Boston is. NYC is.

[armpitsOFmight]

____

[bostonbred]

____

I am SEEIN Mr. FIghts points inthishere post coverin it all. PLUS OUR MAYOr from BOSTON NOT MEFFA!!! CHECKMATES!!!!

[Chessplayer]

^
Bloomberg is also from Boston.

[ablarc]

Boston is better than NYC!!!
BIGGER, too !!!

[statler]

BIGGER, too !!!

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j182/killerachilles/m9q5xk.gif

[ablarc]

^

statler,

for various reasons I've gone through some months of not being able to laugh.


You've cured all that.

[armpitsOFmight]

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j182/killerachilles/m9q5xk.gif

Funny Statler, but why do you think a washed-up rapper driving his car in NYC has anything to do with this thread? You and the other mods on this board are always boasting about how you don't need a car in "the big apple" and yet you still need to pound your chest and show off how great NYC is through car culture.

[kennedy]

Actually, 50 is driving his car in L.A.

Ironically, he's shaking his head at the person from New York who is driving the smaller car.

Similar to how NY is bigger than Boston, and sort of just shakes it's collective head at Boston.

So, um, so your little "I hate mods" thing was kind of silly.

[blade_bltz]

armpits you've completely jumped the shark. BBred continues to be the more amusing troll.

Note this is still consistent with the hypothesis that armpits and bbred are the SAME PERSON.

also, I don't know where that 50 gif is from, but I was instantly reminded of this, uh, classic scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUHukG-ZnRA

[kennedy]

...I don't know where that 50 gif is from...

Entourage, the episode either this past season or the one before it, on Turtle's birthday when he gets two cars and wants to get a job so he can stop mooching off of Vince...and then they all sit around and give each other noogies in the end.

[bostonbred]

^
Bloomberg is also from Boston.

THIS being true as being I born in SAME hopital is MR. NYC Mayor!!! BUT, to add to the other points. NOT TROLLz, Mayor Bloom OR me. My name NOT Wishnik. Mayor Norfin NOT mayo of NY.!!!! NOT having the BIG pink HAIR. PLUS if PINK hair am mayo of Ft. Loderdale or Scot'sdale due to BAD rinse job at old person booty parler.

Iam addinf THE P.iS. here to this. yes IAM having 2PITS Mr BBITZ but THIS not one of THEM, so you no Shylock Homes here!!!.

[ablarc]

Who you callin' Shylock, bo'?

[bostonbred]

You being Dr WHITSUN if you are wanting it.

[blade_bltz]

Oh, go jump off your precious "Bunker Hill Bridge"

[vanshnookenraggen]

http://4gifs.com/gallery/d/128844-1/Keep_on_trollin.jpg? (http://4gifs.com)

[ant8904]

Well, I can say with certainty that Boston is cleaner than NYC.

[bostonbred]

Oh, go jump off your precious "Bunker Hill Bridge"

That NOT being the NICE boston thing to say. NOT chunky Stewy here.

[commuter guy]

Bostonbred,

Who dat? who dat? Who dat behind da komputhair writin dem PoSTs?

[kz1000ps]

"Boston is better than NYC!!!" ...... pathetic. Insecure much?

[cden4]

Well hey at least we don't regularly call ourselves "the greatest city in the world". Talk about a big ego!

[vanshnookenraggen]

I know, "Hub of the Universe" is very modest.

[kennedy]

More sophisticated, anyhow.

[czsz]

Holmes actually only said "Hub of the Solar System". Modest compared to "universe," no?

Also, he was referring to the State House, not to Boston.

[KentXie]

Even so, I think NYC's description is more accurate than Boston's.

[cden4]

I guess I just hear people regularly say that NYC is the "greatest city in the world" more than I hear people say Boston is the "hub of the universe". For example, on David Letterman's show they say it every night.

[TikiNYC]

We all know that if Boston is better than New York, then Boston is better than London, because New York is better than London (http://sleepny.lefora.com/2009/07/08/london-v-new-york/) (according to a lot of the members at SleepNY and around the internet).

But I dont think that it's that simple. You see, in New York we have this dude.
(http://sleepny.lefora.com/2009/12/19/captain-chesley-sullenberger-a-new-york-icon/#post0)
There aint no one like him doing stuff like that (http://sleepny.lefora.com/2009/06/21/ode-to-sullenberger-flight-1549-ditches-in-the-hud/) in Boston, surely?

[GW2500]

Boston is awsome and most certainly a location, but it's not even in the same class as NYC.

[kennedy]

Hey Tiki, if NYC is so great, then why do they have forums about sleep? :p

[armpitsOFmight]

I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW AMAZING NYC IS!!!! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!! THAT 2ND AVENUE SUBWAY PROJECT IS ALMOST DONE!!!!!

[czsz]

Are you living in 2016? Cause...no.

[Patrick]

I think this is a silly thread, but honestly, what are the measurements for comparison? Economy doesn't make a great place. Population doesn't either. Culture and society might, in both of which areas Boston has traditionally given NYC a run for its money. and for a long time Boston was leading the pack in terms of "society," with NYC and Philly trailing somewhere in the distance.

I think it is right to say the two cities are not in the same class. NYC is much more cosmopolitan, but what does this mean for which city is "better." and what does that even mean anyway? Both cities are a collection of inner core areas and annexed outer areas, some of which have urbanized much more than others. Not all of NYC is what it looks like on postcards. Pound for Pound I would say Boston might actually have more to offer. That is to say, in my opinion, NYC may have more going for it, but per person Boston offers more. Just an opinion.

[bostonbred]

THIS not provin the true on FOOsBALL feld with the dum JETS going to SUNNY SAN DEIGO and Holywood Tom going north of their. ISO SAD.

[kennedy]

I'm still too shocked to be sad. Screw Sanchez. USC quarterbacks are dirty, awful people who probably hate most kittens. Except Matt Cassel. He was lucky enough to not start his first few years, learn under the glorious Tom Brady, and taste a bit of Ol' School New England Humble Pie.

NYC sports definitiely have nothing on Boston.

[armpitsOFmight]

I personally couldn't give a shit about sports. NYC is lame because it has an army of douchebags like this guy...

http://i491.photobucket.com/albums/rr279/jrlevi01/DonaldTrump001.jpg

[kennedy]

I can imagine him facing off against Menino in "Tool Academy."

[vanshnookenraggen]

It's true, everyone in NYC is just like that.

[KentXie]

I don't think I could ever live in NYC. Not because I hate it or anything. I just think it's too overwhelming. There're too many things happening at once.

[unterbau]

I would eat 99cent pizza every day

[tobyjug]

All the men would sound like Al Michaels. And the women like Bella Abzug. Or perhaps Mariah Carey.

[ablarc]

All the men would sound like Al Michaels. And the women like Bella Abzug. Or perhaps Mariah Carey.
Hey ... wait a minute ! ... what you talkin' about ?? Mariah Carey is THE GREATEST SINGER IN THE WORLD (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20332&highlight=mariah+carey) !!

[Beton Brut]

Mariah Carey is THE GREATEST SINGER IN THE WORLD (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20332&highlight=mariah+carey) !!

Yikes! My money's on Dawn Upshaw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Upshaw), or Polly Jean Harvey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Jean_Harvey).

...And the women like Bella Abzug. Or perhaps Mariah Carey.

Or Mariann from Brooklyn... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_from_Brooklyn#Mariann_from_Brooklyn)

[Suffolk 83]

I've never read a sentence in this senseless thread but I wanted to post this somewhere. Went and visited a girl I dated for a bit.. check these fuckin digshttp://farm3.static.flickr.com/2708/4316597525_ed48dc379c_o.jpg

I'm sure alot of you have been in similiar spots, but I haven't. I can't put it in words how fucking dope this view is from your bedroom. How could life be bad if you went to bed and woke up to this everyday? still hate NY, but no place in Boston can you find a few so spectacular. And this is with a terrible camera phone on a bad day. Unreal, really. At night its even better.

[JohnAKeith]

Yeah. I agree. I'd be like, "My life is so awesome, I wake up every morning and see this view. Well, it was great every day except the one when my ex-boyfriend decided to visit ..."

Joking!

[armpitsOFmight]

Hey Suffolk, you forgot to post a picture of the people that populate NYC...

http://www.thebigbags.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/guido.jpg

[czsz]

^ That would be a New Jersey specimen. They're safely pent up on the other side of the bridges and tunnels.

[KentXie]

Absolutely. I took this shot 1.5 years ago from Central Park. Something about it makes it look so....awesome!

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v322/112/30/1245870095/n1245870095_30116180_8025.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

Imagine if the Common looked like that. Yeah, it would be terrible.

[bostonbred]

>^^?
it NO treetment Om the COMMON

[kz1000ps]

Damn that's an awesome view. Here's how it looks at a friend's place on the other side of the East River...not quite as inspiring, but kickass nonetheless:

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/4442/img0238aa.jpg

And no, Boston isn't better than NYC. Perhaps we can have a moderator change the title of this thread so it doesn't lie? :)

[TikiNYC]

Even One Penn Plaza is better than Boston.

Check out our new One Penn Plaza logo (http://www.sleepnewyork.tk)

and this (http://sleepny.lefora.com/2009/11/27/one-penn-plaza/).

I still love Boston.

[kmp1284]

I still love archBoston because I can spam all day long without so much as a slap on the wrist.

^^^ What you meant to say.

[ablarc]

Absolutely. I took this shot 1.5 years ago from Central Park. Something about it makes it look so....awesome!

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v322/112/30/1245870095/n1245870095_30116180_8025.jpg
It's the uniform module of all those windows. They exactly identify the floor-to-floor height and give these buildings scale. And that scale is awesome, because you can see exactly how many floors there are and how many people live there.

These buildings are not wrapped in the scale-less saran of glass.

[tobyjug]

Proper windows allow a building to soar, if you will forgive the expression.

[ablarc]

We both forgot to mention the harmony of all those buildings using the same notes to create subtle variations on a theme.

Some buildings stack the windows in dense and rigid, columns, some wobble the columns a bit, some vary the windows themselves a little.

Here and there a building will gather a few into a stack that hints at superscale; others spread them like wallpaper over aspirational forms with setbacks; and yet others celebrate with a party hat plopped on top.

It's always somewhat New Year's Eve.

[tobyjug]

That photo is a case where regulation and the profit motive worked well.

Planner: "You will step back your building to increase light at the street."
Developer: "What's smaller floor plates worth to me, pal?"
P: "More height."
D: "Spit and shake on it, bub".

But later, curtain wall technology means more profits, good bye setbacks, goodbye windows as we knew them! Oh well...

[Beton Brut]

One of our finest examples (http://www.cardcow.com/images/hotel-manger-boston-us-state-town-views-massachusetts-boston-69278.jpg) of this era was demolished (http://www.bambinomusical.com/Scollay/Madison.html) and replaced by this inexplicable shit-pile (http://maps.google.com/maps?client=firefox-a&q=Thomas+P.+%22Tip%22+O%27Neill+Federal+Building&hl=en&ie=UTF8&radius=0.11&sll=42.364668,-71.065181&sspn=0.000995,0.004136&filter=0&rq=1&ev=p&layer=c&cbll=42.36502,-71.061957&panoid=R71f5Wisx4tFa7eqvZBfEA&cbp=11,281.27,,0,-13.33&hq=Thomas+P.+%22Tip%22+O%27Neill+Federal+Building&hnear=&ll=42.365021,-71.061957&spn=0.000995,0.004136&t=h&z=18) by an otherwise competent architect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Stubbins_Jr.).

[tobyjug]

And I was there to see it! What a great pairing the Manger and the Garden were! (And I am expecting a phone call from Mr. and Mrs. S. Pile enquiring about a defamation claim against you for your comparison.)

[Beton Brut]

I was in the crowd too, Toby. I have about 2/3 of a brick on a bookshelf.

I'll PM you if I need legal representation.

[kennedy]

I've said it a million times: get a developer to clone the facade of the Garden on that parcel in front of the New Garden, with a nice big building behind it. Hotel attached to arena (perfect for the visiting team,) restaurants, residences, offices, whatever.

[TikiNYC]

One of our finest examples (http://www.cardcow.com/images/hotel-manger-boston-us-state-town-views-massachusetts-boston-69278.jpg) of this era was demolished (http://www.bambinomusical.com/Scollay/Madison.html) and replaced by this inexplicable shit-pile (http://maps.google.com/maps?client=firefox-a&q=Thomas+P.+%22Tip%22+O%27Neill+Federal+Building&hl=en&ie=UTF8&radius=0.11&sll=42.364668,-71.065181&sspn=0.000995,0.004136&filter=0&rq=1&ev=p&layer=c&cbll=42.36502,-71.061957&panoid=R71f5Wisx4tFa7eqvZBfEA&cbp=11,281.27,,0,-13.33&hq=Thomas+P.+%22Tip%22+O%27Neill+Federal+Building&hnear=&ll=42.365021,-71.061957&spn=0.000995,0.004136&t=h&z=18) by an otherwise competent architect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Stubbins_Jr.).

That's just...I can't describe how....that is.

I agree with you 100%.

And, the Citigroup Center has to be the East Side's ugliest tall building.

[Ron Newman]

I never understood why a hotel next to a major sports arena and transit hub could not be successful.

[vanshnookenraggen]

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/4442/img0238aa.jpg


This looks really really really really really familiar for some reason. :)

[ablarc]

I never understood why a hotel next to a major sports arena and transit hub could not be successful.
They let it run down. Most of the occupants were roaches.

[statler]

It's the uniform module of all those windows. They exactly identify the floor-to-floor height and give these buildings scale. And that scale is awesome, because you can see exactly how many floors there are and how many people live there.

These buildings are not wrapped in the scale-less saran of glass.

We both forgot to mention the harmony of all those buildings using the same notes to create subtle variations on a theme.

Some buildings stack the windows in dense and rigid, columns, some wobble the columns a bit, some vary the windows themselves a little.

Here and there a building will gather a few into a stack that hints at superscale; others spread them like wallpaper over aspirational forms with setbacks; and yet others celebrate with a party hat plopped on top.

It's always somewhat New Year's Eve.

BTW, these are my favorite type of ablarc posts. Quick, little Architecture 101 courses. :D

[tobyjug]

I never understood why a hotel next to a major sports arena and transit hub could not be successful.

I think the Beatles stayed here in its Madison days when they were doing a gig at the Garden. (They also stayed at the Somerset.)

[armpitsOFmight]

I know both of you mods go to bed with a stuffed Statue of Liberty pillow, but please be fair and change back the title of this page to

Boston is better than NYC!!!!

http://separi.wippiespace.com/img/internet_forum_moderator.jpg

[czsz]

^ Is there some kind of internet depot where people get these memetic forum-related images?

[KentXie]

I know both of you mods go to bed with a stuffed Statue of Liberty pillow, but please be fair and change back the title of this page to

Boston is better than NYC!!!!

http://separi.wippiespace.com/img/internet_forum_moderator.jpg

Haha, no. What are you going to do about it if they don't? Whine?

[statler]

I know both of you mods go to bed with a stuffed Statue of Liberty

Now, you can say what you like about me, but leave Ms Libby out of this! :mad:

http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x176/bstnstatler/libby.jpg

[kennedy]

^ Is there some kind of internet depot where people get these memetic forum-related images?

Yes. It's known as Google...Images. Learn the ways of this mighty force and be enlightened, as armpits did before he became armpitsOFmight.

[vanshnookenraggen]

^ Is there some kind of internet depot where people get these memetic forum-related images?

Somethingawful.com

[armpitsOFmight]

It's the lamest week in NYC!!!

All of the biggest NYC douches are attending NY fashion week. Van, make sure you leave your giant sized bug-eyed-sun-glasses at home!

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Photo/2010/02/16/wintour2__1266341641_3059.jpg

[Beton Brut]

Van, I think our pal Speed Stick just called you a tranny...

[vanshnookenraggen]

Ahh the wonders of the ignore list.

[tobyjug]

Nice legs there, dude!

[Suffolk 83]

bwahaha. your gettin banned for that one.

[ablarc]

you're gettin banned for that one.
I sure hope so.

[Scott]

Well, I have to admit I've never understood the point of watching emaciated people dressed like Lady Gaga prance up and down a runway; must be a New York thing.

[vanshnookenraggen]

Oh yeah, that shit happens all the time here.

[kz1000ps]

At least they're not bogarting (I love that word) Bryant Park any more.

[Lrfox]

I went to fashion week this year. My girlfriend is a design student at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Some peers of hers had runway shows. To me, walking around the Bryant Park area (and peeping the awesome Mercedes Benz vehicles inside the tent... I have photos) was more fun. The scene in/around the tent is insane. I am no fashionista. I don't know the important names or faces in the industry. While I could easily point out Daniel Libeskind, I couldn't tell you what any designers look like. My girlfriend was pointing out big name designers, editors of famous fashion magazines and all sorts of "celebrities" (namely, reality TV stars).

The event was not my scene. I also feel Lincoln Center will be a better venu. The tent essentially overtook Bryant Park. The sidewalks were packed with temporary fencing, security and, of course, a red carpet. The weather was nice while we were there too. I almost felt bad for the people who couldn't use the park as, well, a park.

Side note on Bryant Park though... nicest public restrooms ever! I mean seriously, spotless.

[bostonbred]

sadd to admits that we having LANE BRYANT city here

[Lrfox]

^I don't know about that. Boston's one of the healthiest cities in the U.S. Philadelphia may be a Lane Bryant city, though.

[JohnAKeith]

(Sorry for the hotlink; I have a photo of the old HoJo's I'll try to find.)

http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/images/186241/gardnercolumn.jpg


1551 Broadway -- the transformation from HoJo?s to American Eagle
By James Gardner
The Real Deal

Since the day it opened back in 1959, the now vanished Howard Johnson's in Times Square, at 1551 Broadway at 46th Street, announced a profound change in the once and future crossroads of the world.

Until that time, the intersection had been a fairly elegant and surely vibrant part of the city, where you could take the family. But the arrival of Howard Johnson's restaurant over 50 years ago confirmed, though it did not cause, the change that would soon lead to the swift and inexorable degeneration of Times Square into a den of prostitution and drug addiction, where respectable people feared to tread. It was fitting then that this Howard Johnson was almost the last vestige of that old Times Square to evaporate, nearly half a century after its opening, thus signaling the definitive victory of resurgent family values.

In place of that now defunct Howard Johnson's -- which closed in 2005 -- is the spanking new flagship of American Eagle Outfitters, the designer jeans emporium.

The resulting structure that has arisen over the ghosts of a million middling burgers is striking, especially at night, but in a very real sense, it signals the defeat of architecture. It is a vast wall of LED and LCD tubes created by the Barnycz Group, a Baltimore, Md.-based design firm.

"In Times Square, what we wanted to create for American Eagle Outfitters was a 'canvas,'" according to Danny Barnycz, the company's founder and president. This they accomplished by fashioning a multi-tiered interactive high-definition digital 1469 LED panels that covers almost 15,000 square feet and rises up to a 25-story LED tower.

But a canvas is not a building and it would have been nice to see some more substantial structure rise up in this part of Times Square.

In its defense, let it be said that Howard Johnson's itself was nothing to boast about either. In fact it too was little more than a single-story restaurant whose upper levels were a composite of mismatched billboards.

In the new Times Square, of course, everything is bigger and glitzier, and so the new dispensation creates, through sheer brightness and massiveness, a drama that was lacking before. And it can also be argued that, since the days when this place was still Longacre Square, more than a century ago, its totality was, architecturally speaking, always far more than the sum of its parts.

James Gardner, formerly the architecture critic of the New York Sun, writes on the visual arts for several publications.

http://therealdeal.com/newyork/articles/1515-broadway-the-transformation-from-hojo%E2%80%99s-to-american-eagle-outfitters-james-gardner-says-is-bad

[ablarc]

The Howard Johnson was better.

[Ron Newman]

The article's premise makes no sense, given that Howard Johnson's was the epitome of 'family restaurant'.

[vanshnookenraggen]

Yes, let's all celebrate when the first ever Wal-Mart closes it's doors. Seriously, fuck that shit, this is written by a guy from the NY SUN! Cry me a fucking river. When that HoJo opened anyone who gave a crap (us, 50 years ago) would be crying foul! Now we are expected to cry? HoJo is the epitome of the "family" centric strip mall food venue (to be fair I did go to HoJo as a kid and fondly remember it). I don't want to wax poetic about the "good o'l days" with the pimps and pushers but COME ON!

Any time I hear about someone in Boston wanting to emulate Times Sq I want to scream MANHATTANIZATION!!!!! Build all the skyscrapers, Boston, and you won't be Manhattan unless you sell out to the all mighty dollar.

[kennedy]

Woah, rant much? I was more upset by the fact that what's there now is a billboard for people to walk in, so they can buy clothes that are miniature billboards for American Eagle (which, ironically, is a Canadian company).

[golodhendil]

American Eagle (which, ironically, is a Canadian company). Um, no?

[TMcLaughlin]

American Eagle (which, ironically, is a Canadian company).

They're based in Pittsburgh.

[kennedy]

You're right, my bad. I could've sworn I read somewhere that they were the subsidiary of a Canadian company, but I must have confused that with the fact that they own a few similar Canadian chains.

[armpitsOFmight]

Mother fucker!!! Tim Burton is at the MOMA! Goddamn it, that's the one thing I wanna see! Fuck you NYC!

[TikiNYC]

Take the bus and come and see it! It's worth the trip.

[JohnAKeith]

Kind of loses its luster when they turn out da lights.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/ame_eagle1.jpg

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/yes_eagle1.jpg

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/am_eagle42.jpg

[JohnAKeith]

Is this significant? Know it? I do, now.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/ny_architecture.jpg

[aquaman]

hospital in NYC?

[JohnAKeith]

http://images.nymag.com/arts/art/features/tinytown100426_560.jpg

http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/65481/

[JohnAKeith]

The American Express pig, coming north toward SoHo.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG00211-20100507-1257.jpg

Church surrounded by high-rises.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG00204-20100507-12241.jpg

Near City Hall.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG00207-20100507-12351.jpg

What are these heinous buildings?? Appear to be projects perhaps reimagined as "mixed-income" based on the nearby billboards.

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG00208-20100507-12471.jpg

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG00209-20100507-12481.jpg

http://thelifeofacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG00210-20100507-12511.jpg

[JohnAKeith]

Gentrification and Its Discontents
Manhattan never was what we think it was.
By Benjamin Schwarz

Michael Sorkin, an architect and critic, and Sharon Zukin, an urban sociologist, have each written what they describe as books about contemporary New York City?but that?s putting things far too broadly. Zukin?s Naked City does make forays into the white-hot center of hipness, Brooklyn?s Williamsburg, and to rapidly gentrifying Harlem. But the bulk of her book, and all of Sorkin?s Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, is confined to fine-grained observations of the streets and neighborhoods within roughly 20 blocks of their apartments in Greenwich Village?that is, west to the Village?s Meatpacking District and new Gold Coast along West Street, east to the fringes of Alphabet City, north to Union Square, and south to SoHo and Tribeca. This area today is in every sense rarefied, and for most of its history was in crucial ways set apart from the rest of Manhattan, which to some extent leaped beyond it. Still, the precedent for using the Village to draw lessons and issue prescriptions about New York generally, and indeed urban life writ large, was of course sanctified in 1961 by that doughty urban observer and community activist, Jane Jacobs. She largely formed her conclusions in The Death and Life of Great American Cities?the ur-text for contemporary writing about urban life and the most influential American book ever written about cities?by closely reading the neighborhood life around her house on Hudson Street (about six blocks from Sorkin?s apartment and, by my reckoning, about 10 from Zukin?s; it?s all a bit clubby).

Both authors are consciously, unavoidably ?in dialogue? with Jacobs, as Sorkin puts it, so it?s probably not surprising that the two broadly agree on what ails New York and how it should be remedied. The city, Zukin laments, has ?lost its soul.? What Sorkin calls the ?pathology? of gentrification is obliterating those elements of thriving urban life that Jacobs famously identified: diversity of uses; the mom-and-pop stores; what Zukin calls the ?cheek-by-jowl checkerboard? of rich, poor, and middle class; the distinctive identity of neighborhoods. Formerly funky precincts are upscaled, redeveloped, and?you guessed it??Disneyfied.? In the Village, Sorkin declares, ?local businesses and longtime residents are being forced out by rising prices and yuppies.? In SoHo, the sidewalks have long been packed on weekends with people who ?with no thought of art? (my emphasis) have ?come simply to shop and brunch and to look at each other shopping and brunching.? (I should add that although their screeds and prescriptions are banal and predictable, Sorkin?s and Zukin?s minute, street-level observations and their analyses of the social forces underlying gentrification are astute and precise.)

Inevitably, behind cries of decline is a conception, conscious or not, of a time and situation that was better?when the city had a soul. In her invocations of laundries and shoe-repair and hardware stores, Zukin betrays a vague nostalgia, shared by many chronicles of New York (Robert Caro?s The Power Broker, Ric Burns?s documentary New York, Pete Hamill?s memoirs), for the Old Neighborhoods characteristic of what was once an overwhelmingly working-class city. As late as 1950, New York was by far the world?s largest industrial center, and even Manhattan was predominantly and the Village largely a center for labor. There were sewing rooms and small-scale manufacturing lofts in the east-central Village, SoHo, and Tribeca (where, in the late 1970s, I worked in a belt-and-handbag factory); the far West Village had a working waterfront (New York?s port was easily the world?s largest, employing 200,000 people) and a brewery (New York made one-fifth of the world?s beer). Even if Zukin and Sorkin bemoan the city?s deindustrialization and are wistful for the higgledy-piggledy way manufacturing was scattered throughout New York (diversity! mixed use!), they?re compelled to make clear that they don?t miss the sweatshops and the exploitative, horrible life that went with them. And recall that the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, in the heart of the Village on a block fronting Washington Square, burned in the second decade of the 20th century?only 25 years before Mary McCarthy, 35 years before the Abstract Expressionists and the Beats, and 45 years before NYU student Woody Allen would all be strolling the square. Which means that even hazy melancholy for the New York of regular Joes with lunch pails returning after a good day?s work to their neighborhoods of kids playing stickball and corner drugstores dispensing egg creams can only evoke scenes pretty much limited to the years of the LaGuardia administration.

While Sorkin, Zukin, and seemingly everyone else misses the relics of that lost city, such as its dense network of mostly mediocre neighborhood bakeries?relics that, thanks to the uneven and arrested economic development imposed by the Depression, war, postwar decline, and fiscal crisis, were a familiar aspect of the streetscape of much of Manhattan into the 1980s?the city of the old neighborhoods was really an agglomeration of mostly self-sufficient, inward-looking, lower-middle-class communities. (Even as young marrieds, my French-Canadian grandmother and Korean grandfather, neither of whom ever mastered English, largely confined themselves to the few blocks of their upper Manhattan neighborhood.) To many modern celebrants of urban life, the Manhattan of the 1940s seems, as Zukin acknowledges, a far less ?interesting? place?a less hip, thrumming, and worldly place?than the contemporary borough. While some poor and rich communities were in shocking proximity?the slaughterhouses and shanties of Turtle Bay, until they were cleared for the construction of the UN headquarters, essentially abutted the grand residences of Beekman Place?there wasn?t much of the kind of lively intermingling of classes or even ethnicities that Zukin?s description might evoke.

When you come right down to it, the image of vibrant, diverse, but neighborly city life?Zukin speaks of the continued struggle between the homogenized ?corporate city? (bad) and the ?urban village? (good)?that champions of urbanism summon is really the ideal of the West Village neighborhood life that Jacobs imperishably described. Here were the laundry, the deli, the tailor shop, the candy and cigar stores, the greengrocer, the pizzeria, the hardware store, the locksmith, the corner drugstore, and the dry cleaner?all of which, with their comradely-but-not-officious proprietors, helped sustain the intimacies of long neighborhood association. Here was a rooted population of Italian, Spanish, and Irish working-class families, many of whose menfolk worked at the piers a few blocks to the west (my mother, who lived in the neighborhood?on Charles Street, just east of Hudson?from the mid-1940s to the early 1960s, always recalled the exotic glamour that the waterfront bestowed on it). Here were cobblestone streets and early-19th-century houses, such as the one Jacobs?s family was restoring, all of which testified to the continuity and stability?the fly-in-amber quality?of an enclave that, thanks to a series of historical accidents (and the nativist sentiments of its 19th-century inhabitants), was removed from the ravenous economic dynamism of a city that had bypassed it. Jacobs summoned, as Zukin trenchantly puts it, ?an idyllic picture of small town life in the midst of the big city.? But added to the workaday if charming neighborhood were worldly bohemian embellishments: an antique store, a shabby-genteel French restaurant that Ezra Pound had patronized, and the White Horse Tavern, open very late, which had been a favorite of Ana?s Nin, James Baldwin, Dylan Thomas, and countless longshoremen. And here were the urbane newcomers?journalists, architects, artists?who, like Jacobs and her husband, eschewed the central part of the Village, around MacDougal Street, that the tourists were blighting. Here, then, was a vivacious, neighborly, historic district inhabited by Old World workers and well-educated sophisticates.

Thanks to the profound influence that The Death and Life of Great American Cities has exerted, the West Village circa 1960 has come to epitomize?really to be the blueprint for?the urban good life. But in its mix of the new and the left over, in its alchemy of authenticity, grit, seedy glamour, and intellectual and cultural sophistication, this was a neighborhood in a transitional and unsustainable, if golden, moment. Which meant that it was about to lose its soul. Two recently published books, Wrestling with Moses, by Anthony Flint, and Manhattan Projects, by Samuel Zipp, detail how the working class was driven out of the West Village, as gentrifiers like Jacobs drove up assessed values and rents. Progressive, reformist city planners, supported by seemingly most of the Village?s blue-collar residents, favored a relatively low-impact urban-renewal scheme to build hundreds of below-market-rate homes in the neighborhood?a plan Jacobs and a group of largely affluent residents successfully fought on the grounds that it would destroy the area?s character. Whatever the merits of the opposing positions, one of the proponents of renewal was surely prophetic in arguing in 1961, ?If the Village area is left alone ? eventually the Village will consist solely of luxury housing This trend is already quite obvious and would itself destroy any semblance of the Village that [Jacobs and her allies] seem so anxious to preserve.?

Thanks in no small part to the fact that Jacobs?s recipe for livable and vibrant cities?keep the scale small, preserve the physical fabric of neighborhoods?has become, Zipp says, ?the lingua franca of planners and city lovers,? the physical appearance of Jacobs?s old neighborhood (a place where I lived and worked in the mid-1990s) is much as it was. But its character is unrecognizable. The hardware store?s building, Zukin reports, now houses the New York branch of a small Chicago chain that describes itself as a purveyor of ?hip designer maternity clothes?; in 2008 the ground floor of Jacobs?s former home contained City Cricket, which sold ?one-of-a kind, hand-made, antique treasures for children.?

The same processes created?and, as Sorkin and Zukin would have it, destroyed?contemporary SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village. In their analyses of each, it?s clear that they pine for?and mistake as susceptible to preservation?the same sort of transitional moment Jacobs evokes in Death and Life, when an architecturally interesting enclave holds in ephemeral balance the emerging and the residual. Such neighborhoods still contain a sprinkling of light industry and raffish characters, for urban grit, and a dash of what Zukin calls ?people of color,? for exotic diversity. Added to the m?lange are lots and lots of experimental artists (for that boho frisson) and a generous but not overwhelming portion of right-thinking designers, publishing types, architects, and academics, and the one-of-a kind boutiques and innovative restaurants that will give them places to shop and brunch.

Neither writer seems to apprehend the inherently impermanent nature of this balance, because neither writer comprehends large-scale economic processes. For instance, in railing against the passing of SoHo?s exhilarating, creative days?characterized by ?the mix of artists, crafts-people, small manufacturers, researchers [!], as well as of commerce oriented to their needs? (a few funky bars for the artists; places like the collectively run restaurant Food)?Sorkin joins in the lamentation for ?the rapid decline of the city?s industrial economy.? He doesn?t recognize that the SoHo he yearns for was precisely the product of that rapid industrial decline, which made economically available to artists and their hangers-on all those cool industrial spaces that in more industrially vibrant times would have been used by, well, industry.

Zukin declares that she ?resent[s] everything Starbucks represents,? which really means that her urban ideal is the cool neighborhood at the moment before the first Starbucks moves in, an ever-more-fleeting moment. Indeed, what has changed since Jacobs?s day?and the reason, as these books attest, that gentrification has become so intense an issue?is the speed of the transition of districts from quasi dereliction to artsy to urban shopping mall. This acceleration results from the ways consumption has become the dominant means of self-expression (Zukin is perceptive on this point) and from?relatedly, ultimately?the acceleration of the global economy.

Confronted with this unstoppable process, Zukin proposes waving a magic political wand by calling for an assortment of mandates and controls to ensure that certain ethnic groups and social classes and the practitioners of certain livelihoods that contribute to the ?authenticity? of the city be able to live there. Surely this is taking the fetishization of vibrant Jacobsian urbanity too far. It?s entirely reasonable?in fact, humane?to argue that the state must ensure decent living conditions for its citizens (and God knows we are terribly far from that situation). But it?s a wholly different proposition to argue that, in the name of what Sorkin calls ?the protection of ? the local? and to forestall ?a landscape of homogeneity,? the state should create the conditions necessary for favored groups?be they designers, craftspeople, small-batch distillers, researchers, the proprietors of mom-and-pop stores?to live in expensive and fashionable neighborhoods or boroughs. That effort would ultimately be an aesthetic endeavor to ensure that the affluent, well-educated denizens of said neighborhoods be provided with the stage props and scenery necessary for what Jacobs and her heirs define as an enriching urban experience.

Mostly, though, such political solutions seem quaint: all this bellyaching about authenticity and lost soul. Sorkin and Zukin, sentimental progressives, need a bracing dose of Marx. Manhattan is the primary locus of global capitalism, the most voracious force for change in history. Best to pick a different place to try to render fixed and solid that which inexorably melts into air.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/gentrification-and-its-discontents/8092/

[vanshnookenraggen]

You saw my tweet!

[czsz]

That's a hugely important article. I think it deflates a lot of Jacobs' prescriptions, down to her emphasis on in-the-street empiricism.

[tobyjug]

The Toby urban plan: cheap housing, cheap beer and free art supplies.

[czsz]

They've been trying cheap housing and cheap beer in Buffalo and Detroit for awhile. Are the art supplies the missing ingredient?

[tobyjug]

I guess its my shorthand for patronage for struggling artists. I keep thinking about all the WPA painters. $50 million a year in artist welfare subsidies would do a lot for the city in the long run.

[armpitsOFmight]

Check out this NYC douchebag!

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs060.ash2/36379_948486004289_810209_52401969_7074187_n.jpg

Ugly fucking shirt!

[tobyjug]

Check out this NYC douchebag... shirt!

Forget the chick and her shirt. Check out the Super Speed Graphic, America's only great camera!

[statler]

Not one of the Onion (http://www.theonion.com/articles/84-million-new-yorkers-suddenly-realize-new-york-c,18003/)'s stronger pieces IMHO, but it seems to be flying around the web for some reason.

8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live
'We're Getting The Hell Out Of This Sewer,' Entire Populace Reports

September 2, 2010 | ISSUE 46?35



NEW YORK?At 4:32 p.m. Tuesday, every single resident of New York City decided to evacuate the famed metropolis, having realizing it was nothing more than a massive, trash-ridden hellhole that slowly sucks the life out of every one of its inhabitants.

With audible murmurs of "This is no way to live," "What the hell am I doing here?I hate it here," and "Fuck this place. Fuck this horrible place," all 8.4 million citizens in each of the five boroughs packed up their belongings and told reporters they would rather blow their brains out with a shotgun than spend another waking moment in this festering cesspool of filth and scum and sadness.

By 5:15 p.m. there was gridlock traffic on the outbound sides of the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, and the area's three major airports were flooded with New Yorkers, all of whom said they wanted to go anyplace where the pressure of 20 million tons of concrete wasn't constantly suffocating them.

"I always had this perverted sense of pride because I was managing to scrape by here," said Brooklyn resident Andrew McQuade, who, after watching two subway rats gnawing on a third bloody rat carcass, finally determined that New York City was a giant sprawling cancer. "Well, fuck that. I don't need to pay $2,000 a month to share a doghouse-sized apartment with some random Craigslist dipshit to prove my worth. I want to live like a goddamn human being."

"You see this?" added McQuade, pointing at a real estate listing for a duplex in Hagerstown, MD. "Two bedrooms, two baths, a den?a fucking den?and a patio. Twelve hundred a month. That's total, not per person."

According to residents, the mass exodus was triggered by a number of normal, everyday New York City events. For Erin Caldwell of Manhattan, an endlessly honking car horn sent her over the edge, causing her to go into a blind rage and scream "shut up!" at the vehicle as loud as she could until her voice went hoarse; for Danny Tremba of Queens it was being cursed at for walking too slow; and for Paul Ogden, also of Queens, it was his overreaction to somebody walking too slow.

Other incidents that prompted citizens to pick up and leave included the sight of garbage bags stacked 5 feet high on the sidewalk; the realization that being alone among millions of anonymous people is actually quite horrifying; a blaring siren that droned on and fucking on; muddy, refuse-filled puddles that have inexplicably not dried in three years; the thought of growing into a person whose meanness and cynicism is cloaked in a kind of holier-than-thou brand of sarcasm that the rest of the world finds nauseating; and all the goddamn people.

In addition, 3 million New Yorkers reportedly left the city because they realized the phrase "Only in New York" is actually just a defense mechanism used to convince themselves that seeing a naked man take a shit on a park bench is somehow endearing, or part of some shared cultural experience.

"I was sitting on my stoop, drinking coffee, and out of nowhere this crazy-looking woman just starts screaming, 'I am inside all of you,' over and over," Bronx resident Sarah Perez, 37, said. "Then, we both had this moment where we looked at each other and realized, okay, we have to get out of here."

"This place sucks," Manhattan resident Woody Allen, 74, told reporters. "It just fucking sucks."

When fleeing New Yorkers were asked if they would miss the city's iconic landmarks, most responded that Central Park is just a pathetic excuse for experiencing actual nature, that the Brooklyn Bridge is great but it's just a fucking bridge, that nobody goes to the Met anyway, and that living in a dingy, grime-caked apartment while exhaust fumes from an idling truck seep through your bedroom window isn't worth slightly bigger bagels.

"This is no place to raise a kid, that's for sure," said 32-year-old Brandon Rushing, a lifelong New Yorker. "I grew up here and I turned into a giant asshole. Why would I want that for my son?"

"Plus, we're the place most likely to get nuked by a dirty bomb in a terrorist attack," he added. "So that's great. Also, it smells like shit here, and I'm not exaggerating. You'll just be walking around and it starts smelling like human shit, and it just fills your nostrils and you breathe in shit for like 20 seconds."

Before departing by private helicopter, Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke with members of the media to address the situation.

"You know what the greatest city in the world is?" Bloomberg asked reporters. "Scottsdale, Arizona. It's clean, it's not too big, it's got a couple streets with shops and restaurants, and the people there aren't fucking insane. This place is fucking insane. And by the way, that's not a reason to like it. Anyone who says that is a delusional dirtbag."

By Tuesday night, New York was completely abandoned. At press time, however, some 10 million Los Angeles?area residents, tired of their self-centered, laid-back culture and lack of four distinct seasons, and yearning for the hustle and bustle of East Coast life, had already begun repopulating the city.

[Justin7]

the phrase "Only in New York" is actually just a defense mechanism used to convince themselves that seeing a naked man take a shit on a park bench is somehow endearing, or part of some shared cultural experience.

This part rings true. Made me laugh.

[JohnAKeith]

Not much about anything, but I found out something about Manhattan that I didn't know before.

"Canal Street" is named such because ... they were going to dig a canal between the Hudson River and the East River along what was a natural spring. Much of it (70 acres?) was already marsh land.

Once they dug it, people started building on either side of it but soon their basements were all flooded so the city eventually covered it back over. There are rumors that the spring still flows, below.

I found out about it when taking a tour of the "Between Here and There : Passages in Contemporary Photography (http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={CE53C4A7-C88F-46D5-B814-4234A2D9FC25})" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. I didn't find the show to be very exciting but worth walking through if you're already there.

Here's a photo by Matthew Buckingham (http://matthewbuckingham.net) imagining what (current day) Canal Street would look like it had been turned into a "Venetian canal".

http://johnakeithrealestate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/buckingham8-12-1.jpg

[Ron Newman]

Whereas our Canal Street was the endpoint of the Middlesex Canal, something made obsolete by the Boston & Lowell Railroad that came along a couple decades later.

[JohnAKeith]

http://johnakeithrealestate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Screen-shot-2010-09-05-at-12.50.44-AM.png

The New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (http://main.aiany.org/) (AIA) and the Center for Architecture Foundation have been co-hosting an exhibit entitled "Our Cities, Ourselves: The Future of Transportation in Urban Life (http://www.ourcitiesourselves.org/index.php/exhibition/)". It continues through 11 September.

I checked it out, yesterday. It was fairly interesting. Most of the exhibit is accessible online so you're not missing much if you can't make the trip.

Here's a brief synopsis of the exhibit:

Our Cities Ourselves: The Future of Transportation in Urban Life explores the creation of better cities through better transportation and demonstrates what is possible when we design our cities for ourselves ...

... Our Cities Ourselves envisions sustainable urban futures for ten major global cities: Ahmedabad, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Dar es Salaam, Guangzhou, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Mexico City, New York City and Rio de Janeiro. In each city, ITDP field offices and international architects propose ideal transportation futures grounded in current conditions.

The exhibit is made up of panels of photos of how a neighborhood in each city looks today along with drawings of how they might look twenty years from now, with new transportation options (and a lot of landscaping) in place.

So, if you're still reading this, I came away from the exhibit with five thoughts on cities and transportation.

1) Nine of the ten cities in the exhibit are at latitudes (longitudes?) where the weather is almost always moderate. New York City is the only city, I think, that has snow every winter. I don't think weather gets enough attention when people discuss transportation. It seemed as though every one of the panels had people biking along paths in their shorts, children playing in parks, and three-wheeled, door-less pedicabs. That's all well and good except for the months of December, January, February, and March.

Yes, some people ride bikes in winter. Mostly, for transportation, not for enjoyment. Cold climates have different needs than warm-weather cities.

2) What the hell is this obsession with three-wheeled, door-less pedicabs?? Either man-powered, by electric or by gas, it seems this is the future of transportation. Maybe, although my experiences in Boston and New York City are that they don't work well, mainly due to cost. Although the drivers say that they work for tips and that there's no set fare, they won't take you anywhere unless it's worth $15 or more. This isn't practical for many people. And, in traffic, you can probably walk as fast.

3) Boston got screwed with the Silver Line. Yeah, we all say that, but time and again I'm reminded of this fact. To see what other cities have done with BRT makes me almost weep (no, seriously). It's tragic. The Silver Line should have been the START of something great in the city but instead I think it will be the start AND END of BRTs. I like how the Silver Line seems to have improved in frequency between Dudley Square and South Station, but I don't it works, otherwise.

4) Many of the proposals for the different cities involved revitalizing run-down neighborhoods ("slums") not improving already-existing areas. So, basically a clean slate. (NYC was the exception of this; the proposal was for the area around the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan-side. It's a sloppy mess right now but it's not a decrepit hole in the ground.) So, the proposals are of limited, practical use - I don't know how transferable their ideas are to other neighborhoods.

5) Congestion in downtown neighborhoods in cities such as New York and Boston is, to a large part, caused by the movement of goods. "Food, fuel, clothing come in, garbage goes out ..." as a handout describes it. Things come to a standstill on my street by garbage trucks, by the UPS guy (gal, actually), by the delivery truck to the corner store. (The other big slow-down is caused by valet parking, but I digress ...)

Last night I was walking down 8th Avenue in Chelsea (NYC). I walked by one of the 95 drug stores in the neighborhood (only out-numbered by the Thai and sushi places ...). A delivery truck had parked in the right-hand lane - which has now been designated as a bikers-only lane. So, it was great that it wasn't blocking traffic but it mean the bikers (of which there were many) had to swerve into the street to go around it.

Thanks, asshole!

Finally, here are "10 Principles for Sustainable Transport".

1. Walk the walk: Create great pedestrian environments

2. Powered by people: Create a great environment for bicycles and other non-motorized vehicles

3. Get on the bus: Provide great, cost-effective public transport

4. Cruise control: Provide access for clean passenger vehicles at safe speeds and in significantly reduced numbers

5. Deliver the goods: Service the city in the cleanest and safest manner.

6. Mix it up: Mix people and activities, buildings and spaces.

7. Fill it in: Build dense, people and transit oriented urban districts that are desirable.

8. Get real: Preserve and enhance the local, natural, cultural, social and historical assets.

9. Connect the blocks: Make walking trips more direct, interesting and productive with small-size, permeable buildings and blocks.

10. Make it last: Build for the long term. Sustainable cities bridge generations. They are memorable, malleable, built from quality materials, and well maintained.

[Ron Newman]

Nine of the ten cities in the exhibit are at latitudes (longitudes?) where the weather is almost always moderate. New York City is the only city, I think, that has snow every winter.

Budapest is quite a bit north of New York City and, I suspect, has similar if not colder weather.

[armpitsOFmight]

So I was in NYC over the weekend...I thought it was important that I share the beautiful scenery with everybody..

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs320.ash2/60014_817214772936_5501287_45046197_6552330_n.jpg

[kz1000ps]

...Because that never happens in Boston. Oh wait, I see that exact scene once or twice a week.

(it's so cute when a Masshole hates on NYC)

[armpitsOFmight]

take a pic and prove it!!!

[czsz]

Nine of the ten cities in the exhibit are at latitudes (longitudes?) where the weather is almost always moderate. New York City is the only city, I think, that has snow every winter.

Bike planners and the like in Copenhagen in particular have put a lot of thought into this climate issue. I'm not sure I'm really convinced by any of their arguments - they all seem like a variation on "it's cold here, but we still promoted cycling and it worked!" Maybe the snowfall totals there are less; that seems like it would put a bigger damper on bikes than just the cold.

I think there needs to be more creative thought put into the issue. How about little snowmobile taxis, for instance? Is there a cultural bias against these things because they're favored by certain ex-Alaskan governors' spouses?

The Silver Line should have been the START of something great in the city but instead I think it will be the start AND END of BRTs.

Good, RIP forever. BRT is awesome for cash strapped third world countries struggling to build decent transit systems. Here in Boston, we have the money for trains, we just choose to spend it building obscenely expensive highway tunnels and widening 128. This is the real issue.

...Because that never happens in Boston. Oh wait, I see that exact scene once or twice a week.

It's true there's no trash rotting in the streets of the Back Bay and South End, where there are service alleys to deal with the problem, but virtually everywhere else in the Boston metro has to content with the stench. Any side street in Cambridge is vile-smelling on garbage day. It's merely a function of lower density that we don't see mountain ranges of plastic bags on the sidewalks, but it doesn't seem to take away from the smell.

[kz1000ps]

take a pic and prove it!!!

So you're leading to me to believe that either 1) you've never left the tony confines of the Back Bay, or 2) you're a liar and you're not that bright.

Welcome to Monday mornings in Brighton.... our shit stinks as much as NYC's, and the fact that I have to say this aloud to you is idiotic. NY's a great place, Boston's a great place, huzzah.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/4987966164_a265caf935_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4089/4987966984_89bec581e8_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4154/4987965250_1ba30a7f3b_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4105/4987967568_f238a547b5_b.jpg

Now please go back into hibernation. The past month or so without you has been nice.

[armpitsOFmight]

^^^That's not the same thing buttmunch!! Where's the mountain of garbage bags?? All I see in your pics is trash organized for the garbage men to pick them up. Sorry, but you need to try a little harder.

[KentXie]

^^^That's not the same thing buttmunch!! Where's the mountain of garbage bags?? All I see in your pics is trash organized for the garbage men to pick them up. Sorry, but you need to try a little harder.

Please visit Chinatown, Boston. Or better yet, find Charlestown or East Boston the day before trash pick up.

Also, in proportion to the population density between those two areas (that place in NYC and Brighton), the garbage pile is probably the exact same proportion. Please try to think of why there might be a bigger pile in NYC then just randomly take a snapshot.

[kz1000ps]

That's not the same thing

Tell that to your nose!

[JohnAKeith]

Reasons to not have rent control / rent stabilization. Also, not to be unkind, but, dude, grow a pair! Cut the apron strings.

Because Dirt-Cheap Has Its Downsides
By Joyce Cohen
New York Times

HOW could he possibly relinquish the lease on a $714 rent-stabilized one-bedroom? Everyone told Gary Parker he was crazy.

But he was the one living the reality behind the cheap rent. His railroad apartment in South Park Slope, Brooklyn, was noisy, dark and badly maintained. He longed for a better quality of life.

Mr. Parker, who grew up near Boston, landed the apartment ? a furnished summer sublet he found through a chain of friends ? 20 years ago. At that point the rent was around $350 a month. When the leaseholder decided to go to graduate school in the Midwest and failed to return, Mr. Parker, now 42, took over the lease.

?Finding that apartment was like hitting the lottery,? he said. The cheap rent allowed him to put himself through school ? first Brooklyn College and then, for a master?s degree, Hunter College.

But he was living with cracked ceilings, squeaky floorboards and leaky faucets. The toilet ran until the handle was jiggled. The view was of the building across the street. Sunlight was weak. ?Every plant I ever bought in that apartment died,? he said.

And he knew things wouldn?t change. ?No landlord wants to do improvements on an apartment where the tenant is paying so little,? said Mr. Parker, who was formerly district manager of Community Board 5 in Midtown and is now director of government and community affairs at New York University.

His mother, Stella, who lives in Manchester, N.H., was one of the few who encouraged him to move. On her visits, she said, there was so much noise from the neighbors and the street that, when she tried to watch television, she turned on the closed captions ?so I could read it in case I couldn?t hear it.?

A year ago, with a budget of around $300,000, Mr. Parker began searching for a one-bedroom with a view ? ?something captivating that I could really take in and enjoy,? he said. His mother joined him early in the hunt for a weekend of open-house exploration. They saw walk-ups that seemed ?really awful and needed a lot of work,? she said. By day?s end, ?I didn?t want to walk up another flight of stairs.?

Mr. Parker contacted Scott Klein, an agent at Prudential Douglas Elliman, whom he knew through the Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn. ?I needed guidance,? he said, ?because I had no idea what I was doing.?

Mr. Klein saw it this way: Mr. Parker needed a place ?where he could say, ?When I come home, I feel really good about it.? ?

They went to see a co-op in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with two small bedrooms, a large kitchen and a view of the Manhattan skyline. It was listed at $299,000, with a maintenance fee of $300 a month.

?On paper, this could be the place,? Mr. Parker said. But the layout was odd, and the apartment was in bad shape. A friend told him he would be depressed there, ?because it is basically your apartment now ? with a view.? He realized he wanted a place in move-in condition.

He considered Troy Towers, a co-op in Union City, N.J., which appeared in an online search for affordable places with views. One-bedrooms were in the $200,000 range, but maintenance fees were high, around $1,000 a month.

The fee included air-conditioning, heat, electricity and water. ?Everybody pays for everybody?s utilities,? Mr. Parker said, ?and I think that encourages people to leave their air-conditioning on all day long, which drove the price up for everyone.?

Back in Brooklyn, he checked out a new condominium in Gowanus, listed at $379,000 with monthly charges under $250. It was lovely, but there wasn?t much of a view. And he was leery of the high closing costs that typically come with new construction.

Last spring, two possibilities appeared in co-ops on Ocean Parkway in Kensington, Brooklyn. One was in a nice prewar building with a view of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The view, however, was seasonal ? obscured when the trees were in leaf. The listing price was $279,000, with maintenance of $540.

At the other co-op, a 1961 white-brick building a few blocks away, he had a visceral reaction. ?I knew I was home,? he said. ?I had been to so many places, but I?d never experienced that.?

Three boroughs ? Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island ? were visible, with the view punctuated by the Verrazano. The apartment, large and in very good shape, came with an off-street parking spot. The asking price was $289,000, with a maintenance fee just under $600.

Mr. Parker immediately summoned his mother. When they arrived at the apartment, the owner?s tenant ?made us take off our shoes before we went in,? Mrs. Parker said. ?I thought that was pretty nice of a renter to do that, because a lot of times renters don?t care.?

With its great view and parking space, there was no question that this was the place. ?I think for Gary, buying was a rite of passage,? Mr. Klein said.

Mr. Parker negotiated the price to $277,500. Getting a mortgage, with its mountains of paperwork, ?was a difficult and painful process,? he said. He rushed to close, and was just in time for the first-time home-buyer tax credit.

Leaving his old home was emotional. ?When the movers took all the boxes out and that apartment was completely empty,? he said, ?every happy memory I had in that apartment for 20 years came flooding through my head, and I was so filled with gratitude that I was able to live there.?

He donated his possessions to charity, except for clothes, photos and some keepsakes. ?There was something about making a fresh start,? he said. Until he bought dishes, he improvised, eating cereal out of takeout containers.

Now, Mr. Parker has a place he is happy with and the view he had in mind. ?You can see so much sky,? he said. ?I marvel at how many planes are cruising around. It is like watching very slow shooting stars.? He no longer has to park on the street, or move his car for street-cleaning. As a friend put it, ?Imagine that 45 minutes twice a week you are going to gain by not having to drive around looking for a parking spot.?

Between mortgage and maintenance, Mr. Parker now pays around $1,800 a month. ?Even though he is paying a lot more, he?s getting a lot more,? his mother said. ?I am going to be visiting a lot more often.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/realestate/19hunt.html?hpw

[czsz]

Who seriously needs or expects a view in New York at a price like that? He could have found a much nicer place in a much nicer neighborhood at a much lower price without that absurd requirement. Even a lot of relatively wealthy New Yorkers don't expect "so much sky".

[bostonbred]

his MOMA tellin him wHat he do.

[KentXie]

True, but if there wasn't rent control, the normal joe wouldn't be able to live there. Instead of finding any place cheap, all the apartments would have been in the 250,000 range.

[JohnAKeith]

Amazing.

A billion aerial views of NYC.

http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-123176/cache/nyc052.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1289041107

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/13/captured-new-york-city-from-above/2331/

[PaulC]

Notice that the Chrysler Building isn't a perfect rectangle. On the back side it follows the outline of the old Boston Post Road.

[JohnAKeith]

I think this is a pretty good article about growth in a large city and the pressures that institutions such as universities can put on the urban fabric that makes our cities great.

Also, there are good examples of fucking insane people.

New York University has unveiled its "NYU 2031" master plan, which will increase its size by an estimated 6 million square feet. If you look at the maps attached to the story you'll see it really isn't all that much since a lot of it will be on land it already owns.

NYU plans on adding a fourth tower to the block that already includes three I.M. Pei-designed towers. Neighbors were vehemently opposed to their construction. These three buildings were given landmark protection in 2008. Now neighbors say they don't want the fourth building because it will ruin the design aesthetic of the original three buildings.

If you can't read it all at least go to page six where a resident named David Gruber shows how completely out of touch with reality most of the anti-development people are in NY (similar to Boston).

John Sexton, NYU?s president, is doing what he does best: selling. ?You want to contrast the way NYU is in the city and Columbia is in the city,? he tells me. Columbia?s campus, sitting at the southern edge of Harlem, is a walled city, the more-than-metaphorical ivory tower. But at NYU, there?s ?not a single gate, not a single blade of grass,? which isn?t strictly true, but close enough for a great salesman burnishing his brand.

Sexton is seated at a conference table in his office on the top floor of NYU?s Bobst Library, wearing rumpled navy slacks and a sky-blue sweatshirt from his alma mater, Brooklyn Prep. ?Frankly, I dress this way anytime I have an excuse,? he says. When Sexton became president, ten years ago, many believed his drive was to elevate NYU to compete with the Ivy League. In fact, his ambition is grander. He sees the city and the university as a single unit, a node of talent and creativity and, of course, money. And he?s not marketing only to the country?s bright high-school students but also to the global meritocracy. ?The analogy that I use is to the Italian Renaissance, when there was Milan and Venice and Florence and Rome, and the talent and creative class moved among those points,? he says, tracing circles with his hands for emphasis.

New York, with its population of immigrants and transients of all races, creeds, and socioeconomic categories, not to mention its global reach, is the perfect city to build such a vision, but some changes will have to be made. Big changes. NYU is proposing to add 6 million square feet of new space across New York City in the next twenty years, with half the growth taking place in the historic blocks of the Village?the equivalent of three Javits Centers. The proposal, known as NYU 2031, is the culmination of four and a half years of design work by a team of world-class architects that included Toshiko Mori, a Harvard professor and former chair of Harvard?s architecture program. In the Village, NYU is proposing to build four new buildings, including a 38-story hotel and residential tower and a 1,400-bed freshman dorm alongside the I. M. Pei towers that the university owns. Sexton?s vision, and his argument, bears some resemblance to the famous G.M. adage of the fifties: What?s good for NYU is good for New York City, and vice versa. And what it means in practice is that the core of downtown New York is on its way to becoming a college town.

http://nymag.com/news/features/69482/

[Ron Newman]

How old are the I.M. Pei towers? I'm surprised that NYC allows landmarking of buildings less than 50 years old.

[Lurker]

True, but if there wasn't rent control, the normal joe wouldn't be able to live there. Instead of finding any place cheap, all the apartments would have been in the 250,000 range.

Some insane percentage (80%?) of NYC housing rental housing stock is somehow rent controlled or stabilized. This dramatically distorts the market pricing and new development. Every non controlled rental unit has a price premium making up the difference for all the units which are locked in at pricing way below market value. There are many buildings in NYC where the newcomer renters are paying ridiculously high rent in order to offset the landlord's loss on long time controlled/stabilized units.

If NYC got rid of rent control & stabilization the choice units, which should be expensive but are often locked in at prices from 40 years ago, would exponentially increase. However, all the middle class and less desirable housing stock would likely see a dramatic fall off in pricing.

[KentXie]

However, all the middle class and less desirable housing stock would likely see a dramatic fall off in pricing.

Counterintuitive to what you think, there actually won't be a dramatic fall off in pricing. Without rent control, residents will be paying more, leading to higher profit for the landowners who would be able to fix up and renovate dilapidated apartments and increase their value. Price would go up instead of down.

[Lurker]

Eliminating the premium charged on non rent controlled apartments by getting rid of rent control would bring the overall peak pricing down. The artificially cheap housing stock would become more expensive, but also be maintained, rather than left to decay to the point of being condemned in a permitting game to get out of rent control status. The middle class housing would see an improvement in maintenance and a rent reduction themselves. Not subsidizing the bastards sitting on a good deal locked in from the 1970s frees up funds for maintenance and, in not compensating for the cheap deals, allows rents across the board to be equal.

Rent control does more to artificially inflate prices (for the unlucky), encourage people to remain in the same spot (no reason to move, get a better job, or get off the dole, because the housing deal is so unrealistically good), and defers maintenance (landlord needs to make a profit somehow, government forcing private property owners into the public housing business probably should violate a commerce clause anyway) than anything else.

[JohnAKeith]

I.M. Pei says, not so fast. Opposes fourth tower. NYU says, okay, we won't build it there ... but ...

[NYU President John Sexton] told me that NYU can build on land it owns nearby when a building restriction expires in ten years. ?We can grow anyway! I mean, we grew for twenty years before. If that?s denied, we have an as-of-right building that will be five feet away. Which we?ll do! Maybe we?ll be forced to add seven stories to the Catholic Center.?

More about canceling project: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2010/11/18/breaking_nyu_drops_40story_tower_but_here_comes_pl an_b.php

(I was going to write, I.M. Pei says, "Me no likey" but was afraid you'd think that was racist.)

[vanshnookenraggen]

I was actually shocked when I read that. But they are only moving the building, like, 100 feet to the west. It will still be a giant eye soar [/pun]

[JohnAKeith]

I think this article is great except its main point is invalid, that the rebirth of 42nd Street and Times Square was the result of plans to build office towers on its corners. Seeing as they weren't finished until well after the area was "reborn", they didn't help/hurt at all.

After 30 Years, Times Square Rebirth Is Complete
By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Next month, 11 Times Square, a new, glassy 40-story office tower at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, will formally open with its first tenant. Compared with the metamorphosis that has occurred around it, there is nothing extraordinary about the building except for this: Its completion officially marks the end of the long and tortuous redevelopment of Times Square, an effort that began 30 years ago.

The plan, to radically make over 13 acres, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, primarily fronting 42nd Street, outlived three mayors, four governors, two real estate booms and two recessions. It faced widespread derision in the beginning from jaded New Yorkers who were wise to grand plans. It faces occasional derision today from New Yorkers who speak of the old Times Square with newfound fondness.

It embodied both the hubris of urban master planning and its possibilities, and showed the value of ripping up blueprints and starting over in midstream. And it has been a touchstone experience for a city that is now building, or trying to build, several multibillion-dollar projects, including ground zero, the Atlantic Yards, Willets Point and the Hudson Yards.

?So often, people say New York can?t build large-scale projects anymore,? said Lynne B. Sagalynn, a professor of real estate finance at Columbia University and the author of ?Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon.?

But, Professor Sagalynn said, ?Times Square is an example of how a city was able to think on a grand scale and carry it out.?

?It can take a decade or two for the complete vision to become a reality,? she continued. ?But it happened here.?

Success is evident. Crime is down significantly from the days when pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts and dope pushers prowled Times Square and the Deuce, as that stretch of 42nd Street was known. The number of tourists is up 74 percent since 1993, to an estimated 36.5 million last year, and attendance at Broadway shows has soared to nearly 12 million.

Morgan Stanley, Allianz Global Investors, Viacom and Cond? Nast now make their corporate homes there. Retailers are paying rents as high as $1,400 a square foot, second only to those on chic stretches of Fifth and Madison Avenues.

And while many billboards in Times Square were blank in 1979, today the area is a kaleidoscope of moving images depicting financial institutions, automakers and fashion houses, with the best spots on 1 Times Square?s facade commanding as much as $4 million a year in rent.

?The irony is that this place represents in many ways the epitome of free-market capitalism,? said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance. ?But its transformation is due more to government intervention than just about any other development in the country.?

Times Square, of course, has certain unique qualities that none of the city?s current projects enjoy: it sits in the middle of Manhattan, has a rich, century-long history and is recognized internationally as the crossroads of the world. Even at the worst of times, tourists from England to Italy, Algeria to Japan came to New York to have their pictures taken in Times Square.

But the often painful rebirth also took perseverance and a long-term approach, rare characteristics in a city obsessed with making things happen in a New York minute.

The concerted effort began in 1980, when after years of complaints and false starts, Mayor Edward I. Koch and state officials announced the coming rejuvenation of Times Square.

The developer George Klein, who later formed a joint venture with Prudential, was selected to build four sedate skyscrapers at the famous intersection of 42nd Street, Broadway and Seventh Avenue. The state would take over the decrepit theaters, evict the peep shows and X-rated movie houses and restore the former dignity. The subway stations would be refurbished, and a huge merchandise mart would be built on Eighth Avenue, between 40th and 42nd Streets, across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

The plan envisioned the use of eminent domain, and the owners of the theaters and nearby office towers, like the Durst family, resisted.

There also was criticism of the large tax breaks showered upon developers and tenants in the new Times Square; the Municipal Art Society, a private planning and preservation group, once estimated that the redevelopment would entail more than $1 billion in ?unnecessary? property tax abatements and other benefits like zoning changes that allowed for taller towers than would otherwise be permitted.

By the time the state had fended off 47 lawsuits brought against the project, a severe recession in 1991 brought the city to its knees. The next year, for the first time, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo failed to mention Times Square in his State of the State address.

Rebecca Robertson, who was then president of the state?s 42nd Street Development Project, worried that the whole plan was unraveling. Prudential, which had already put up $241 million for the land, threatened to pull out if it was forced to build towers at a time when it would be hard to fill them with tenants. It was given more time.

But this gloomy period, Ms. Robertson said, also proved to be an opportunity to overhaul the much-criticized development plan, whose four huge skyscrapers were designed more to bury Times Square?s sordid past than to celebrate its connection to popular culture.

Ms. Robertson, together with the architect Robert A. M. Stern and the graphic designer Tibor Kalman, devised an interim plan that reconnected with the ?razzmatazz? of Times Square?s past by emphasizing entertainment, big garish signs, an eclectic mix of tenants and glassier, flashier office towers, with lobbies that seemed to flow onto the sidewalk rather than wall it off.

?To me, the market crash was a wonderful time to rethink the whole thing,? Ms. Robertson said, referring to a stock market crash in 1987. ?We couldn?t have gotten our plan through in a hot market. The development pressures would?ve been way too strong. Everyone would?ve been talking about what big tenant can we get, and not about restoring popular culture and entertainment.?

The oft-heard complaint about the Disneyfication of Times Square sometimes loses sight of the fact that it was the Walt Disney Company, perhaps more than any other, that helped start the turnaround.

Disney wanted its own Broadway theater, but feared being a lonely outpost on a hostile block. A fierce negotiator despite its Mickey Mouse image, Disney reached an agreement to take over the New Amsterdam theater in the last days of Mayor David N. Dinkins?s tenure, got a low-interest loan from the state and prodded officials to sign deals with Madame Tussauds wax museum and the AMC Theaters, which moved in down the block. The restored theater has now been home to two wildly successful Disney plays, the Lion King, which later moved a few blocks away to the Minskoff Theater, and now Mary Poppins.

The economy recovered and then some, and the multicolored Westin Hotel, more movie theaters and the B. B. King Blues Club and Grill soon followed on the north side of 42nd Street. Douglas Durst, an early opponent, built 4 Times Square, the Cond? Nast building, on land he acquired from Prudential. Then followed the Reuters building, the Ernst & Young tower and a fourth skyscraper as the wrecking ball demolished hot-dog stands and pornography shops.

One Times Square, the building atop which the ball drops every New Year?s Eve, and now the most expensive advertising space in the world, sold for $110 million in 1997, four times what it had fetched just two years earlier after a foreclosure.

The New 42nd Street, the nonprofit group that oversees the redevelopment of seven historic theaters, created the New Victory children?s theater with low prices and an award-winning educational program.

Instead of a merchandise mart on Eighth Avenue, there is the New York Times?s new headquarters. Over objections from landowners, the state condemned a parcel that was home to 55 businesses, including a technical school, a hat store and sex shops, to build The Times?s third headquarters in the neighborhood in a century.

And there is 11 Times Square, on the last parcel to be redeveloped, and a sign of Times Square?s progress but also its challenges ahead. It was built speculatively, without tenants already lined up, and is now seeking to fill its floors amid competition from other buildings, including those going up at ground zero. Proskauer Rose, a major law firm and its first occupant, is scheduled to move in next month.

The adoption of a revised redevelopment plan was a critical moment, said Mary Ann Tighe, a real estate executive. ?They recognized that this wasn?t going to be Rockefeller Center West,? she said. ?Each part of the city is unique and demands its own solution.?

One of the last remnants of the old Times Square is Jimmy Glenn, the owner of Jimmy?s Corner, a bar on West 44th Street east of Seventh Avenue. A boxing trainer, Mr. Glenn was the owner of the late Times Square Gym, located one floor above 42nd Street; boxers with names like Ali, Frazier and Tyson used to mount the long stairwell to his ring.

Now, he said, ?it?s like a pinball machine out there.?

But Mr. Glenn, now 80, does not miss the drug addicts, pornography shops and criminals. ?Everybody loves Times Square now,? he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/nyregion/04square.html?pagewanted=all