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Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

Is Manhattan considered a mistake? I ask because, despite being one of the most desirable residences and tourist destinations in the world, everyone is deathly allergic to even the slightest hint that someone might want to replicate it elsewhere. Am I missing an unspoken “never again” moment? Is everyone who travels to New York doing it to revel in their hatred of the place?

There’s not nearly enough Manhattan to meet the demand to live in such a place, and I fail to see why we shouldn’t make more of it. San Francisco’s economic power and landlocked geometry seem ideal for doing so.

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It's just that many of the stakeholders in these areas such as long-time property owners in the westside of San Francisco and residents with rent control fearing gentrification would not benefit directly from new development. Their incentives simply aren't aligned with younger generations who want to live and raise families in a city with reasonable housing costs. To break this quandary we simply to need intervention at the higher level. Congestion, long commutes and sprawl is hurting the U.S. (and Californian) economy so when change comes it will come at the higher level than the city.

Oh sure, there are plenty of objections to the process of change. I'm more interested in why Manhattan is a boogeyman for the end result.

Manhattan is a byword for the unhappy worst-of-both-worlds situation where you have premium luxury housing no one can afford or run-down walk-ups where you're paying thousands a month for a hole-in-the-wall; pedestrians overrun the sidewalks and gridlock continues late into the night; there's technically trains but sometimes it's faster to walk; people are on top of each other and you can't find anywhere quiet.

Parts of Manhattan aren't like that, but that's not the image people have in their minds.

As opposed to SF? At least in the NYC area you have the option of cheaper housing in Queens or New Jersey and a not-too-horrible commute.

What about east bay?

The bay bridge and transbay tube are pretty much at capacity at rush hour (8-10a, 3-7p).

You can drive over the Bay Bridge in 15-20 minutes if there's no traffic. If there's an accident and a ball game and rush hour, you could easily be stuck on it for 90-120.

For those who don't know, the Bay Bridge has a relatively thoughtful design where rate-limiting is done at the approaches so that traffic on the bridge itself moves just fine. Then there are dedicated lanes so that buses can jump the queue.

Right now the bottleneck for bus throughput is loading bays at Temporary Transbay Terminal. When the new Transbay Terminal comes online, AC Transit will be able to substantially increase bus throughput over the Bay Bridge.

The Transbay bus system has many distinct routes that go express all the way to SF after making a few local stops in a couple of adjacent neighborhoods. Consequently, it's often faster than BART, especially if you don't live particularly close to your BART stop. Transbay Terminal moving the SF terminus closer to the Market St subway will also make the transfer more pleasant if Embarcadero isn't your stop.

there's technically trains but sometimes it's faster to walk;

I like to complain about train delays as much as any New Yorker but this perception is pretty much incorrect; once you're going more than 15 minutes away it'll always be faster to take the subway. Commuting from midtown to where I live takes 25 minutes by train during peak times and up to ~40 minutes late night; walking takes an hour and a half.

I guess I can see how someone who visits NYC and only visits Times Square / Canal Street gets that impression though.

Having extensively used the public transportation system in a number of US cities, NYC has been by far the best place to try to get around by subway. Is there another US city where you think the subway works much better?

Chicago's threatens to be borderline usable, but unfortunately as you tend away from the Loop to the vast expanses of suburbia, its utility diminishes exponentially. Still, by comparison to 95% of Middle America, Chicago definitely deserves a top spot.

The irony in all this is that NYC is actually more affordable than SF now.

I live in midtown Manhattan in a renovated studio on the 30th floor. I pay less than my coworker who is renting a 1bed apartment in Mountain View on a job rotation there.

Bay Area cities may have avoided turning into Manhattan but they have Manhattan-level rent prices. Congratulations people.

The Financial District of Manhattan (and Midtown) is the only place like that in the U.S., and most people have been to Times Square, so it does a good job conjuring up an emotional reaction in voters.

> most people have been to Times Square

A lot of people have been to Times Square, but I doubt most United States voters have.

50 million Americans visit NYC each year. Times Square is a marquee draw for tourists.

There are ~150 million (134m in the last Presidential election) active American voters. They tilt older and financially better off, which is also the combination that is most likely to have a substantial travel history.

I'd bet on the majority of active US voters - 75m+ - having visited Times Square at least once in their lifetimes.

50m visitors != 50m uniques.

There are people who never leave their home state, occasionally city/metro are, though I'm not finding a good source on that.

Where did you get that 50M number? That sounds more like the total number of tourists altogether, only a fraction of whom are Americans.

50M looks an awful like the total tourist numbers reported in this article[0]. I still hold the view that less than half of registered voters have been to time square.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/nyregion/record-number-of...

As a European I was surprised how many buildings in Manhattan are not sky scrapers.

Pardon me for appearing to be the spokes-person for market economics, but if "congestion, long commutes and sprawl is hurting the U.S. (and Californian) economy", wouldn't they be self-healing problems?

Do "younger generations ... want to live and raise families in a city with reasonable housing costs" or do they want to accumulate as much of the easily-available money there a fast as possible? (The former is available almost anywhere.)

It probably is self-solving, but probably not over useful timescales.

Further - it seems like the people truly making the decisions (i.e., the people deciding to keep company headquarters in SF rather than moving) are in a better economic position than the entry-level people who pay for those decisions in quality of life.

The "market self-healing" here is the development of multifamily residential near jobs and transit, which is already close to legal limits.

What's not available "almost anywhere" is your industry's center of gravity.

> Is Manhattan considered a mistake

It's not so much a 'mistake' as it is an instant feeling of "no living thing could ever afford Manhattan". It's like a physical manifestation of the saying, "no one ever goes there anymore, it's too crowded".

> (Manhattan is) one of the most desirable residences and tourist destinations in the world, everyone is deathly allergic to even the slightest hint that someone might want to replicate it elsewhere.

Sure, absolutely. And Lamborghinis are some of the most desirable cars in the world. But if you told everyone in Milwaukee that all other cars were being destroyed ('upzoned' into Lambos) and all Milwaukee citizens would be forced to buy a Lambo or never drive in Milwaukee again -- residents would be freaking out in a similar way.

Personally, I actually like high-rises. I like the look, I like the use of space, and I like the lifestyle. But even as a person with a decent tech income, I could never afford to live in one (in any city, anywhere in the US). And I would be terrified if my city became even 10% more similar to Manhattan, because people already struggle to afford living here as it is.

Try telling families that can't afford $200k-$300k houses that their city should "be like Manhattan" and they hear "you should be paying 1 million to 4 million dollars for a 3 bed apartment, just like Manhattan".

I think we can all agree that there's a relationship between expensive real-estate markets and high-density structures. But are the buildings a cause, or an effect?

And if the reason to restrict density is cost, 1) how do we explain the participation of homeowners, and 2) how do we square this with the other ways people invest in their neighborhoods?

They don't have to be very expensive. High rises that subdivide to 1000-2000 sq. ft. have reasonably priced homes in Atlanta and Chicago, depending on location. 4000 sq. ft. is on the expensive side, but cheaper than a similarly sized townhome.

> no living thing could ever afford Manhattan

I stayed for a week at a hotel in Midtown, in February for about $80/night. Not a great hotel, but there were no bed bugs, rodents, or roaches. That's well below what most folks consider the median rent to be in San Francisco. Plus someone cleaned the place every day.

Hotel Penn is damn near the only place you'll find a rate like that, and if that's where you stayed, it sounds like you got one of the nicer rooms.

It was the Watson near Columbus Circle. The room probably hadn't been redecorated in the better part of thirty years, but I'd happily stay there again.

Whereas the truth is that the only way to bring rent and home prices down where demand outstrips supply and space is limited is to build higher.

"Sure, absolutely. And Lamborghinis are some of the most desirable cars in the world."

Isn't this a false parable? I thought houses themselves are not expensive, but the land on which they are built, is.

I.e. high rises are expensive in US because they are built in areas with high market demand - not that 'a highrise' would necessarily need to be expensive.

I might be totally wrong here, please educate me.

The high price is because there isn't enough of it now. If you make more of it (or something even sort of close to it), the price will fall.

I don't think NYC is seen as a bad model everywhere. There are plenty of medium-sized cities that are trying to conjure up a high-rise downtown with condo buildings and office towers through various kinds of development incentives. Some because they see that as key to attracting certain demographics and businesses, others because they feel it'll subjectively make them be perceived as a "real city". But in SF specifically, "Manhattanification" has been a kind of bogeyman for a while now.

My amateur hypothesis is that a certain portion of SF residents have a local self-identity in part defined by being not-LA and not-NYC. So a planning proposal can be attacked by claiming it would make SF either more like LA, or more like NYC.

A lot of Americans are old enough to remember the significant rise in urban crime rates from the 60s to the 90s. Manhattan was a poster child for crime, drug abuse, urban decay, and corrupt government/police.

Obviously it's much better today, but the image has stuck. And to be fair, the image was mostly accurate at the time. Liberals were so fed up with it they were actually willing to vote for Rudy Giuliani.

I grew up in NYC in that era. Many people forget that the reason for the city’s problems was that it almost went bankrupt due to an exodus to the suburbs in the 60s.

>Is Manhattan considered a mistake? I ask because, despite being one of the most desirable residences and tourist destinations in the world, everyone is deathly allergic to even the slightest hint that someone might want to replicate it elsewhere. Am I missing an unspoken “never again” moment? Is everyone who travels to New York doing it to revel in their hatred of the place?

Manhattan is somewhat good, but has deficiencies:

1. Public sanitation there should at least be better than that in China...

2. Spacing in between buildings can be larger. Or it, better to say, the ratio of public space in between buildings and the building area should be larger. I like the idea "a lot of tall buildings with a lot of space in between" - Vancouver Coal Harbour and Yaletown are good examples.

3. Too much old buildings. Rules for mandatory "renovate or bulldoze" for old buildings.

4. Streets and sidewalks can be wider.

5. Elevated walkways will be a good idea.

6. District steam system can be changed to district heating, as a more safe alternative.

7. Public transport licensing should be liberalized.

8. Restrictions on building height, and land plot to height ratio should be struck down.

9. Brooklyn bridge can be replaced with something newer and fancier.

10. Architectural norms should be less strict, allow for more avantgarde designs

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