How much more can New York City grow?
 

Amazon bringing 25,000 jobs, Google making another billion dollar investment in the city in a months time.

Hudson Yards with 20 million square feet of office nearing completion, numerous other supertall office towers under construction/being planned. $100 million condos popping up around Central Park.

How much more can the Big Apple grow before it reaches it's cap?

interesting question but some of the answer is in your question. Build high!:tup:

That’s not really the answer at all. Luxury highrises don’t actually add that much density (really).

NYC has lots of underutilized land within its 350 or so square miles. In many places, building up just means six stories instead of two. The real limiting factor is the ability of the infrastructure, particularly the subway, to handle the additional residents.

With modern technology? Idk it could have many times its current population.

Would be even worse of clusterF***k then it is now but it can fit more people.

i dont know why but a city that all the buildings were skyscrapers and all the trains were double decker subways would be cool to see. double nys density.

10,000,000!!

But seriously, many of these luxury high-rises are not adding density because they are second homes. The census would not count the residents as part of the city's population.

The opportunity for real growth will be in underutilized sites in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island! A zoning change from one to two family could double the density of an area.

For all the recent talk of upzoning in places like Minneapolis and San Francisco, I realized I have no idea of what the current zoning is like in these vast swaths of moderate-density outer-New York: https://goo.gl/maps/YPQokSyuvvx

Subway/rail service would need to be improved in these areas, but there's no reason they couldn't otherwise be gradually intensified to add hundreds of thousands of new units, if the bylaws were to permit it.

That's Canarsie, which is probably the most suburban corner of Brooklyn. Canarsie isn't gonna have high density development anytime soon, except maybe a bit around the subway.

Adjacent areas, however, allow higher density and have massive development planned. This project, bordering Canarsie, was announced last week:

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/12/10/181...le-housing-pau

Staten Island perhaps with a new car bridge to it to Manhattan and have the SI Railway be extended onto it.

Of course highrises can add a ton of density...just not the types NYC often builds.

It's possible for towers to be full of 600 square foot one-bedrooms, with say 10 per floor. If the price points are high enough, it's possible for a lot of 1,000 square foot two-bedrooms to be included too.

NYC has plenty of vacant or underdeveloped land. Forget about far flung areas like Canarsie. The low hanging fruit is allowing to build 10 storey residential buildings close to existing subway stations in outer boroughs... That would certainly be a start. Oh, and removal of parking space requirements. :koko:

In my areas of Brooklyn they are still building SFHs, just sayin.

How much more can New York grow?

Go pay a visit to Calcutta

There is no limit to how much New York--or any city--can grow. There is no such thing as a cap. There is no method of counting where New York is even in the top 5 of the world's largest cities anymore.

The main reason New York is having trouble accommodating its growing population is that New York's zoning does not allow housing supply to increase fast enough to meet demand. It's not so much an issue of skyscrapers needing to be taller; it's more an issue of lowrises and rowhouses needing to become midrises, and not being allowed to.

All of this, plus you need actual human beings too.

Every city could have 10 million people, if there were enough people that wanted to all live like sardines.

Without significant investment in overhauling its vast rail network, 10 million is probably the rough cap before it reaches a breaking point of some sort. We’re talking easily over a $100 billion worth of expansion and modernization upgrades in new routes, lengthened or widened platforms, adding a fourth track wherever possible, etc. I also think much of the growth (certainly population, but also economic) has to take place in Brooklyn and Queens so that the city isn’t as Manhattan-centric, although this would likely be met with much resistance.

The sky’s (literally) the limit for NYC; it’s always been a city of big thinkers and doers. If there’s one city that has the civic wherewithal to make the seemingly impossible happen, it’s New York.

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But why would NYC want to be like Calcutta?

Since we're talking decades out, new tech and trends will play a role.

The remote working concept hasn't played out so far. But will it? Between working from home and working from satellite offices perhaps?

The satellite office thing strikes me as a potential major influence. Coworking centers are popping up by the hundreds. Suddenly it's easy for a company to rent 20 desks each in various districts around town, with no capital costs or lag time, and with all of the data, teleconferencing, etc., that a normal satellite office would provide. Even if most of us still head for HQ on a typical day, will this allow a sizable percent to stay closer to home? Even if 10% of the office market shifted, that's a significant reduction in the commute crush.

On the flip side, I buy the point that NYC is fraying on the transit front and others. The cost and inconvenience will both be headwinds for growth.

The only place in Brooklyn you see new SFH are in certain wealthy Orthodox South Brooklyn enclaves (esp. around Kings Hwy and Ave. U).

Those are fairly dense neighborhoods overall, though (because the major corridors have large buildings). And, even there, the number of new SFH are minimal. I don't think these enclaves are the issue.

There is a ton of space for NYC to grow. Manhattan is still only 72% of its population peak. But I'm skeptical that the transit system can support +10M people in NYC.

Bring back the tenement