I used to believe this was a young vs old problem. Young people want cities and train world - old people want suburban bungalows and car world. Really I think this is a one-off of generational attitudes toward ideas of permanence, society and independence by those who lived through the car boom of the 70s/80s. My parents fought to keep driving well into their 80s - it really meant everything to them, and for good reason, you can't do anything without a car in suburban Dallas, you become completely dependent, no reason even to leave your house. But in Tokyo I experienced a major culture shock of fit and healthy 80 year olds, out and about, exercising in the streets and small parks, taking the yamanote line - shopping, eating at local restaurants.
I feel like I was taught a truism that old people should settle down in a quiet rural cottage or some nice suburban home - and that the young should be in bustling cities. But it is clear to me now - thinking it through from first principles - a city is a much better fit for the old.
Cities are a good fit for old people who like cities. Most don’t.
Old people without a car are not dependent unless they choose to be. Even in my rural exurb, we have on demand transit, church buses, car services, and informal arrangements.
Literally none of the things I enjoy are available in dense cities. I would rather die and get it over with.
Have you ever lived in a city? I think some people, my parents included, picture times square, shibuya crossing or leicester square. Central places filled with tourists. But there are many quieter enclaves, still well connected by public transport and filled with amenities. You could mistake where I live, in Zone 2 London, for a small town or village if you didn't catch the skyline occasionally. There is an 87 year old in our block of flats. She goes to a ladies club that meets daily for cold water swimming in the local outdoor park pool, helps clean the local park, etc. There is a critical mass of old folk and support networks, breakfast clubs, hospitals, physios.
again what is that? Uber, lyft very common in urban areas makes it very easy for elderly people to get around. Even people who are their 70s and don't like driving at night. Oh we went be back till 9:30? Let's just take an Uber.
That's often not possible in rural areas due to lack of density and demand.
New York City is the only one in the US where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility.
Here's an example; two days ago I rode the Q train, some 18 miles from my UES neighborhood to Sheepshead Bay to join friends on a boat excursion to observe whales (Humpbacks), a sportin' on the briny deep a few miles off the coast of Coney Island. The subway journey in each direction was about 40 minutes. Driving that same route by auto would take *twice* as long at a minimum and the tolls cost more than my subway fare.
During my journey I got to see more human faces than most Americans see in a month. I even got to exchange pleasantries with several of them. In the grim political climate of these times this experience is deeply settling.
I find something unsettling about anyone who must ride the subway in order to find a social life -- but to each their own. Not everybody enjoys being surrounded by crowds of strangers.
If your social life involves having a few drinks when you are socializing then having to drive to social engagements is much, much worse for you but also for everyone else.
I don't drink very often, but I'm often out late (fully sober) in parts of San Francisco where (having previously been limited to public transportation) I'm glad I can get home to Oakland by car.
You don't need to stay in your neighborhood when you can check out an interesting new mom-and-pop eatery ten miles away (ten minutes' drive) in a strip mall.
John did however clearly mention that it's possible to drive to the same location. You could be his neighbour and go on the same boat excursion and get there by car. The argument is that there seems to be some people who would like to live like John but sadly can't.
I think America is also sleeping a bit on trams. They are a feature of European cities and they work.
The way you know you're in an actually wealthy country vs. "a country with some wealthy people" is whether the rich people in that society take public transport.
Bankers in Zurich and Geneva take the metro and ride the train. They have very nice, expensive cars, but those are for driving up to the mountains, not getting around the city.
Or compare Singapore to Manila. Manila has wealthy people with nice cars and drivers. It also has 3 hour traffic jams. The public transit in Manila is inadequate and under funded.
Singapore, by contrast, made an affirmative choice to favor public transit. The Singapore metro system is big, clean, and works well. The Singapore government makes it very expensive to own a car. (100% tax on the car price + a -50,000 SGD certificate that allows you to own a car.)
As a result, wealthy people in Singapore generally take public transport.
Indian cities showcase this a lot. As India has gotten richer in the past 3 decades, a lot more people can afford cars. Kochi in Kerala built a super nice elevated train line in 2013 and it is great. Meanwhile, other cities in India, such as Guwahati in Assam, have not built public transit. The result is becoming like Manila; endless traffic jams as more cars cram into the same streets. Also, in Guwahati's case, it has become the most polluted city in the world as of 2024.
We had these in many American cities on the early 1900/ and inexplicably tore these up. Many were initially horse-drawn, then cable-driven and electric. Noah should have mentioned this along with zoning. Los Angeles had one of the most extensive systems in the world.
UK is more similar than you might expect. 27% car commuting in London, c 80% elsewhere. Greater London has mean density of c 50 people/ha (about 13,000 people/sq mile). Other cities 30-40 pp/ha. We're smaller than USA so probably need to consolidate and invest in cities/urban areas (eg, Manchester-Sheffield-Leeds) to create alternative centre of gravity.
The UK has one large city, by American standards. The next most populous city after London, which I think is Birmingham, would be considered a large town in America. Still, this is interesting. I thought UK urban areas were a lot denser, on average, than those in the US.
Noah wrote, “Someone wants to live in NYC, obviously. Partly that’s because of the enormous consumption benefits for the young wealthy childless people who love living in cities. And partly that’s because dense cities allow industrial clustering effects — everyone knows that if you want to hire good employees in banking, publishing, corporate law, and so on, it helps to be in NYC.”
The large pandemic migration to desirable exurban and rural areas was driven by the availability of remote work and universal satellite Internet, and a desire to have more space and outdoor amenities, while being able to enjoy online shopping and entertainment and the company of like minded neighbors.
The evidence suggests most people moving out of big cities are moving to their preference rather than being crowded out. Seems like the first move would be to support and encourage that preference by encouraging remote and distributed work, and free up space for the people who actually want to live in cities.
> Only 27% of Americans prefer to live in big cities
So either NYC needs to grow to about 100 million people or the US needs more big cities.
I'm all for 100 million New Yorkers. I'd probably move back to the US if the type of energy and vibrancy of an NYC aiming for that existed. However, as unrealistic as it is, it still seems more realistic to build up SF, Philly, Chicago, etc. to be mini-NYCs.
Per Pew, about 31% of the population, roughly 106 million, currently live in urban cores, or about 14 million more than theoretically prefer it.
We do not appear to be short of urban cores if you believe those numbers. However, housing for residents in places like NYC is also competing with second homes owned by people who don’t actually live there, AirBNB, etc. This is true for many places that are desirable to visit.
Whatever definition of urban core is being used here is obviously, hilariously wrong. And to Noah’s original point, all one needs to do is look at prices to see that there is enormous unmet demand here. People are not paying five or six thousand dollars a month to live in not-particularly-fashionable parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn because there is an overwhelming supply of apartments that meet their desires.
As per the article, there are no real cities in the US outside of NYC
There are about 20 million residents of NYC Metropolitan Area, so we are short real city space for about 72 million people, even being very optimistic for how much of that 20 million actually get to enjoy the real city life.
That 20 million includes about 14 million that are living in NYC’s many, many suburbs. The actual urban population is probably five or six million (city proper minus Staten Island and some out lying areas of Queens and the Bronx that are suburban in character).
The article is Noah’s opinion on what makes a real city. Not the actual definition of such.
The Gallup poll was on whether people want to live in a large city, suburb, small town, or rural area by the normal definitions of such.
There is no unmet demand for 72 million more US residents to move to NYC. Many people, including my spouse, happily left NYC when alternatives arose. Nearly 300,000 left during the pandemic, and while the population subsequently rebounded, the influx was from international immigration, not domestic. Domestic migration is still outgoing, and the state is thus expected to lose 2 Electoral College votes in the next census.
I moved from New York to California for (among other things) the freeways. New York's subways are fun -- in the same sense as a theme-park ride.
Dense cities can be enjoyable places to hang out -- in the same fashion as a theme park. Consider the pedestrianized "Old Towns" of mid-sized European cities like Montpellier or Zaragoza -- with parking underground.
“Net domestic migration sharply declined from 2019 (-183,857) to 2022 (-299,557), while net international migration plateaued around 27,720 and rose almost to pre-2016 levels in 2022.”
Numbers I have seen from other sources indicate domestic outmigration has slowed since 2023 but is still net negative. If immigration crackdowns continue, that would be a double whammy to population levels.
New York state is losing EC votes because the domestic outmigration is sufficient to drop its relative status.
Why do you think Pew is defining urban core incorrectly?
Prices show raw demand for a limited resource. They do not show number of people who actually want to live there full time.
Housing in Manhattan has multiple factors affecting price, including a very highly paid finance sector, rich people buying or renting second or third homes so they have a convenient city base when they visit, and AirBNB and similar services turning residence into pseudo hotels. Only the first group is likely to be full time residents.
Non residents are also an issue in housing demand in places like Hawaii and Florida.
What percentage of the people polled have actually lived in a big city (i.e. only New York per Noah)? Polls like this are mostly worthless as people typically say they want to live where they already live. However, it is true that those attitudes do prevent building cities.
Tennessee Williams would disagree. He said, “The United States only has three real cities, New York, New Orleans and San Francisco…everything else is Cleveland.”
I agree with you though. Every time I come up out of the subway, I have a big grin on my face the whole time I’m there. Same for Tokyo.
This essay misses one of the real reasons NYC stands apart from other older East Coast cities like Philly and Boston: its own geography. New York is a city of islands, with the smallest one at the center the most desirable. The need to cross a bridge or tunnel just to get into the city has the effect of making car travel that much less convenient, and it also rules out the urban perimeter expressway (yes, 287 and 278 *kind of* do that, but not really), the kind of road where a number of office parks arose in cities like Atlanta and Houston during the 20th century.
Manhattan also directly abuts a wholly different state, New Jersey, that is effectively walled off from the urban core. The subway system reflects this, as there are no lines to the west, only the mini-metro PATH and suburban train and bus lines. Thus, expansion from Manhattan could really only go across the East River into Brooklyn (which was an independent city for most of its existence) or Queens, or across the Harlem River to The Bronx.
I think it's tough to speak of New York exceptionalism without considering its unique geographic circumstances.
I live in a city of just over 50,000 in a regional area of 500,000. We have a large employer fueling a growing local economy. We have plenty of outdoor recreation choices. New restaurants pop up every week. We have bike lanes and a world-class art museum. Not long ago, it was a remote and dying county seat of about 6,000. Instead of congregating in a few aging, decrepit, overgrown metro areas, it would be easier if our top 100 corporations would spread out and rejuvenate once-thriving communities left behind when manufacturing was offshored. Creating a Tokyo in this country is a fantasy. Building towns like mine is a reality. We need more Bentonvilles, not more New Yorks.
On Philly not having an historical excuse: It kind of did back in the past. Yes there were policy decisions, but more than anything, New York had dominant economic and compounding lead and was the first stop for most immigrants and investment. Not to mention the canal, the natural harbor, and so on.
Now that we're mostly a service/knowledge economy, I do agree the city could compete, but there's a lack of political vision and will from the state and local leadership.
Part of the problem comparing cities is that the line between “city” and “suburb” does not necessarily correspond to the actual city lines. I’m a lifelong New Yorker who has also lived for a time in DC and Boston. I think the “city” parts of those cities are like New York in density and walkability, but the official boundaries of those cities include land that is effectively suburban. The fact that 50% of people in those cities don’t drive to work is nothing to sniff at.
Also, the suburbs of all American cities, *including New York*, are uniformly car-centric. New Yorkers don’t get to lecture other cities when its nearby suburbs are so full of sprawl and pedestrian unfriendly. Bear in mind most of the people in the consolidated NY metro region actually live in the suburbs. This is the New York tourists don’t see.
New York is the American city where density extends over the largest area.
Anthony Bourdain said that there were only two real cities in the U.S. and Chicago was one of them.
I agree that NYC stands apart. But about 700,000 people in Chicago live in car-free households. There's a little more than 800,000 people in San Francisco, in total.
I used to believe this was a young vs old problem. Young people want cities and train world - old people want suburban bungalows and car world. Really I think this is a one-off of generational attitudes toward ideas of permanence, society and independence by those who lived through the car boom of the 70s/80s. My parents fought to keep driving well into their 80s - it really meant everything to them, and for good reason, you can't do anything without a car in suburban Dallas, you become completely dependent, no reason even to leave your house. But in Tokyo I experienced a major culture shock of fit and healthy 80 year olds, out and about, exercising in the streets and small parks, taking the yamanote line - shopping, eating at local restaurants.
I feel like I was taught a truism that old people should settle down in a quiet rural cottage or some nice suburban home - and that the young should be in bustling cities. But it is clear to me now - thinking it through from first principles - a city is a much better fit for the old.
Cities are a good fit for old people who like cities. Most don’t.
Old people without a car are not dependent unless they choose to be. Even in my rural exurb, we have on demand transit, church buses, car services, and informal arrangements.
Literally none of the things I enjoy are available in dense cities. I would rather die and get it over with.
Have you ever lived in a city? I think some people, my parents included, picture times square, shibuya crossing or leicester square. Central places filled with tourists. But there are many quieter enclaves, still well connected by public transport and filled with amenities. You could mistake where I live, in Zone 2 London, for a small town or village if you didn't catch the skyline occasionally. There is an 87 year old in our block of flats. She goes to a ladies club that meets daily for cold water swimming in the local outdoor park pool, helps clean the local park, etc. There is a critical mass of old folk and support networks, breakfast clubs, hospitals, physios.
Yes the uninitiated horror of having to live on a leafy street in NYC:
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/104-Willow-St_Brooklyn_NY_11201_M44278-43094?from=srp-list-card
"Literally none of the things I enjoy are available in dense cities."
Uber? What is in demand transit?
Public transit that is on-demand
again what is that? Uber, lyft very common in urban areas makes it very easy for elderly people to get around. Even people who are their 70s and don't like driving at night. Oh we went be back till 9:30? Let's just take an Uber.
That's often not possible in rural areas due to lack of density and demand.
New York City is the only one in the US where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility.
Here's an example; two days ago I rode the Q train, some 18 miles from my UES neighborhood to Sheepshead Bay to join friends on a boat excursion to observe whales (Humpbacks), a sportin' on the briny deep a few miles off the coast of Coney Island. The subway journey in each direction was about 40 minutes. Driving that same route by auto would take *twice* as long at a minimum and the tolls cost more than my subway fare.
During my journey I got to see more human faces than most Americans see in a month. I even got to exchange pleasantries with several of them. In the grim political climate of these times this experience is deeply settling.
I find something unsettling about anyone who must ride the subway in order to find a social life -- but to each their own. Not everybody enjoys being surrounded by crowds of strangers.
If your social life involves having a few drinks when you are socializing then having to drive to social engagements is much, much worse for you but also for everyone else.
I don't drink very often, but I'm often out late (fully sober) in parts of San Francisco where (having previously been limited to public transportation) I'm glad I can get home to Oakland by car.
You don’t necessarily have to leave your neighborhood in NYC to have a social life.
You don't need to stay in your neighborhood when you can check out an interesting new mom-and-pop eatery ten miles away (ten minutes' drive) in a strip mall.
John did however clearly mention that it's possible to drive to the same location. You could be his neighbour and go on the same boat excursion and get there by car. The argument is that there seems to be some people who would like to live like John but sadly can't.
This is a great post.
I think America is also sleeping a bit on trams. They are a feature of European cities and they work.
The way you know you're in an actually wealthy country vs. "a country with some wealthy people" is whether the rich people in that society take public transport.
Bankers in Zurich and Geneva take the metro and ride the train. They have very nice, expensive cars, but those are for driving up to the mountains, not getting around the city.
Or compare Singapore to Manila. Manila has wealthy people with nice cars and drivers. It also has 3 hour traffic jams. The public transit in Manila is inadequate and under funded.
Singapore, by contrast, made an affirmative choice to favor public transit. The Singapore metro system is big, clean, and works well. The Singapore government makes it very expensive to own a car. (100% tax on the car price + a -50,000 SGD certificate that allows you to own a car.)
As a result, wealthy people in Singapore generally take public transport.
Indian cities showcase this a lot. As India has gotten richer in the past 3 decades, a lot more people can afford cars. Kochi in Kerala built a super nice elevated train line in 2013 and it is great. Meanwhile, other cities in India, such as Guwahati in Assam, have not built public transit. The result is becoming like Manila; endless traffic jams as more cars cram into the same streets. Also, in Guwahati's case, it has become the most polluted city in the world as of 2024.
We had these in many American cities on the early 1900/ and inexplicably tore these up. Many were initially horse-drawn, then cable-driven and electric. Noah should have mentioned this along with zoning. Los Angeles had one of the most extensive systems in the world.
https://www.thereallosangelestours.com/the-red-cars-las-lost-trams/
Lifelong New Yorker who was cheering this essay.
Me too. I also lived in DC and Boston and I think those cities do pretty well. Noah’s graph shows half those cities’ people do not commute by car.
UK is more similar than you might expect. 27% car commuting in London, c 80% elsewhere. Greater London has mean density of c 50 people/ha (about 13,000 people/sq mile). Other cities 30-40 pp/ha. We're smaller than USA so probably need to consolidate and invest in cities/urban areas (eg, Manchester-Sheffield-Leeds) to create alternative centre of gravity.
The UK has one large city, by American standards. The next most populous city after London, which I think is Birmingham, would be considered a large town in America. Still, this is interesting. I thought UK urban areas were a lot denser, on average, than those in the US.
'Los Angeles is seven suburbs in search of a city'.
'You haven't lived until you've died in New York'.
Alexander Woollcott
Noah wrote, “Someone wants to live in NYC, obviously. Partly that’s because of the enormous consumption benefits for the young wealthy childless people who love living in cities. And partly that’s because dense cities allow industrial clustering effects — everyone knows that if you want to hire good employees in banking, publishing, corporate law, and so on, it helps to be in NYC.”
Much of “industrial clustering” in the services has de-clustered physically, in favor of collaborating virtually. For example over half of publishing industry employees work remote, per https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productivity.htm#:~:text=Looking%20at%20a%20more%20detailed,of%20their%20workforce%20working%20remotely.
Only 27% of Americans prefer to live in big cities - the highest preference for living location, at 47%, is to live in a small town or rural area. See https://news.gallup.com/poll/328268/country-living-enjoys-renewed-appeal.aspx
The large pandemic migration to desirable exurban and rural areas was driven by the availability of remote work and universal satellite Internet, and a desire to have more space and outdoor amenities, while being able to enjoy online shopping and entertainment and the company of like minded neighbors.
The evidence suggests most people moving out of big cities are moving to their preference rather than being crowded out. Seems like the first move would be to support and encourage that preference by encouraging remote and distributed work, and free up space for the people who actually want to live in cities.
> Only 27% of Americans prefer to live in big cities
So either NYC needs to grow to about 100 million people or the US needs more big cities.
I'm all for 100 million New Yorkers. I'd probably move back to the US if the type of energy and vibrancy of an NYC aiming for that existed. However, as unrealistic as it is, it still seems more realistic to build up SF, Philly, Chicago, etc. to be mini-NYCs.
Can't any urbanist write a single paragraph while resisting the urge to use the word "vibrant" (to mean "crowded")?
27% of 342 million is 92 million.
Per Pew, about 31% of the population, roughly 106 million, currently live in urban cores, or about 14 million more than theoretically prefer it.
We do not appear to be short of urban cores if you believe those numbers. However, housing for residents in places like NYC is also competing with second homes owned by people who don’t actually live there, AirBNB, etc. This is true for many places that are desirable to visit.
Whatever definition of urban core is being used here is obviously, hilariously wrong. And to Noah’s original point, all one needs to do is look at prices to see that there is enormous unmet demand here. People are not paying five or six thousand dollars a month to live in not-particularly-fashionable parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn because there is an overwhelming supply of apartments that meet their desires.
As per the article, there are no real cities in the US outside of NYC
There are about 20 million residents of NYC Metropolitan Area, so we are short real city space for about 72 million people, even being very optimistic for how much of that 20 million actually get to enjoy the real city life.
That 20 million includes about 14 million that are living in NYC’s many, many suburbs. The actual urban population is probably five or six million (city proper minus Staten Island and some out lying areas of Queens and the Bronx that are suburban in character).
The article is Noah’s opinion on what makes a real city. Not the actual definition of such.
The Gallup poll was on whether people want to live in a large city, suburb, small town, or rural area by the normal definitions of such.
There is no unmet demand for 72 million more US residents to move to NYC. Many people, including my spouse, happily left NYC when alternatives arose. Nearly 300,000 left during the pandemic, and while the population subsequently rebounded, the influx was from international immigration, not domestic. Domestic migration is still outgoing, and the state is thus expected to lose 2 Electoral College votes in the next census.
I moved from New York to California for (among other things) the freeways. New York's subways are fun -- in the same sense as a theme-park ride.
Dense cities can be enjoyable places to hang out -- in the same fashion as a theme park. Consider the pedestrianized "Old Towns" of mid-sized European cities like Montpellier or Zaragoza -- with parking underground.
Losing congressional seats is about "relative" growth, not absolute growth.
New York is still growing, just not as fast as Texas.
NYC still has net domestic out-migration. All growth is from international immigration.
See https://pad.human.cornell.edu/TiDbit/TiDbit_24-01.html#:~:text=Net%20domestic%20migration%20sharply%20declined,out%20of%20NYC%20(%2D0.3).
“Net domestic migration sharply declined from 2019 (-183,857) to 2022 (-299,557), while net international migration plateaued around 27,720 and rose almost to pre-2016 levels in 2022.”
Numbers I have seen from other sources indicate domestic outmigration has slowed since 2023 but is still net negative. If immigration crackdowns continue, that would be a double whammy to population levels.
New York state is losing EC votes because the domestic outmigration is sufficient to drop its relative status.
Why do you think Pew is defining urban core incorrectly?
Prices show raw demand for a limited resource. They do not show number of people who actually want to live there full time.
Housing in Manhattan has multiple factors affecting price, including a very highly paid finance sector, rich people buying or renting second or third homes so they have a convenient city base when they visit, and AirBNB and similar services turning residence into pseudo hotels. Only the first group is likely to be full time residents.
Non residents are also an issue in housing demand in places like Hawaii and Florida.
What percentage of the people polled have actually lived in a big city (i.e. only New York per Noah)? Polls like this are mostly worthless as people typically say they want to live where they already live. However, it is true that those attitudes do prevent building cities.
There already was an enormous, systemic shift towards remote and distributed work, and still demand for city-living is clearly very high.
Tennessee Williams would disagree. He said, “The United States only has three real cities, New York, New Orleans and San Francisco…everything else is Cleveland.”
I agree with you though. Every time I come up out of the subway, I have a big grin on my face the whole time I’m there. Same for Tokyo.
Would not think high rise construction for housing would be a particularly good idea in SF due to earthquake risk
Just an observation: that 17.5 homicides per 100,000 in Chicago is heavily weighted to just a few neighborhoods that are fairly far from the downtown.
This essay misses one of the real reasons NYC stands apart from other older East Coast cities like Philly and Boston: its own geography. New York is a city of islands, with the smallest one at the center the most desirable. The need to cross a bridge or tunnel just to get into the city has the effect of making car travel that much less convenient, and it also rules out the urban perimeter expressway (yes, 287 and 278 *kind of* do that, but not really), the kind of road where a number of office parks arose in cities like Atlanta and Houston during the 20th century.
Manhattan also directly abuts a wholly different state, New Jersey, that is effectively walled off from the urban core. The subway system reflects this, as there are no lines to the west, only the mini-metro PATH and suburban train and bus lines. Thus, expansion from Manhattan could really only go across the East River into Brooklyn (which was an independent city for most of its existence) or Queens, or across the Harlem River to The Bronx.
I think it's tough to speak of New York exceptionalism without considering its unique geographic circumstances.
I live in a city of just over 50,000 in a regional area of 500,000. We have a large employer fueling a growing local economy. We have plenty of outdoor recreation choices. New restaurants pop up every week. We have bike lanes and a world-class art museum. Not long ago, it was a remote and dying county seat of about 6,000. Instead of congregating in a few aging, decrepit, overgrown metro areas, it would be easier if our top 100 corporations would spread out and rejuvenate once-thriving communities left behind when manufacturing was offshored. Creating a Tokyo in this country is a fantasy. Building towns like mine is a reality. We need more Bentonvilles, not more New Yorks.
"They prefer their single-family homes, their cars, their strip-malls and lawns."
That's a function of price - if this was the same price as NJ a lot more people would live in Brooklyn.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/104-Willow-St_Brooklyn_NY_11201_M44278-43094?from=srp-list-card
On Philly not having an historical excuse: It kind of did back in the past. Yes there were policy decisions, but more than anything, New York had dominant economic and compounding lead and was the first stop for most immigrants and investment. Not to mention the canal, the natural harbor, and so on.
Now that we're mostly a service/knowledge economy, I do agree the city could compete, but there's a lack of political vision and will from the state and local leadership.
Part of the problem comparing cities is that the line between “city” and “suburb” does not necessarily correspond to the actual city lines. I’m a lifelong New Yorker who has also lived for a time in DC and Boston. I think the “city” parts of those cities are like New York in density and walkability, but the official boundaries of those cities include land that is effectively suburban. The fact that 50% of people in those cities don’t drive to work is nothing to sniff at.
Also, the suburbs of all American cities, *including New York*, are uniformly car-centric. New Yorkers don’t get to lecture other cities when its nearby suburbs are so full of sprawl and pedestrian unfriendly. Bear in mind most of the people in the consolidated NY metro region actually live in the suburbs. This is the New York tourists don’t see.
New York is the American city where density extends over the largest area.
Anthony Bourdain said that there were only two real cities in the U.S. and Chicago was one of them.
I agree that NYC stands apart. But about 700,000 people in Chicago live in car-free households. There's a little more than 800,000 people in San Francisco, in total.