have the necessary road improvements actually occurred as developments come on line?
Yup, in the SCV we’ll have NYC traffic with no great alternative because the public transit that we could use will be stuck in on the same badly impacted roads (that is unless we are taking one of the Metrolink trains from Canyon Country to Newhall – then it might work).
eat at Carmine’s on 91st and Broadway, i use to be a kitchen manager there…great food.
The building up vs building out controversy can be summed up in one work. EARTHQUACK!
Say hi to Jay-z
If I see a pic of you wearing a Yankee cap -Im gonna find you and kick your ass!
I see someone hasn’t experienced the soul crushing experience that is riding the New York subway every day.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/84-million-new-yorkers-suddenly-realize-new-york-c,18003/
Can’t wait to get back to Santa Clarita and drive in my car to In-n-Out.
LOL, Perfect post Jess.
Go to the Marriot Hotel and eat at the rotating restaurant on top!
And order a martini! It’s $16 for one, but it’s worth it. 1.) One is enough 2.) it’ll keep you buzzing for 3 hours.
And say hello to the Naked Cowboy at Times Square!
Jeeze Louise, CS has an opinion on everything.
I lived in Manhattan as a kid, just north of NYU. My mom took me everywhere on the subway, while my dad was at work. By age 5 I had been in every museum in Manhattan (yawn) and could find my way through Macy’s and Gimbels without an adult.
I lived in Manhattan again during the summers as a law student, and again took the subway everywhere. Visualize going to Flatbush, to Crazy Eddie’s, buying a whole stereo which I balanced on top of a folding metal shopping cart, and then bringing it back to 10th Ave. & W. 24th Street while trying to keep hostile locals on the subway in West Brooklyn from stealing it from me.
The point about the population/housing density of Manhattan is that it works because the amount of subway track per acre is stupendous, compared with LA Co. or SCV. There are 4 north-south subway lines on an island 2 miles wide, plus nearly constant east-west bus service and connecting east-west subway lines to create an easily usable network to avoid use of cabs, let alone ccars. New York is building a whole new line on the far east side of Manhattan, because it’s owners were “underserved”. When you add the commuter train lines to New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut, you see why no sane person tries to drive a car into Manhattan.
Manhattan is eminently walkable, and eminently subway-able. However, the problem of “few supermarkets” continues. I once spent 7 hours going from bodega to bodega trying to buy lime flavored jello. People who want to cook have to use their metal shopping carts, and ride the subway for many blocks, just to reach a supermarket. That explains why even the most elegant apartments have super tiny kitchens. Most people “eat out” for each meal.
Even though Manhattan is super convenient on foot, it is also wildly expensive. My old cockroach filled apartment building has been turned into a co-op (NY’s version of a cond0). My one bedroom, with windows into a dark court yard, sells for over $1 Million.
The rents in Manhattan are astronomical. One bedrooms like those in my old building go for something like $5,500 per month. (It’s no wonder young investment bankers need those big bonuses.) My old building is a “pre-war landmark”, complete with gargoyles and a rooftop view of the Hudson. However, in reading the website for my building’s owners association, I see that the cockroaches are still there 33 years later, despite the high price to buy or rent an apartment in the building.
The average person living in Manhattan lives in a tiny space, square footage wise. They have far fewer possessions than Santa Claritans, or are profoundly creative with storage. They have no private back yards. Most apartment buildings have no green space whatsoever. The large number of dog owners in Manhattan walk their dogs on the sidewalks rather than grass; the dogs crap on the sidewalks; and generally no one picks up after their dogs. The apartment building supers and shop owners hose off the sidewalks from time to time. My niece tells me that W. 23rd St. is still a slippery nightmare every Monday morning, because no sidewalk washing occurs on the weekends.
When you drill down through the veneer of civility of the upper classes who live in Manhattan, they join the ranks of those who live “north of 111th St” in being as tough as rats. Perhaps it’s all the underground subway riding in the rats’ territory which does it.
Though we sort of loved Manhattan, giving up car, possessions, dog, gardening, garage work shop and cooking was more than we wanted to do to live there. The world over, city dwellers long to have those amenities, and those who can afford it, in places with great subways like London, Moscow and Tokyo, have “country houses” to live a real life some of the time. My bottom line is that living in a highly dense urban environment needs to be a choice, not one foisted upon anyone by California city planners and real estate developers glorifying having no yard, no storage space, and no dog.
It is true, the rent is too damn high.
This.
Jeff, when you marry and raise children, you will look at density and lack of private space in a whole new way. Not everyone is in your stage of life. “Coexist”
Are there no families in NYC?
And Jeff’s no longer married?
I guess I need a serious reality check. Perhaps I should move to Castaic.
So tell me which community design is more “family friendly”?
Try to stay on topic.
Tell me what’s more family friendly – having Mommy and/or Daddy live 5 miles from work … or 30 miles from work?
Is it about where you work, or where you live?
Community design is about both. Quality of life is about both. Family friendliness encompasses so many things; space between your neighbors and sizing of one’s lot aren’t prime.
I’d trade the latter for proximity to work, if I could, but the schools in LA proper are a non-starter.
Not everyone has your issues. For example, your neighbors want to annex.
Actually, they voted not to annex.
55mph freeways masquerading as roads (Newhall Ranch). I thought you were going to say residential roads, but same thing.
Fun place to visit, but living in that mess, no!