Downtowns are back

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, Lower Manhattan wouldn't be high on my list of Manhattan neighborhoods for living. It was never "bombed out", BTW. Ever. Even in NYC's worst years, it never had troubled areas.

One of the big reasons you see more traditional families down there is because a bunch of elite private schools opened. Leman Prep, Blue School, Pine Street School, etc. Also, the public schools are some of the best in the city.

It wasn't the south Bronx but I saw cars being stripped and buildings in the area were worse for wear.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, Lower Manhattan wouldn't be high on my list of Manhattan neighborhoods for living. It was never "bombed out", BTW. Ever. Even in NYC's worst years, it never had troubled areas.

One of the big reasons you see more traditional families down there is because a bunch of elite private schools opened. Leman Prep, Blue School, Pine Street School, etc. Also, the public schools are some of the best in the city.

A guy I went to college with got a job teaching woodworking on Wall St. to kids in one of those school's art programs. So every morning he was getting off the same subway trains as the hedge fund guys, but to make wooden toys with kids.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

There's definitely a lot more there now, but it still has the perception of being "boring". I don't get the appeal of it as a place to live unless you actually work in FiDi.

Imagine to live in a very tall 1920's skyscraper? How cool is that?

And I imagine there are tons of good bars and restaurants on the neighbouring districts. Are Greenwich Village, East Village still interesting or did they become to wealthy and bland?

[streetscaper]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Imagine to live in a very tall 1920's skyscraper? How cool is that?

And I imagine there are tons of good bars and restaurants on the neighbouring districts. Are Greenwich Village, East Village still interesting or did they become to wealthy and bland?

They're still very interesting... they're both places that New Yorkers from all over go for a night out.

(I wouldn't necessarily say they're 'neighboring' FiDi though, they're both at least 40min walk away... not too far, but not super close either)

[Chisouthside]

Originally Posted by JManc

It wasn't the south Bronx but I saw cars being stripped and buildings in the area were worse for wear.

This, if you google "80s lower east side" theres literally pictures of buildings bombed out down there and from stories of bands that played at CBGBs and ventured into the LES theyve also described the bombed out buildings there.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Imagine to live in a very tall 1920's skyscraper? How cool is that?

And I imagine there are tons of good bars and restaurants on the neighbouring districts. Are Greenwich Village, East Village still interesting or did they become to wealthy and bland?

Wealthy people living in Lower Manhattan (and that would be most homeowners there) would mostly be dining out/hanging out in Tribeca. Tribeca is pretty seamless with the Financial District, and has a ton of amenities. Lower Manhattan, not so much.

But Lower Manhattan offers better value, and has more private schools. Plus giant prewar skyscrapers that make interesting residential conversions. Tribeca is one of the most expensive areas in Manhattan, while Lower Manhattan is one of the most affordable parts of prime Manhattan.

Amenities are pretty decent now. There will soon be two extremely large, multilevel Whole Foods, there are rumors of a Stew Leonard's (a regional supermarket with gigantic stores) and there are a fair number of destination restaurants now, like Nobu.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Chisouthside

This, if you google "80s lower east side" theres literally pictures of buildings bombed out down there and from stories of bands that played at CBGBs and ventured into the LES theyve also described the bombed out buildings there.

Correct, but the LES isn't the Financial District. The formerly sketchy parts of the LES were maybe 1.5 miles from the Financial District. It isn't like someone on Wall Street in the 1970's was gonna randomly end up walking to Avenue D.

Those neighborhoods were always separated by the Civic Center, Chinatown, Little Italy, and the shrinking Jewish enclave in the LES.

[MolsonExport]

Alphabet city late 70s, early 80s


reddit

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Imagine to live in a very tall 1920's skyscraper? How cool is that?

And I imagine there are tons of good bars and restaurants on the neighbouring districts. Are Greenwich Village, East Village still interesting or did they become to wealthy and bland?

FiDi is fairly expensive, and there are just too many better options if you're looking for proximity to bars and restaurants. If you cross the bridge and live in Brooklyn you'll have more options for bars and restaurants, while being roughly the same commute to amenities in Greenwich Village or the East Village. The East Village itself is probably cheaper than FiDi. The only real selling point of FiDi, IMO, is proximity to your office if you work in FiDi, or as Crawford pointed out, if you have children and are paying for an expensive private school in that area.

[MolsonExport]

from Taxi Driver:

[Crawford]

All that Alphabet City sketch was as close to Midtown as to Lower Manhattan. It was basically the far eastern stretch of the East Village from Houston to 14th.

When I moved to NYC in 2001, the sketch was gone. The only reminder of Alphabet City's bad old days is the unusually large number of "community gardens", which were established on the rubble of former tenements, and which have largely remained due to extreme NIMBYism. Once you walk east of Ave. B you start to see the gardens.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Correct, but the LES isn't the Financial District. The formerly sketchy parts of the LES were maybe 1.5 miles from the Financial District. It isn't like someone on Wall Street in the 1970's was gonna randomly end up walking to Avenue D.

Those neighborhoods were always separated by the Civic Center, Chinatown, Little Italy, and the shrinking Jewish enclave in the LES.

I'm not talking about LES, that's on the other side of Manhattan, but the areas immediately around the financial center which were typical of New York of the 80's (dumpy) and in stark contrast of the WTC/ WFC nearby..with the gross display of wealth. Today, it's night and day nicer all over.

[iheartthed]

Prior to the West Side Highway being torn down, I can believe there were abandoned and stripped cars around Battery Park City. I doubt it was common to see that east of the highway, though, unless it was up in Tribeca or something. But all of that would've been in the 1970s or 80s, so well before my time.

[jmecklenborg]

I visited Miramax's NYC office in 2000 (no, we did not meet Harvey Weinstein!) and Tribeca was mostly intact, physically, but by no means bustling or prestigious in the way it soon became.

[Yuri]

Downtown Cleveland


Oberlin College

As we've discussed Detroit, I thought it would be nice to bring Cleveland as they have many things in common, for instance, both cities are still declining albeit at a much slower place.


---------------------------- 2020 ------ 2010 ------ 2000 ------ 1990 ---- Growth ---- Density

Downtown ------------------- 13,338 ------ 9,471 ------ 6,312 ------ 4,561 ---- 40.8% ---- 50.0% --- 38.4% ----- 7.8 km² --- 1,705.6 inh./km²

Cleveland ------------------ 372,624 ---- 396,831 ---- 477,450 ---- 505,629 ---- -6,1% --- -16,9% --- -5,6% --- 201.3 km² --- 1,851.1 inh./km²

Cleveland Metro Area ---- 2,790,470 -- 2,780,440 -- 2,843,103 -- 2,759,823 ----- 0.4% ---- -2.2% ---- 3.0% --- 7,509 km²


I used three tracts for Downtown Cleveland, and pretty much all the 2010's growth took place in the one where Tower City is, near the river. It was the least populated in the 1990, with only 895 people in 1990, jumped to 1,944 in 2010 and 5,524 in 2020.

One important feature it's the size, rather big (almost 8 km²), including all the docks, railway yards and even an airport, resulting im a low density. Note, however, the growth started already in the 1990's and it's been consistent and very fast since then, specially considering the city is still shrinking.

We don't often talk about it, but it's clearly a success case.

[Yuri]

Downtown San Diego




---------------------------- 2020 ------ 2010 ------ 2000 ------ 1990 ------ Growth ------ Density

Downtown --------------------- 39,538 ----- 27,918 ----- 15,482 ----- 12,771 ---- 41.6% ---- 80.3% --- 21.2% ----- 4.7 km² --- 8,457.3 inh./km²

San Diego MSA ----------- 3,298,634 -- 3,095,313 -- 2,813,833 -- 2,498,016 ----- 6.6% ---- 10.0% --- 12.6% -- 10,904 km²


That's one of the biggest suprises for me as I was putting the list. San Diego is so under the radar, and its Downtown even more. It's not only very dense now (8,500 inh./km²), but it's still growing at a very fast pace.

Another testimony of how US Downtowns boom is taking place everywhere, from the Rust Belt to the sunny California.

[SIGSEGV]

Wow, I wonder if the census happened at more or less the worst possible time for downtown Chicago? (from https://www.chicagobusiness.com/comm...-records-again)

[Pedestrian]

San Francisco population changes:

The city

Google Earth

Downtown

Google Earth

Population changes

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects...sf-population/

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Wow, I wonder if the census happened at more or less the worst possible time for downtown Chicago?

i'd guess it was likely a bad time to count people in major US city downtowns across the nation, what with the whole universe of bullshit that was the utterly crap-tacular year of 2020.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

San Francisco population changes:

I have San Francisco done. Massive work as census tracts don't match perfectly with neighbourhoods and there are some overlaps (North Beach/Telegraph Hill).

I put together Financial District and Embarcadero as it was impossible to split them, Chinatown, North Beach, Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Tenderloin, Civic Center, Rincon Hill/South Beach and South of Market.

Pretty much the entire northeast quarter of the city. And I called "Downtown" everything minus North Beach and Russian Hill.