Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
And something you do notice in New York, not to sound like a traitor to where I grew up, but the whole city just seems healthier than cities in the Midwest. Obviously places like Detroit and Cleveland are much maligned, but as shown in this thread there are even vast swaths of Chicago that are empty, beaten down, crumbling, with little hope of recovery in the foreseeable future. There are big swaths of the city with a generally "run down" feel. That doesn't exist to any great extent in New York. Even NYC's low income neighborhoods are hubs of economic activity by comparison.
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No offense taken and I have noticed the same thing. I have been to New York City but have only walked around Manhattan and inner Brooklyn, the rest I have learned about from spending time on google street view. I actually try to find bombed out neighborhoods in NYC and really haven't found any, at least anything to the extent you find in Chicago. Even someone like me who tends to be a glass is half full optimistic urbanist is shocked at how healthy even the most random NYC neighborhoods look. I don't think it is a midwestern vs. east coast thing though because Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C. still have bombed out areas; it is the simple fact that NYC seems more and more like an exception to all other older urban cities in the USA. I do agree though that second and third tier midwestern cities (plus Pittsburgh and Buffalo) seem to look the most rundown.