Estimating the Perceived 'Claustrophobia' of New York City's Streets (2024)

31 pointsposted an hour ago
by jxmorris12

11 Comments

technothrasher

an hour ago

As a born and bred country person, I've always found pretty much all cities claustrophobic for me. My son, I guess as part of his youthful rebellion, told me at the age of five that he was going to go to school in NYC, and he followed through on the threat. This past summer we drove down to the Bronx a few times in preparation for his attending Fordham University, and I found the Bronx very uncomfortably busy and loud. Well, this past weekend I went down to parent's weekend at the school, and stayed in Manhattan, which I hadn't been to in at least 25 years. After an evening in Manhattan, I took the train up to the Bronx and suddenly thought, "wow, this is so quiet and nice!" Clearly perspective is very important.

mtalantikite

3 minutes ago

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".

nopalito

26 minutes ago

The fact you present this obvious distinction as meaningful insight suggests your preconceptions about the city were not based in reality that even the most basic differences apear revelatory.

deinonychus

13 minutes ago

what were his preconceptions about the city other than "they're all loud and claustrophobic?"

senkora

38 minutes ago

Midtown Manhattan is “too much” even for a lot of New Yorkers. I try to minimize my time there.

indoordin0saur

6 minutes ago

I work in Midtown and live in (a still very dense) part of Brooklyn. When I come home in the evenings and come up those subway stairs I always breathe a sigh of relief.

afavour

an hour ago

This is really fascinating use of city data. I’ve browsed stuff like sidewalk data in the NYC open data portal before and wondered what I could ever do with it. You have a better imagination than me!

Particularly happy to see scaffolding listed in there. It’s an absolute blight on the city and some scaffolding remains up for years and years for no good reason. There should be fines for leaving it up.

colpabar

25 minutes ago

Good point about the scaffolding. I stayed for a few days in the financial district last year and walking around outside the hotel felt like being underground.

flint

an hour ago

Obviously, he's never been to Rikers.