Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicago103
Yeah I am just starting to learn more New York City geography from looking at NYgirl's threads on SkyscraperCity. Actually density in the Bronx and Brooklyn is more interesting to me than Manhattan because highrise residential density is common in NYC and Chicago but the residential density in parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn just blows me away, especially how widespread and unrelenting it is. The only parts of New York City that remind me of the bungalow belts of Chicago where I live are eastern Queens and gasp!; parts of Staten Island. Actually the parts of Queens near JFK Airport and near the border with Nassau County remind me of the neighborhoods near Midway Airport in Chicago where I live, i.e. neighborhoods that are majority detached bungalows/houses that have multi-family residences here and there. Overall Queens is the closest to Chicago in terms of the way it looks, the denser western parts looking like the north lakefront areas of Chicago and the eastern parts looking more like the bungalow belt of Chicago. So I would say the recipe for Chicago would be to take Queens, throw in some lower and midtown Manhattan for the tall skyscrapers and add in a healthy dose of Detroit to get the Chicago ghettos. Also the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn looks a lot like Chicago's Bridgeport just a bit denser. The only place in Chicago that looks close to the south Bronx would be the densest parts of Woodlawn or parts of Rogers Park and of course the highrise housing projects look somewhat similar between NYC and Chicago but in general Chicago's ghettos are lower density and look more like Detroit than the Bronx.
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There are some parts of Brooklyn that are like what you describe, low density with a few apartment buildings thrown in for good measure. Check out Bensonhurst and Midwood for instance. The outer parts of Brooklyn aren't very dense by New York standards.
But in general I agree. New York actually has much more in common with European cities in terms of built form than with any other American city.