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Comment by mtalantikite | Hacker News Reader

I've been living in Brooklyn for just shy of 20 years and I'm very comfortable in dense cities. After spending about a month in India, primarily in Delhi and a bit in Jaipur, I remember getting back to Manhattan and thinking "wow, look at all this space, there's no people here! What a peaceful, relaxed city".

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Something that surprises often is that NYC used to be far, far denser. See the second image: https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhat...

I recommend to people the Tenement Museum for their second trip to NYC - it was eye opening (but pretty grim)

What amazes me is that people did not flee. I assume the hand-to-mouth existence they had in these slums was apparently a little better than their prospects elsewhere. Or perhaps they were moving out but immigration and reproduction was more than making up for it…

To where?

You have no money, very little skills, you don't speak English. Even if you cobbled together money to take the train to some small town in Ohio or Iowa or something, what are you going to do as a complete social outsider who doesn't speak the language?

The idea was to stick around in the LES where you had an actual community. Try to make some money, learn English, develop some skills, and then move out. Which is exactly what people did. And the new immigrants took their places.

Also -- they had already fled. This was the fleeing. From Ireland, from Italy, from Poland, etc.

Their kids were the ones who were better educated and could move on.

It’s still happening today.

This is the entire reason why people emigrate.

Sure, my point is that - no matter how bad this looks, it was approximately better than their alternatives. So it's a testament to human resilience.

That aside, that there was literally no going back, given the travel to get to NY. I had an ancestor come to NYC in the 19th c. and return back to Sweden, but he was not in the desperate straits that many were. I'm sure some would have returned, given the opportunity.

There is a real human tendency to stay in a known but bad situation instead of making the risky leap into the likely better but unknown.

You see it time and time again.

A lot of these people were in immigrant enclaves. Their neighborhoods may have been the only place in the country people spoke their language or shared their religion, so serving that community was their best bet for employment.

Who does the best job managing density? Tokyo is lovely and orderly, but it’s not that dense—similar to San Francisco. Maybe Seoul?

Depends where in San Francisco. A lot of business travelers in particular perceptions of SF are probably colored by the areas near the Moscone (and Fishermans Wharf). Though most of SF is relatively sane in general--certainly not like the Times Square area in NYC.

San Francisco doesn’t feel dense to me at all.

San Francisco is the 5th densest county in the USA, the top four are also the four densest burroughs of New York City.

There is a good argument that San Francisco could and should be denser than it is, but its ludicrous to call it not dense at all.

I live in a US city with a higher population density than SF that has barely any structures taller than 3-4 storeys. Most of SF is low density for a city of global importance. The Richmond, Sunset have essentially not changed since the early post-war era.

You can argue the global importance of Silicon Valley or even California generally. I'm not sure I get the "global importance" of the city of San Francisco specifically, which besides an attractive location and relatively easy access to Silicon Valley isn't especially unique among medium to large US cities.

> Times Square area in NYC.

quick funny story, my family and i were in Times Square last year for New Year's. Thousands of people everywhere as you can imagine. We're walking down the sidewalk and right as rain my wife runs into someone she knows from all the way back in Texas. Among all those people from all over the world she still manages to run into someone she knows. My wife and her talk while me and the boys hang around waiting just like we've had to do at our local grocery store back home. My kids and I still laugh at that story.

I've actually run into people I knew in Manhattan. But they were from the Northeast so it wasn't that unusual.

I’ve read about the “international airport paradox” which says you’ll likely see someone you know at an international airport - because if you’re in the group to use them, you’re already in a pretty small group.

Honestly, I feel like Paris does a great job. I know it's relatively small population wise for a major international city (~2 million), but it's population density is about 50% more than NYC without ever feeling overwhelming. Just having those 6-story Haussmann style buildings everywhere with wide boulevards makes it feel very human scale.

Good point. It’s dirty, but the density does seem nicely managed.

Of all the places I've been, Singapore.

They have a population of 6 to 7 million people in an area of 700 square kilometers, resulting in a population density of 8300 people / km^2. Substantially more than that if you account for the fact that a large percentage of the island is still tropical jungle.

Despite that fact, their city planning is so good with large open spaces everywhere interspersed with greenery, that you almost never feel claustrophobic. Even the so-called "hearland" neighbourhoods with rows after rows of high-rise residential HDB buildings are quite pleasant.

The most claustrophobic place I've been in Singapore are the few squares in the center of CBD filled with skyscrapers that almost obscure you the view of the sky.

You aren't kidding! I picked a random intersection in what looks like an urban part of the city and it's beautiful: https://maps.app.goo.gl/P3aUTtYejh5YHvFF6

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