Street View of 80s NYC | Hacker News Reader

Street View of 80s NYC

80s.nyc

282 pointsmwexler57 comments

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The South Bronx really was a war-zone.

http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8265/-73.9080

http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8107/-73.9180

http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8188/-73.9217

http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8229/-73.9167

http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8102/-73.9194

http://80s.nyc/#show/40.8152/-73.9165

All of those rent-control incentivized arsons... empty lots with garbage everywhere... dogs running around with no owners visible.

Edit: correction, while rent-control played a big role in Brooklyn's housing abandonment rate, South Bronx faced a variety of factors in addition to rent control:

> For example, housing abandonment in the South Bronx, probably the most devastated area in the entire city, can be plausibly related to the economics of an obsolete housing stock. The area was one of the most densely populated in the country in the 1940s and 1950s, and the housing stock consists almost entirely of five- and six-story walkups. As population density decreased, fifth- and sixth-story walkup apartments became unrentable at prices sufficient for sound building maintenance, irrespective of rent controls. Arson eventually became the owners' only financially rewarding alternative.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100610/BLOGS01/306109...

Another perspective on the rash of South Bronx arsons is that it was caused by bad data science. See story here: http://nypost.com/2010/05/16/why-the-bronx-burned/

Thanks, I came across that article too. I've included an edit, there were many factors involved in the South Bronx blight (economic and political), but yes fire stations shutting down in neighbourhoods with less political pull was certainly one of them.

The fires ended up ruining entire neighbourhoods due to the poor city response times, but the simple fact is many of them were started due to landlord arson or from poor property maintenance by the owners.

The incentives weren't just rent control but also white-flight population decline leading to decreased rent rolls leading to reduced property valuations that weren't yet reflected in insurance valuations.

And much of that white flight was due to the Federal government funding interstates to the suburbs and subsidizing mortgage loans for whites only that made suburban houses cheaper for white middle-class families to live in than urban apartments. http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1934-1968-FHA-Redl...

The South Bronx was also entirely redlined by the HOLC in the 1930s, rendering it ineligible for mortgage loans for decades: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=12/40.8328/...

> And much of that white flight was due to the Federal government funding interstates to the suburbs and subsidizing mortgage loans for whites only that made suburban houses cheaper for white middle-class families to live in than urban apartments. .

That study is for "1934–1968". The civil rights act (1969) made that type of discrimination illegal and included provisions to incentivize the reduction of segregation, yet I've read that nearly 50yrs later housing segregation is still today higher (or as high) than before the civil rights act.

I'm sure that federal policy played a big role in white flight but I'm curious why it hasn't reversed despite these changes... there must be other forces still at play here, that or we're seeing a multi-generational side-effect of bad policy.

But regardless it's interesting to think that so much government policy did the exact opposite of help the poor at federal, state, and city level... from city budgeting of fire stations to mortgage incentives to rent control and zoning laws, etc.

> I'm curious why it hasn't reversed despite these changes...

Then came the gangs (70s-90s, still today)...

Neighborhoods like this are/were/became:

a) literal war zones

b) in many cases extremely hostile to non 'natives'

Pretty much if you lived there, you wanted to survive or get out, and no one in their right mind who had a choice wanted to move in, until the gentrification wave of late 90s to now, which only came after crack wars ended and gangs started to be sucessfully supressed..

As for 'policy' -

If you dig beyond the surface corruption, there are plenty of not-so-implausible tinfoil hat theories relating to using drug related crime as a foreign and domestic political tool in most countries..

Until white people are comfortable living in a 80% minority neighborhood, self-segregation is potentially inevitable regardless of all other factors.

Play with the little simulation at the bottom here: http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segreg...

Notice how low the similarity percentage has to be to get anything that is remotely integrated.

It likely wouldn't be seen as a 'problem' if economic levels were similar. In Toronto the ethnic enclaves are a highly regarded feature of the city and there is very little tension (if at all). Many of our ethnic groups are doing as well and sometimes better than the native white groups.

It's a natural phenomenon for cultural groups to stick together. I see nothing wrong with that and all groups benefit from the variety in food and festivals.

Although we don't have the super high violence rates that spill over into other neighbourhoods and lower incarceration rates.

It's not just economics - Canada doesn't have slave history.

Many of these neighborhoods are predominantly AA and descendants of freed slaves; many residents view these neighborhoods as their territory and however bad the crime might be, at least it is something that is 'theirs' in a country that stole their land, families, etc.

Encroachment is often viewed as racial assault and non-natives are often treated with suspicion at the least, or outright hostility.

The crime and poverty is a separate issue - but if you'll note, when this is solved, the neighborhoods become gentrified and existing poor residents are rapidly displaced.. for these, it was almost preferable to have the crime since they could still live in 'their home' in a neighborhood they grew up in, etc.

Reminds me of St. Louis today, it's completely hollowed out with dilapidated buildings everywhere. Sad.

Except St Louis isn't coming back.

Never. Unfortunately.

One of the most stunning parts of the movie Koyaanisqatsi are the demolition of builds in the South Bronx (I'm pretty sure they're there, can someone confirm?). And, the scenes from the movie Wolfen look very similar to the above scenes.

Those were in St. Louis, MO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe

Hence the name of the song. (smacks side of head) Thanks.

Looks like Baltimore.

Looks like Detroit today.

Have you been there lately? Fewer dogs but still similar.

I know it's fun to be edgy, but it's even more fun to be pedantic and provide links of what those actual locations look like today:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8265393,-73.9077102,3a,75y,7...

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8107336,-73.9187274,3a,75y,1...

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8187207,-73.921799,3a,75y,13...

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8228232,-73.9165044,3a,75y,3...

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8104059,-73.9199855,3a,75y,8...

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8147291,-73.9166855,3a,75y,3...

Wow what an improvement all around, thanks for that. Some of the empty lots are still there but fenced off and with far less blight.

>For Bronx, we found that the violent crime rate is one of the highest in the nation, across communities of all sizes (both large and small). Violent offenses tracked included rape, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, armed robbery, and aggravated assault, including assault with a deadly weapon. According to NeighborhoodScout's analysis of FBI reported crime data, your chance of becoming a victim of one of these crimes in Bronx is one in 94.

>NeighborhoodScout's analysis also reveals that Bronx's rate for property crime is 19 per one thousand population. This makes Bronx a place where there is an above average chance of becoming a victim of a property crime, when compared to all other communities in America of all population sizes. Property crimes are motor vehicle theft, arson, larceny, and burglary. Your chance of becoming a victim of any of these crimes in Bronx is one in 54.

Take a walk down there some night and tell me what it looks like up close. Don't bring your wallet.

https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/bronx/crime

This is what I personally can't stand about internet posters. Posting forcefully about things they have done no research on.

The borough of the Bronx compared to a number of cities Using total crime as that's what was used.

Chances of being a victim of property/violent crime Bronx 1 in 95, 1 in 54 Cleveland 1 in 63, 1 in 16 Denver 1 in 148, 1 in 28 San Francisco 1 in 127, 1 in 16

25% more likely to be a affected by violent crime than in San Francisco. And Less likely to be affected by property crime.

No one is saying all areas of the Bronx are utopias (definitely not), but from what I've experienced, people posting comments like the above are either made to disparage, or often are just blindly repeating what someone has read with zero knowledge of facts.

> With a crime rate of 70 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 14.

  https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/bronx/crime
  https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/mo/st-louis/crime
  https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/oh/cleveland/crime
  https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/co/denver/crime
  https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime

What I personally can't stand are braying internet jackasses who read statistics and try to tell people who actually live somewhere how things are.

Thank you for putting those statistics in context; I was going to ask StanislavPetrov to do it, given that he was happy enough to reply to my comment with some "research".

This whole thing is turning into a bizarre "у вас негров линчуют" scenario, complete with a Russian name (one that I'm sure the original Petrov - who actually knew enough about what his particular area of expertise to save the world - would have been loathe to see.)

Unless it's gone radically downhill since I was there 4 years ago, it's really just fine...

I mean if you're paranoid about ever having anything happen to you, sure, don't go there. But honestly you should be more worried about heart disease than murder.

Thank you for reframing your argument from "it's still a desolate warzone" down to "crime exists in a major American city".

If I do take a walk, and end up un-mugged, un-raped and un-murdered, will I be able to talk you down to "property values are significantly lower than suburban Connecticut"?

If anything, there's more dogs.

Seems that there would be quite a bit of historical value to getting everyone to digitize their personal photos and upload them to a shared repository. Has there already been such an effort?

I can't remember the URL and I'm on mobile, but I recall a a site that did this for USSR photos. It was very interesting to see photos of Chernobyl pre-incident.

Unfortunately trying to construct street level from this technique would be difficult as people would have to manually geolocate to an extent, which would generally grow the older the photos are. But I think sites like Mapillary and OpenStreetCam don't have a required freshness of photos, though I've found by accident Mapillary has a minimum at 1 epoch time.

In Detroit they collected family movies taken around the date of the 1967 Detroit riots and created a movie.

http://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/movies/2017/02/13/d...

This is similar to this one for SF http://www.oldsf.org/

Looks like the NYC one has more coverage though.

They also have a similar site for New York: https://www.oldnyc.org/

Not that I know of. Without some way of knowing where and when they're from, I'm not sure how useful the data would be. It'd make an interesting project.

During WWII the UK government (maybe the US? I'm unable to find a reference but the search terms are pretty generic) requested pictures and postcards from people who'd taken recent trips into Europe. They wanted them for intelligence reasons - I think it was the UK.

That's the closest thing I can think of, where there's been a request for massive photos. They wanted people to include information about locations and dates, as I recall.

Someone here might be a historian and know more details than I do.

But, it seems like it'd be a large pile of data and work. Unless they knew when and where they came from, I'm not sure how much value they'd have - other than aesthetics.

> But, it seems like it'd be a large pile of data and work. Unless they knew when and where they came from, I'm not sure how much value they'd have - other than aesthetics.

You're right, its a huge pile of work. Without the geotag and temporal EXIF data, you're relying on machine vision/structure from motion (think https://mapillary.com) to rebuild 3D scenes solely from image data.

https://help.mapillary.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001770329-Ma...

"Mapillary uses a technology called Structure from Motion (SfM) to create and reconstruct places in 3D. By matching points between different images, SfM is able to locate the point in a three-dimensional space and therefore determine its location on the map. The more images there are available for a specific point, the more accurately it can be reconstructed. In addition, SfM creates the kind of smooth transitions between images that you can see in the Mapillary viewer—again, provided that images have been taken within close proximity with enough overlap between them.

We also run semantic segmentation on the images. This means that the computer tries to understand what is in the image and assigns a category tag to each pixel. That enables us to detect different areas in the images (such as buildings, pedestrians, cars etc.). Semantic segmentation together with 3D reconstruction enables us to extract 3D positions of objects such as traffic signs and display them on the map. You can get more detailed information on what is currently available on our product page."

Disclaimer: No relation, just dig their tech (they're using machine vision to build world models for self-driving cars, using crowd sourced imagery).

When I typed my reply, I briefly considered if AI/ML/NN might help but then I thought about it. I don't think there will be enough training data and I suspect that existing reference points would be vastly different, and made even more difficult to use by the lack of resolution.

But... If it had some initial training done by hand, and by people including what dates and locations they know, maybe it could work backwards? It'd still end up being a HUGE amount of data and the compute power for that would probably be obscene.

Which, of course, means I think it's an excellent idea and that someone should do this. I can't even begin to imagine the costs. This might just be the best idea ever, or the worst.

Sounds like fun! I know the Mapillary folks from interviewing with them. I think it'd just be a matter of me paying for the spot instances for the compute time. I'm going to ask!

And the data acquisition.

It does tie into a strange idea that I've been tossing about for the past decade.

A cluster of used cell phones. They're easy to power, probably free for the taking, and might make for big computing while just using something that'd normally be thrown away.

My original idea was SETI or one of the unfolding@home type projects, but something like this might make for a good project.

Alas, I'm way too lazy (and not qualified) to do this. Laziness is one of the perks of retirement.

I’d have people uploaded them now and have machine learning work out the stitching later. The sooner we collect data, the older the dataset we will have. People won’t have much incentive to upload things after they die.

I scanned several thousand of my parent's photos.

I'd say a few dozen are of the places they were living.

The ones that show recognizable places are pretty interesting to look at though.

From having browsed through the tax lot photos in the municipal archives from prior generations, it would be fun to see a split view where you browse around both the 1940s and 1980s at the same time.

If you browse around 80s Williamsburg photos it is not a place you would want to be. Now every one of those lots would be a minimum of $1M, with waterfront lots in the tens of millions. Pays to play the long game.

In the long game we're all dead.

Not to mention that not everywhere comes back (in said lifetime at least).

The same gamble that paid off in NYC or Boston likely didn't in Baltimore, Detroit, STL, etc. Playing the long game has given you zero or near zero returns for decades there.

I was expecting a street view like Google Maps. The name seems a bit misleading to me.

Not hating, but I was underwhelmed.

There must be oodles of old NYC photos sitting in various old home photo albums out there. I hope some day they're all digitized and compiled into something like a VR experience. :-)

As interesting as it is to see some rough areas, most of the areas have not changed much. I looked at the streets where I used to live / currently live - they largely look the same. Some of the shops are still there.

Since someone mentioned popular culture references, one movie that I thought "got" the hyper nature of 80s NYC was "Crocodile Dundee". It is of course exaggerated, being a romantic comedy, but it got some parts of it very well.

Nicely done! This is a great idea! I hope those photos from the 30s are digitized so they can receive the same treatment

From what I've seen of the 1930s/40s tax photos, they're much better quality as far as framing. Not sure if this is the case across the board, but the copies I looked up were pretty consistently better. But you have to either go in to the municipal building to look at them or order them online.

New York has really come a long way.

Nice project. I was wondering how the street's were back then in 80s and it is hard to find a photo foe every street. Nice job

There's an AR project in here, I tell ya!

How appropriate. I was just watching Simon and Garfunkel perform 'The Boxer' in Central Park, 1981 on YouTube.

I miss the old early 80s Times Square! Nice and seedy. (I was born in Brooklyn in 1962)

My building and the pharmacy near me are there and look the same!

First thing I noticed was the ReactJS favicon...

Good catch, thanks. I use Safari so didn't notice... favicon is updated now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15260897

I don't know much about NYC, but I've read "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1987 novel; heard the movie sucked...). Anyone plot key points in that? (for example: the car scene of Sherman and Maria, the court house in the Bronx, the Park Avenue apartments). If not, whaddaya whaddaya?

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