From The Economist’s Free Exchange blog (h/t: Steve Stinson):
I once considered myself worldly and sophisticated. But after seven years in
Manhattan, I have noticed, during my increasingly infrequent trips elsewhere, I
appear to have a small town naiveté … I realise I never
experienced New York before its modern renaissance. I live in a neighbourhood
where the streets constantly teem with yuppies like me. …Given the high rents and fierce co-op
boards my trips off the island make me wonder, is living in Manhattan
essentially living in a gated community?
What say you, dear readers.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:15 am
I lived in Manhattan for several years and in some ways it is very similar to a gated community. The exclusivity in parts of the city are palatable. Yet unlike the sprawling suburbs that ring just about every U.S. city, in Manhattan, no matter where you live on the island, diversity (economic, racial, ethnic, religious, lingual, political) are inescapable. Everyone in the city moves along the streets, rides transit, and idles in the park. Yuppies and hipsters, prone to exclusion, still clamor outside dingy lower-east side bars and flock to Harlem soul-food dives. Because people in Manhattan (and most of NYC) must share the limited space around them, they are forced to interact with those who they might not choose to associate with. Even if the developers are someday able to wrangle away all the public housing, Manhattanites, will still have to face diversity in person, not from behind the tinted glass windows of their Suburbans, when the share the sidewalks, the trains, the buses, and the parks with the diverse millions who will work and recreate around them.