Why There Are No Skyscrapers in the Middle of Manhattan (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Why There Are No Skyscrapers in the Middle of Manhattan (2012)

observer.com

45 pointsmonort21 comments

I had trouble getting past the first sentence. That NYC has the finest skyline in the world is a fact? Well, I think it’s ugly and uninspiring. And that’s not a fact. Also, seems extremely odd to not just ask developers why they don’t build skyscrapers in the middle of the island? They would be able to tell you whether it’s lack of feasibility or that no one has asked them to do it.

I'm not an expert on New York's history, but in a general sense, I don't find the clustering of buildings all that surprising. After all, what's the alternative? Highrises built sporadically around the island in isolated areas? A blanket of highrises covering the entire island? Once an area becomes established as a center of business (for whatever reason), there's a real benefit of living and working in close proximity so consequently other developments take place in the area.

Apart from NYC, it seems to me that roughly every major city I have ever visited had the exact same clustering in certain areas.

Not to mention the transportation network that has built up around these areas. For instance, Midtown is fed by multiple train stations, a bus station, multiple tunnels, and an incredible nexus of subway stations. You couldn't add a new high-density area without adding it in an area that's well-served by transportation.

Reflexively, the most likely candidate for a new skyscraper patch (just weighed by transportation support) falls between the two peaks. 14th street is near Penn Station, has the usual grab-bag of uptown/downtown Manhattan subways, the PATH, is also near a tunnel, and has the L train. Not sure why this hasn't happened past zoning reasons.

So we should probably start a crowdfunding venture to purchase air rights around 14th street.

It might be more useful to crowdfund lobbying for upzoning instead - if you've bought a bunch of air rights around 14th St and the city upzones the whole area those air rights won't be worth so much...

With a few exceptions, air rights can only be transferred to contiguous parcels (the two exceptions in Manhattan that I know of are the "Special West Chelsea Air Rights District" and the midtown rezoning around Grand Central).

Curious quirk of NYC real estate: as valuable as air rights are, the City has no formal process to track them other than through the building permit process. There isn't an "air rights" database for example.

Two points:

- It's only the "middle" if you ignore everything above 59th street. Which is fair if you're considering skyscrapers but otherwise quite false.

- The two peaks roughly correspond to the old city in lower Manhattan, where the financial district is, and to the bottom of central park, where the views are.

I'd hazard a guess that it's not the views, but three giant transportation hubs (grand central, penn station, and the port authority) that form the axis of the midtown high rise district. Looking out the window is nice, but it's filling those buildings with people every morning that comprises the real magic of a central business district.

Heh as a long time commuter from lower Manhattan to Queens, I always considered 59th street the top of Manhattan. Everything above it doesn't matter (to me)

For all of the people that I've come across that have said this (or something similar)...I've not once come across a satisfying reason as to why people take pride in their limited geographic or experiential knowledge of NYC and all/more of its neighborhoods. Sure, all of your needs might be met in X part of the city; but forgoing Y part of the city is missing out on so much more.

North of 59th might as well be Yonkers.

For the same reason people root for their local sports team, it's fun.

Which reminds me, New York City is the greatest city in the history of world civilization and the rest of the country is an endless cultural desert of strip malls and chain restaurants.

I thought this was a joke with the answer being "because there's a giant park instead of buildings"

The park's on the other side of the second cluster of high-rises.

It's all zoning. Which means it's all politics. At best you can come up with some historical explanations for how certain neighborhoods evolved, but really it is practically random.

The article doesn't really answer the question. It's more like "here's some evidence that a popular myth is incorrect."

(2012)

Good catch. Added.

"Therein, he posited his belief in a correlation between bedrock and big buildings, and like the Empire State Building" - What a weird sentence. Like a skyscraper being built successfully is some random event that can be used to indicate bedrock. Are measurements of the bedrock really that hard to come by?

p.s. How old is the quote at the end lol? "traipsing through ... Soho to get to work? That land was cheap, but the location was worthless"

[Some](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/092515...) would say soho is the most expensive neighborhood now

The full quote is "Like cavemen following mammoth across the Bering Strait, early developers were following their prey. “Who’s moving north?” Mr. Barr said. “It’s the wealthy and the middle class. If you’re an insurance salesman, do you really want to be traipsing through the slums of Five Points or the factories of Soho to get to work?"

The author is talking about the historical drivers of Midtown's development.

Soho has only been an expensive neighborhood for ~15-20 years, a good century after the rise of Midtown. Back then it was a light industrial district of warehouses and factories with dirty streets, high crime, and high noise. It's important to note that this is pre-containerization, so ships from all over the world docked along the East River and Hudson River, supplying and shipping to/from the factories of Lower Manhattan. The streets were filthy and filled with heavy freight, and its main redeeming value is proximity to the ports.

After containerization and the ports moved away, Soho fell into disrepair as industry moved to be closer to supply lines. In the 60s and 70s artists took over many of the spaces because they were big but the area was undesirable enough to be affordable. It wasn't until the 90s that the area started being gentrified, and it wasn't until the 00s that the area became outrageously expensive.

Ditto Five Points, which doesn't even exist as a discernible neighborhood anymore. Nowadays it's the giant court house complex, but back then it was a poor and dangerous neighborhood.

The NYC from 2000-2016 is not at all like the NYC from the 70s and before.

Thank you. Makes sense.

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