Your city's "favoured quarter"

[Docere]

An acquaintance surveyed the home addresses of the partners of his Manhattan white shoe law firm:

Manhattan 35%
Westchester 20%
Fairfield 10%
Brooklyn 10%
Nassau 5%
Bergen 5%
Other NJ 5%
Other NYC 5%
Other NYS 2.5%

* Rounded a bit to assure anonymity

[Crawford]

That sounds about right. And indicative of the fact that the NYC metro doesn't have a strong favored quarter. But if you have to choose one, it would be a north/east directional.

But obviously it varies somewhat by industry. I bet you white shoe law is a bit more in Westchester; finance a bit more in Fairfield. A few more law partners in Rye and Chappaqua, a few more finance directors in Westport and Darien. Some communities in NJ will have strong finance bent due to easy rail connections to Wall Street. Places like Summit and Short Hills. Brooklyn will have a strong publishing/creative bent.

[Docere]

Toronto's favored quarter runs northward from the CBD through a central corridor. It runs through four electoral districts: University-Rosedale (Annex, Rosedale), St. Paul's (Forest Hill, Yonge-St. Clair), Eglinton-Lawrence (North Toronto) and Don Valley West (Lawrence Park, York Mills). Note that even these wards are rather mixed.

Uni-Rose and St. Paul's are pretty much your standard "urban elite" districts, while DVW and Eglinton-Lawrence are more suburban in character.


Average Income

Don Valley West $109,887
University-Rosedale $98,820
St. Paul's $92,952
Eglinton-Lawrence $81,773

University Degree

University-Rosedale 67.1%
Don Valley West 62.7%
St. Paul's 60.5%
Eglinton-Lawrence 53.3%

* Average (individual) income is around 50K, 44% of Torontonians have university degrees, City Hall is located in the Spadina-Fort York electoral district.

[Docere]

While NYC social geography is too complex to have a "favored quarter" I think the difference between Westchester and LI in terms of born out in another state (best proxy measure for transplants) is telling.

Westchester:

Rye 29.7%
Bronxville 25.3%
Larchmont 22.6%
Pelham 16.8%
Scarsdale 15.7%
Yorktown Heights 11.4%
Eastchester 7.9%

Long Island:

Garden City 8.7%
Roslyn 8.1%
Great Neck 5.2%
Deer Park 4.9%
Farmingdale 4.6%
Levittown 4.5%
Franklin Square 2.7%

Very high percentage of transplants in "Brahmin" suburbs like Larchmont and Rye, LI doesn't really seem to have the equivalent. It also seems to explain the voting difference between Westchester and LI that simple demographic analyses like education and income doesn't pick up.

[Yuri]

São Paulo, with the starting point at See Cathedral, it's everything inside those black bars up to the Pinheiros River. Across the river, there are plenty of very wealthy neighbourhoods mixed with very poor ones.

And the wealthiest areas of those are around "Pinheiros", "Jardins" and "Moema":



Brazilian cities tend to be weathier at west and south. Don't know why.

[Yuri]

And as it's expected in a former colonial society, high income and white areas match perfectly.

First map has darker colours for Mixed+Black population and the second one has red for the wealthiest areas:

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

While NYC social geography is too complex to have a "favored quarter" I think the difference between Westchester and LI in terms of born out in another state (best proxy measure for transplants) is telling.

Westchester:

Rye 29.7%
Bronxville 25.3%
Larchmont 22.6%
Pelham 16.8%
Scarsdale 15.7%
Yorktown Heights 11.4%
Eastchester 7.9%

Long Island:

Garden City 8.7%
Roslyn 8.1%
Great Neck 5.2%
Deer Park 4.9%
Farmingdale 4.6%
Levittown 4.5%
Franklin Square 2.7%

Very high percentage of transplants in "Brahmin" suburbs like Larchmont and Rye, LI doesn't really seem to have the equivalent. It also seems to explain the voting difference between Westchester and LI that simple demographic analyses like education and income doesn't pick up.

Long Island is much more insular, ethnic and New Yorky. Most families are a generation or two removed from Brooklyn/Queens and still maintain ties. Expats and non-locals gravitate to Westchester, CT and NJ, which feel a little more "all-American."

Easy corporate transfer from Chicago's North Shore or Montgomery County, MD to Westchester or Fairfield, to take an example. The culture will be familiar. Great Neck is rich and educated but culturally too local. Rich Persian Jews with Brooklynese accents.

But home prices, incomes and education levels are the same on LI as for other directionals (actually home prices are much higher, apples-apples than NJ).

[Docere]

It's more about culture than economics, LI vs. the rest.

[Docere]

Westchester does have some more "ethnic" suburbs though, like Eastchester (Italian American) and Scarsdale (Jewish).

[vanman]

For Vancouver it is west of downtown. This map (from 2018) of single family home values makes it pretty clear.


https://globalnews.ca/news/4052244/b...vancouver-map/

[Docere]

Expensive-expensive vs. super-duper expensive.

[Docere]

Forest Hill and Lawrence Park/Lytton Park are probably as close as Toronto gets to a Shaker Heights, Beverly Hills, Winnetka, Chevy Chase and the like. But they're about twice as dense.

Population density:

Forest Hill South 11,356 / per square mile
Lawrence Park South 12,143 / per sq mile

Forest Hill is very Jewish, while the Yonge St. corridor is more WASP. Avenue Rd. is the border between more and less Jewish.

[SFBruin]

I don't know if Seattle has a favored quarter, per se, but the northern half seems to me to get a little more attention than gets the southern half.

[SFBruin]

Originally Posted by Yuri

high income and white areas match

Interesting.

[Docere]

The east side suburbs of Seattle are the most affluent, while south Seattle and the southern suburbs running to Tacoma are the more low income/working class.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

That sounds about right. And indicative of the fact that the NYC metro doesn't have a strong favored quarter. But if you have to choose one, it would be a north/east directional.

I think Docere’s survey clearly indicates that Manhattan, Westchester, and Fairfield are where more of the pedigree is, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the responses but home to only about 15% of the metro population.

Jersey is clearly underrepresented at 10% considering proximity and the fact that it’s home to 7 million people, Bergen having a population of 956,000 yet accounting for half of Jersey responses.

And let’s just hypothetically say that “other NYC” is all Queens and “other NYS” is all Suffolk County. That’s over 8 million people — about a third of the metro — yet only 22.5% of responses.

[Quixote]

Bay Area also has affluent suburbia in every direction, but it’s clear that the Peninsula, southwestern Santa Clara County, and Marin are more favored than the East Bay communities along the 680 corridor, which I would say is the Bay Area’s version of NJ.

—

LA is less evenly distributed than both, but that’s because there’s less wealth. It’s not as Westside-centric as made out to be. Hancock Park, West Hollywood, Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, gentrifying parts of NELA, Downtown, Pasadena, South Pasadena, San Marino, La Canada Flintridge, Sierra Madre, Arcadia, Diamond Bar, Walnut, and parts of the Coachella Valley provide an eastern tilt.

Everything along the 101 corridor from Studio City through to Camarillo, Ojai, West Hills, Bell Canyon, Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, and the Simi and Santa Clarita Valleys provide a northern pull.

And then you have the South Bay beach cities (which have mild, San Diego-like weather), the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and Orange County. OC is home to 3.15 million people and has a sizable chunk of poor areas, yet its median household income is over $100,000. Only Santa Clara County and maybe Nassau County are more impressive in terms of income vis-a-vis population size.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Quixote

I think Docere’s survey clearly indicates that Manhattan, Westchester, and Fairfield are where more of the pedigree is, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the responses but home to only about 15% of the metro population.

Jersey is clearly underrepresented at 10% considering proximity and the fact that it’s home to 7 million people, Bergen having a population of 956,000 yet accounting for half of Jersey responses.

And let’s just hypothetically say that “other NYC” is all Queens and “other NYS” is all Suffolk County. That’s over 8 million people — about a third of the metro — yet only 22.5% of responses.

I don't know what survey is referenced, but incomes and education across apples-apples geographies are largely flat across the tri-state. Income & education generally define favored quarters. It's pretty clear that places like Chicago, DC, Atlanta, Dallas, etc. have different income/education patterns than in the NYC area.

Also not sure why you're comparing Westchester/Fairfield to all of NJ or all of LI. Wouldn't you also then include the Bronx with Westchester/Fairfield? Obviously Brooklyn/Queens, the Bronx and the urban Jersey counties aren't suburbia.

As someone who used to work for a (formerly) very WASPy investment bank, I know the directors and managing directors had no discernable suburban pattern. They were as likely to be in Manhasset or Princeton as in Westport or Dobbs Ferry. Probably about 40% lived in Manhattan or Brooklyn, and the remaining 60% were mostly scattered throughout Westchester, Fairfield, North Shore LI, and four areas in NJ - the Summit-Short Hills-Madison corridor, the Tenafly-Alpine-Englewood Cliffs area, the Ridgewood area, and Princeton. Once in a while you'd get directors from the Rumson-Red Bank (NJ) area or some waterfront area of South Shore (LI).

Suburban NY is more of a pattern of generally upper class sprawl with working class older towns (or neighborhoods) scattered about. Even in Westchester/Fairfield, there are plenty of relatively poor towns. Basically every older town has poverty, even Greenwich. Next to Greenwich is working class Port Chester. It's very different from, say, the North Shore of Chicago.

This was all 20 years ago, but I doubt there has been radical change. The share of directors in Brooklyn, especially, has probably risen. Boomers didn't live in Brooklyn. Maybe the city residents are up to 50%+ but I doubt the suburban patterns changed.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Bay Area also has affluent suburbia in every direction, but it’s clear that the Peninsula, southwestern Santa Clara County, and Marin are more favored than the East Bay communities along the 680 corridor, which I would say is the Bay Area’s version of NJ.

There are affluent enclaves along the 680 corridor, especially the western hillsides of Alamo and Danville, and Blackhawk in the eastern hills.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't know what survey is referenced, but incomes and education across apples-apples geographies are largely flat across the tri-state.

Also not sure why you're comparing Westchester/Fairfield to all of NJ or all of LI. Wouldn't you also then include the Bronx with Westchester/Fairfield? Obviously Brooklyn/Queens, the Bronx and the urban Jersey counties aren't suburbia.

Income and education may be similar across the board, but perception and type of money are different. You're saying that elites are equally as likely to live north, east, and west of Manhattan. That may be true, but only in absolute terms. Westchester and Fairfield together are home to about 2 million, North/Central Jersey 7 million, and Long Island 3 million. I'm saying that if it's apples-to-applies, then there shouldn't be an equal distribution across the three directions.

The northern part of the metro has an outsized share of the cachet, wealth, and overall more pedigree. Greenwich/Stamford is an important financial center in its own right, while Westchester is headquarters to Mastercard, Pepsi, and IBM. Westchester and Fairfield are analogous to San Mateo and Santa Clara, respectively, only they're sleepier, less dense, more bucolic, and have stronger ties to the primary city. More of the movers and shakers are likely to concentrate here. Nassau County is more typical 1950s bedroom-community suburbia, while NJ is probably more suburban writ large (fewer commuters and commuter rail lines to Manhattan, more family-owned businesses, more conservative, homes are cheaper). It's more like Orange County, CA or DuPage County, IL.

NJ and LI come across as a little less "refined." Places like Alpine and Saddle River scream new money. LI's North Shore — north of the LIE from Great Neck to about Huntington — is more legacy-oriented. Satellite view shows that it's greener and laid out more like Westchester/Fairfield than the more conventional tract-style suburban sprawl that characterizes much of NJ and the rest of LI.