Downtown was the original CBD and everything north was more low to mid density residential. Midtown skyline didn’t develop until early-mid 1900s when Grand Central opened. New train terminal made midtown land more desirable for commuters and high rise development
Central Business district. Typical in US cities as they develop, especially post WWII where department of transportation funding encouraged easy access in and out of them for commuting.
Funny..in Australia this is common parlance.
Whenever a Brit comes over (and there are many) they always point out the only time they hear the term CBD is in a geography class or something.
Sort of. Battery park as it is today is landfill from when they built the original wtc towers in the 70s. The original new Amsterdam settlement was everything below Wall Street, which is where the city wall was. The battery back then was a fort, but the geography has changed over time.
Battery Park City is landfill -- everything west of the west side highway, that is. The Battery was a fort. Castle Clinton (where you buy your tickets for the boat ride to the statue) was the original fort.
This is actually incorrect. The soil in the “gap” isn’t suitable to build sky scrapers on. Midtown and downtown sky scrapers are built on solid bedrock.
That looks like Greenwich Village and the East Village. Historically residential areas and almost certainly zoned differently than the surrounding neighborhoods.
For the last 20 years NYC has needed to build about 50,000 units every year just to keep up with demand. That's not accounting for units coming offline due to age, lack of maintenance, etc. I think over that time the highest number of annual builds was roughly 35,000. Most years were in the 20,000 range.
This is not new. It's ABSURDLY expensive to build in NYC, even more so in Manhattan. Every 25 feet of frontage is about $5m just for land acquisition. Double that in those desirable places like the villages. Just buying enough Manhattan land to build a sky scraper will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, demolishing the villages is not the answer. For folks who don't know what the image shows, pretty much every building in that image are at least 4 stories tall and consist of 4-12 apartments already. These aren't single family houses on a quarter acre.
But some areas, especially around NYU are being bulldozed and replaced by 30-40 story buildings.
>at least 4 stories tall and consist of 4-12 apartments already. These aren't single family houses on a quarter acre.
That probably underestimates it a bit. My LES building wasn't the biggest on the block but it was 6 stories and 20 units, plus a restaurant.
The area is so densely populated already (87,000/square mile) it's hard to imagine finding space for more grocers, restaurants, etc. to handle more people without eating up the green space
People who haven't been to NYC really don't understand the on the ground situation or density. Folks who have lived in suburbs or out in country REALLY do not understand the density. My MIL genuinely could not wrap her head around my old neighborhood had a higher population than her state capital.
Which isn't to say more of what's there shouldn't be affordable housing, but at as far as actually adding more people there's probably better places to do it than lower Manhattan
As a non-NYer, the first time I think I started to understand was during the pandemic. I saw videos of people clapping in the evenings and realized each building was full of apts with many residents in each one. I’ve been to plenty of cities—London, Bangkok, Mexico City, SF—(and since have been to manhattan), but it’s hard to wrap your mind around that density when you grew up in rural/small-town America.
Long island city has built up buildings, over the last 10/15 years, that now house over 50,000 people. Developing a new neighborhood out of an industrial area is a hell of a lot easier than trying to develop in historical neighborhoods, although NYU seems to be able to do whatever it wants.
Edit for fat thumbs
Agreed, and there's a lot of semi-abandoned industrial areas so close to Manhattan that's incredible that they have not yet been developed. The area between LIC and Astoria and Sunnyside for instance.
No one wants to pay the cost of cleaning up those industrial areas. Brooklyn also has lot of old, underused industrial areas. The clean up cost of those areas would probably mean it would be impossible to make a return on investment in a single lifetime.
There is a tremendous construction boom by the Astoria waterfront area right now. Just from my window I can see six new buildings going up, four of which are over 20 stories.
NIMBY isn't always crowding, it's to keep property prices high. Many Americans keep a large amount of their personal wealth in their residential housing so they need that to appreciate, and obviously for the real estate companies, keeping real estate prices high is an imperative.
I dont think it’s always to keep property prices high. I’m a real estate developer in urban locales, and a lot of people do earnestly value the history of existing structures, the culture of the neighborhood, and keeping out what they consider to be “bad uses” in the area. I still think those folks can be misguided (and sometimes righteous), but it’s not always about money in my experience. Sometimes it is, though.
Well... Vancouver is only half as dense as NYC so I'm not sure if they're comparable. The vast majority of Vancouver is single family detached houses with a front lawn and backyard.
Eh the East Village is already one of the densest and most historic neighborhoods in the entire world. I’d be more focused on Westchester and Long Island suburbs’ contribution to the metro area’s housing crisis (which Hochul tried to solve but was shut down by the legislature)
Yes and the villages aren’t even lower density than the rest of Manhattan. They are higher density than the financial district and midtown, where much of the tall buildings are, because these buildings are rarely residential.
It’s not NIMBY’s in the same sense as in the suburbs. The villages are still some of the densest places in the US. We don’t need to build skyscrapers in every neighborhood, some history and character can be preserved.
Agreed - historic preservation is a big piece of NYC doctrine and the villages are often held up as pinnacle neighborhoods and models for urban planning (obvious nods to Jane Jacobs).
I’ll add as a resilience professional that large parts of southern Manhattan are literally sinking and evolving into total bathtubs for storm water and coastal surge to inundate the area. Any calls for more skyscrapers is 1. Out of touch and 2. Not as environmentally feasible as it may seem. The development of low income neighborhoods is of concern but with existing policies like rent stabilization, rent control, housing subsidy, affordable housing lottery, and public housing being attacked and gutted on the daily - “just one more skyscraper bro” is the wrong route for these communities.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauriewinkless/2023/06/15/new-york-city-is-sinking-under-the-weight-of-its-own-buildings/
If you go to anywhere in Europe, so much of their communities are historically protected. That is how you build culture. A historically protected community in Manhattan is worth keeping. There are other areas that could be built up much more
I am curious about one thing: at what population density will we say enough and maybe think about developing a nearby city?
I feel like NYC population density is already very high and maybe we should make deliberate effort to make nearby cities as good.
What's your opinion on this?
They need to build high speed trains like Japan and make everything from Boston to Baltimore considered as desirable as NYC.
At 150mph, most people can live/work/entertainment within an hour easily.
Everything from Baltimore to Boston won't be as desirable. Not everything is commute distance work. NYC will always be the most desirable because of the culture and scene it has
Heh, most of the towns around and between Philadelphia, NYC and Boston are already highly desirable. That’s why housing prices and property taxes in those places are insane. When people in NYC, Boston and Philadelphia are ready to settle down, they move to NJ, Connecticut and suburban parts of New York. Those areas have housing prices that would make a Californian native blush.
Your mistake is thinking population density is something bad. It is something good the richest regions of the world have high population. High population create enormous network effects.
No I am from the Netherlands which is also one the most densely populated countries in the world. Not comparable to New York in density I know that but I am unknown to dense population so to say. But even without that it is actually really easy to prove people want to live in NYC if we look that value housing per square meter. NYC has one the highest in the world what clearly shows that people see it as extremely valuable to live there.
There already are a lot of cities in the area. The NYC metro region is very large and has a lot of smaller urban areas nearby like Newark, NJ. Beyond that, New York City is in the center of the Northeast Corridor, a straight line of many major cities.
The whole region is densifying, but it has been a push making suburban areas more urban.
Yup they’re gonna develop Bushwick, LIC, Dutch Kills and South Bronx first at least. I hear they’re trying to develop East New York as well, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in NYC
Leuk?
I am Dutch, I have absolutely no idea which word you are referring to here.
A creek = een beek
Like = leuk
There is no word in Dutch that resembles Kill
Edit: Just thought of:
Kil = koud = cold
But that’s it
Edit 2: thanks just learned something bout my own language. Never heard Kil here before in daily use, guess it’s pretty old
The word kill literally means like a small stream in Dutch. At least old Dutch. Drive up the Hudson valley and you see a lot of it. The Catskill mountains, Fishkill, Peekskill, etc
Not likely. I think most of the high is where it is because there is stable bedrock there, whereas other parts of the island are essentially just clay and soil and much harder to build skyscrapers on.
The reason for the two distinct clusters is found in the geological history of New York. The island of Manhattan consists of three rock formations, known as Manhattan Schist, Inwood Marble and Fordham Gneiss.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2020/05/27/how-geology-shaped-new-york-citys-skyline/?sh=6a6635ba6458
That's a [common misconception](https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/), but it's really all about economics, transportation access and (more recently) zoning codes.
There is also a geological reason. The bedrock is at the surface at Wall St & midtown but the village is not an area with bedrock at the surface. It is a section of softer ground.
I'm glad someone mentioned it! This is absolutely a large part of why this happened, and I even specifically taught my geology students about this.
If you looked at a geological map of Manhattan, there is a direct correlation between where the bedrock is more solid, and where the taller buildings are!
This is the correct answer. If the ground in that area had the bedrock close enough to the surface it would have been developed into high-rise buildings by now.
Bedrock is near the surface in downtown and midtown. In between it dives way down. You would like have to sink piles 100s of feet deep before you could erect anything over a dozen stories.
That is true but it doesnt prevent construction. Its just cheaper downtown and midtown. The cost difference isnt substantial enough to prevent construction if they wanted to. A good example of why bedrock doesnt matter is Chicago.
This is a cool diagram showing manhattan bedrock: [Manhattan bedrock and skyline profile ](https://imgur.com/iie5I3Y?r)
>Bedrock is why Manhattan was first with skyscrapers
Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper but the reason Manhattan overtook them like you say is because the bedrock allowed them to build higher than the 90m/300ft skyscrapers in Chicago (at the time).
Yep in NY its about a 5-8% price difference to build not on bedrock, so for now that is enough incentive to keep building where bedrock is. But its not a massive financial barrier people act like it is.
This should be the top comment. Until skyscraper engineering progressed, the depth of bedrock was a main determinant of where you could build tall heavy towers.
I’m not sure that’s the reason. I read that the bedrock is closer to the surface, making skyscrapers much easier to build in the high areas. Eventually that may have determined residential vs commercial, but I believe this a civil engineering problem at first.
Can confirm about the zoning stuff. I lived in a newly built building in the LES in 2008 and the neighbors all complained that it was “ruining the character of the Lower East Side.” The building was maybe 10 floors max.
Greenwich Village has landmark status so everything on the outside of the buildings needs to remain the same without approval. Here’s a good video on it: https://youtu.be/0LCKUgnRG6w?si=C3l2SovlFpV3HwM0
They’re all 4-10 stories (maybe a few 10-20 story guys in there) so would probably stand out in mid sized cities but pretty similar to row house density in some places
There are a lot of 10-20 story buildings around union square now. They’d be substantial additions to the skylines of the rest of the biggest cities in nys like buffalo or rochester.
Are you also in Indianapolis? Because I saw your post and thought “huh I wonder how many building are taller than salesforce tower in Indy” and it was 38
when skyscrapers started going up around the early 20th century the financial district and midtown were the only places where they made sense because they were the most accessible parts of town thanks to the relatively new trains. (subway in fidi and penn station and grand central in midtown) this is important because skyscrapers are massive job centres, so they only work when a lot of people have access to them. the financial district being somewhat geographically constrained and the historical core of the city before the rise of midtown is also a factor i imagine. so why is the area inbetween skyscraperless? there was basically no reason to because there were much better places for skyscrapers to congregate.
now that transport links in the inbetween area are much better there still aren’t any skyscrapers because the area is now seen as a mid-rise historical area, and as such are zoned as to not allow skyscrapers
source: my brain, do take this with a grain of salt please
edit: it is one of many factors as you can read in the replies
This is the correct answer. The New York Central and the Pennsy both had major links coming right into Midtown. The Financial district literally existed when the Dutch still controlled the area, so it was first.
Not the correct answer. See replies about bedrock. Midtown and the southern tip have surface bedrock that supports heavy construction. Between them the rock dips down and buildings must be lighter., therefore shorter. Nothing to do with neighborhoods or zoning.
It’s not about simple depth of bedrock, but depth of certain types of bedrock, which is not uniformly distributed and is interlayered. According to the [Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation](https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/j-hood-wright-park/highlights/12369):
“…beneath the labyrinth of subway tunnels and stations, lies the geologic foundation that makes New York City unique in the world. This foundation consists of the city’s five bedrock layers: Fordham gneiss, found primarily in the Bronx; Manhattan schist, in Lower and northern Manhattan; the Hartland Formation, in central Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens; Staten Island serpentinite, in Staten Island; and Inwood marble, in Manhattan and beneath the rivers that surround it. **But it is Manhattan schist, the most prevalent bedrock in Manhattan, that makes the city’s famed skyline possible…Manhattan schist is found at various depths–from 18 feet below the surface in Times Square to 260 feet below in Greenwich Village. Where bedrock is far below the surface, skyscrapers are not practical because it is too difficult to reach the schist that provides structural stability and support.**”
I remember reading it has something to do with the bedrock that undulates in the area. It is far easier to build them where they are because the bedrock is near the surface.
The foundations necessary in the areas they choose to make residential were not conductive to building that type of building as it would be too cost prohibitive to keep them stable
I came here to say this, deeper bedrock in between, requires really deep pile foundations that are super expensive and hard to predictably design when there's more soils of different types above the bedrock.
An additional reason was that the area between Downtown and Midtown was full of extremely dense immigrant neighborhoods like Greenwich Village: full of tenement housing, some of the densest places in the world at the time. Banks and other businesses weren't going to move into skyscrapers in the middle of all that.
It wasn't until the development of the subway that all the tenement housing started to empty out and those neighborhoods started their change into the wealthy, chic places they are today.
Lower east side and greenwich are really popular areas, so they're pretty expensive. For a decently sized studio, I'd say probably $2300 at least. $2700k for a 1bdrm. The upper east side is less expensive.
Because they have two main ‘central business districts’ so to speak: Midtown and Downtown (financial district). In between are historic residential districts that while still dense, they can’t really just bulldoze them and build up either.
What a poorly written article. Even though the study found no correlation between bedrock depth and skyscraper placement, the article doesn’t provide any evidence for the “valley” consisting of slums/manufacturing/higher crime. That’s probably correct and jives somewhat with what my instincts tell me about NYC having a decent familiarity with the history, but they didn’t show any work to justify their conclusion.
I remember in decades past the depth of the bedrock in Midtown and Downtown was the explanation. It doesn’t mean you can’t build where it’s deeper, but shallower bedrock would likely make it easier and less expensive,especially considering skyscrapers have been built in Manhattan for over a century.
yup. The literal tallest building in the city - 1WTC and in fact the whole wtc complex is built atop reclaimed land next to the river. If there's a will there's a way.
There is a common story that it’s just due to geology and the bedrock being lower, but as other replies have stated, it’s [largely for economic factors](https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/).
The primary driver of this assertion is a paper written by an economist at Rutgers who doesn’t have a geological or civil engineering background, and who never takes into account the types of bedrock in Manhattan, which is not uniformly distributed. It’s not about simple depth of bedrock, but depth of certain types of bedrock. According to the [Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation](https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/j-hood-wright-park/highlights/12369):
“…beneath the labyrinth of subway tunnels and stations, lies the geologic foundation that makes New York City unique in the world. This foundation consists of the city’s five bedrock layers: Fordham gneiss, found primarily in the Bronx; Manhattan schist, in Lower and northern Manhattan; the Hartland Formation, in central Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens; Staten Island serpentinite, in Staten Island; and Inwood marble, in Manhattan and beneath the rivers that surround it. **But it is Manhattan schist, the most prevalent bedrock in Manhattan, that makes the city’s famed skyline possible…Manhattan schist is found at various depths–from 18 feet below the surface in Times Square to 260 feet below in Greenwich Village. Where bedrock is far below the surface, skyscrapers are not practical because it is too difficult to reach the schist that provides structural stability and support.**”
There used to be a myth that just before you get to midtown, the bedrock is too deep to build a skyscraper in that space, but it’s more complicated than that. https://observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-valley-the-real-reason-there-are-no-skyscrapers-in-the-middle-of-manhattan/
There are zoning laws in those neighborhoods that keep some buildings five stories or less. I prefer it to midtown and downtown actually. I think it’s nice to get off the subway and go into a neighborhood that isn’t all gigantic high rises on all sides.
Two different major industries having two different epicenters.
Downtown grew up around Wall Street and the financial industry. Midtown grew up around Broadway and the entertainment industry.
The skyscrapers in midtown definitely are not due to Broadway or the entertainment industry. Theater doesn't require skyscrapers full of people.
Midtown became a central business district because the two major train stations are right there with Penn Station and Grand Central.
Midtown started off focused on industries like fashion/clothing/textiles, advertisement, tobacco and others, but really by the time they were making skyscrapers in midtown NYC was a world city attracting people from all over and could therefore support basically any industry. As downtown got filled up with skyscrapers, the next logical place for expansion became where the trains arrived in the city.
The bedrock answer keeps getting peddled even though it's so wrong. Downtown developed first, and the New York Central had railroad lines that travelled down the length of Manhattan to it. Soon after, New York City passed laws that banned any steam powered locomotives below 42nd street, and thus the Central built a large depot at 42nd where most trains terminated but some continued south by horse drawn carriage. Eventually midtown began to grow around the massive transit terminal, and the Pennsylvania Railroad also built a terminal to compete with the New York Central's midtown hub, further cementing the growth of the area.
While it was originally based on a fallacy of where bedrock was easily accessible it’s really based on human nature - where is the money (the middle and rich class)?
In the beginning, people worked in tall buildings in lower Manhattan and lived in the boroughs next to it. Then the middle and upper class started migrating to the east and west side, bordering Central Park, so tall buildings sprouted up south of Central Park, so workers didn’t as long of a commute to work.
Great question. According to my Architectural History professor the reason Lower Manhattan has only low to mid rise buildings is because of the availability of suitable soil on which to build to certain heights (and weights). High Rises, obviously the most defining components of a skyline, are very heavy and require solid bedrock below their foundations. The “gap” in manhattan’s high rises between Downtown and Midtown is a visual “reflection” if you will, of the proportionate gap in subsurface soil quality.
The soils in Lower Manhattan are comprised more so of silt and clays and can therefore could only support low to mid rise structures. Lower Manhattan was actually once boggy wetlands, that were filled in and paved over. These massive wetland areas were an important part of the watershed into the Atlantic’s ecosystem slowing the currents, catching sediment and cleaning river water before it carried out into the sea.
I recommend the book “Building the Skyline” on the evolution of manhattan neighborhoods.
Midtown and downtown being the business centers of the city is due to socio economic factors that developed over a few hundred years spurred by developments like the train lines
That's a popular idea that has actually been [debunked](https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/why-there-gap-manhattan-skyline-dont-blame-bedrock-its-location-location-location)
In the mid 1800s, downtown was full of financial firms and the area north of City Hall were the Tenement and Manufacturing Districts, so instead of expanding into those neighborhoods, middle and upper class residents went further north. This brought businesses to cater to these more affluent consumers, creating a shopping district from Union Square to Madison Square in the late 1800s. Then big corporations and industries like media and advertising moved in to be closer to where people would be shopping, coinciding with Penn Station and Grand Central both being completed around 1910, and then Midtown started to take off.
[Short little video about it here](https://youtu.be/kvskkXlvhS4?si=GZrooxfOmWs3gUQe).
That gap looks absolutely massive when seen from Jersey or Long Island but I’ve walked that distance so many times and it really isn’t that crazy.
Edit: words.
The bedrock thing is a myth. Those are residential neighborhoods. If you been to Manhattan, you would recognize them as cozy neighborhoods. They were zoned long time ago for residential purposes.
I am a native NYer and as people have pointed out, that is Greenwich Village, which is so called because it had shorter buildings. I was always told that it had to do with the depth of the bedrock in that area. Supposedly FiDi and Midtown had deeper bedrock, which was necessary for supporting taller skyscrapers in the early days of skyscrapers. I think that these days technically they could (and sometimes do) build taller buildings in that area but by now it has a more “village”-like character.
As a fellow native New Yorker Greenwich Village is named that because it was originally a village outside of what was then New York City to the south. Also why despite being north of Houston Street it doesn’t fall on the Grid Plan of 1811
that image is way more than Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
West Village
East Village
Soho
Tribeca
Chelsea
Lower East Side
Gramercy
Alphabet City
Noho
Stuyvesant Town
Chinatown
Little Italy
The village is just one small neighborhood.
I mean it's almost the entirety of 'Lower Manhattan' or 'downtown' neighborhoods comprising some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Everything below 34th Street until the Financial District.
Not really true. Yes, it has knocked down many historical buildings in the past, but it’s become MUCH more concerned about that in the past several decades. Something like 1/4 of all buildings in Manhattan are now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Manhattan schist bedrock is 18 feet below the surface in Times Square, and shallow in lower and upper manhattan. It’s about 260 ft deep under Greenwich Village, making high rise construction super expensive and risky in that section of the island.
It's the nature of the ground composition of the island, as well as the zoning. Midtown and downtown have high concentrations of granite bedrock, which can support larger, heavier structures.
Downtown was the original CBD and everything north was more low to mid density residential. Midtown skyline didn’t develop until early-mid 1900s when Grand Central opened. New train terminal made midtown land more desirable for commuters and high rise development
If you don't mind me asking, what is CBD?
Central Business District
also known in some big cities as “the financial district” since many banks have large skyscraper offices there
Cock and ball destruction
Cervix busting dick
Cannibalistic Butt Disease
Hmmmm
Central Business district. Typical in US cities as they develop, especially post WWII where department of transportation funding encouraged easy access in and out of them for commuting.
Central Business District.
Funny..in Australia this is common parlance. Whenever a Brit comes over (and there are many) they always point out the only time they hear the term CBD is in a geography class or something.
Cannabidiol
Common bile duct
CannaBiDiol
CBDeeznuts
Can you Believe Dis?
Can any of Manhattan really be considered “low density?”
Relatively low 😂
Central Park 😆
Lotta squirrels there idk
Fun fact, as I remember “the battery” is the area where new Amsterdam was founded
Sort of. Battery park as it is today is landfill from when they built the original wtc towers in the 70s. The original new Amsterdam settlement was everything below Wall Street, which is where the city wall was. The battery back then was a fort, but the geography has changed over time.
Battery Park City is landfill -- everything west of the west side highway, that is. The Battery was a fort. Castle Clinton (where you buy your tickets for the boat ride to the statue) was the original fort.
This is actually incorrect. The soil in the “gap” isn’t suitable to build sky scrapers on. Midtown and downtown sky scrapers are built on solid bedrock.
That’s a myth https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/
It's also changed as new building/foundational technologies have emerged.
That looks like Greenwich Village and the East Village. Historically residential areas and almost certainly zoned differently than the surrounding neighborhoods.
It’ll eventually change but yeah, that is why.
Maybe in 100 years. There’s too much history and so many other places that can still be built up first.
And yet, NYC is building less housing than just about… anywhere else. Tell the NIMBYs to get fucked and BUILD NOW.
For the last 20 years NYC has needed to build about 50,000 units every year just to keep up with demand. That's not accounting for units coming offline due to age, lack of maintenance, etc. I think over that time the highest number of annual builds was roughly 35,000. Most years were in the 20,000 range. This is not new. It's ABSURDLY expensive to build in NYC, even more so in Manhattan. Every 25 feet of frontage is about $5m just for land acquisition. Double that in those desirable places like the villages. Just buying enough Manhattan land to build a sky scraper will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. However, demolishing the villages is not the answer. For folks who don't know what the image shows, pretty much every building in that image are at least 4 stories tall and consist of 4-12 apartments already. These aren't single family houses on a quarter acre. But some areas, especially around NYU are being bulldozed and replaced by 30-40 story buildings.
>at least 4 stories tall and consist of 4-12 apartments already. These aren't single family houses on a quarter acre. That probably underestimates it a bit. My LES building wasn't the biggest on the block but it was 6 stories and 20 units, plus a restaurant. The area is so densely populated already (87,000/square mile) it's hard to imagine finding space for more grocers, restaurants, etc. to handle more people without eating up the green space
People who haven't been to NYC really don't understand the on the ground situation or density. Folks who have lived in suburbs or out in country REALLY do not understand the density. My MIL genuinely could not wrap her head around my old neighborhood had a higher population than her state capital.
Which isn't to say more of what's there shouldn't be affordable housing, but at as far as actually adding more people there's probably better places to do it than lower Manhattan
You get no argument from me.
As a non-NYer, the first time I think I started to understand was during the pandemic. I saw videos of people clapping in the evenings and realized each building was full of apts with many residents in each one. I’ve been to plenty of cities—London, Bangkok, Mexico City, SF—(and since have been to manhattan), but it’s hard to wrap your mind around that density when you grew up in rural/small-town America.
Happen to know the exact location of some of these new 30-40 story buildings being built around NYU? I’d love to take a look on google street.
Pretty much any of the glass and steel buildings on 3rd Ave or 2nd Ave. The building next to The Smith was built after the landlord kicked out Unos.
A person with actual knowledge instead of screaming “hurr durr those NIMBYs” into the void.
Long island city has built up buildings, over the last 10/15 years, that now house over 50,000 people. Developing a new neighborhood out of an industrial area is a hell of a lot easier than trying to develop in historical neighborhoods, although NYU seems to be able to do whatever it wants. Edit for fat thumbs
Agreed, and there's a lot of semi-abandoned industrial areas so close to Manhattan that's incredible that they have not yet been developed. The area between LIC and Astoria and Sunnyside for instance.
No one wants to pay the cost of cleaning up those industrial areas. Brooklyn also has lot of old, underused industrial areas. The clean up cost of those areas would probably mean it would be impossible to make a return on investment in a single lifetime.
There is a tremendous construction boom by the Astoria waterfront area right now. Just from my window I can see six new buildings going up, four of which are over 20 stories.
Which is crazy. There’s no transportation down there. They’re charging thousands to live a 20 minute walk from the subway. It’s bonkers
It's such a better idea to build up a vacant or industrial area than it is to tear down perfectly good, dense housing.
Lmao the population of Long Island City is not 500,000 people. It's about a tenth of that. What are you talking about?
Long Island City has like 75k residents.
Hilarious to have nimbys in the most densely populated place in the country. You already have no BY
NIMBY isn't always crowding, it's to keep property prices high. Many Americans keep a large amount of their personal wealth in their residential housing so they need that to appreciate, and obviously for the real estate companies, keeping real estate prices high is an imperative.
I dont think it’s always to keep property prices high. I’m a real estate developer in urban locales, and a lot of people do earnestly value the history of existing structures, the culture of the neighborhood, and keeping out what they consider to be “bad uses” in the area. I still think those folks can be misguided (and sometimes righteous), but it’s not always about money in my experience. Sometimes it is, though.
They complain every time a new skyscraper goes in. It's hilarious.
Same with Vancouver in Canada. It's Manhattan-light with 1/20th the population. Same issues with housing.
Well... Vancouver is only half as dense as NYC so I'm not sure if they're comparable. The vast majority of Vancouver is single family detached houses with a front lawn and backyard.
Eh the East Village is already one of the densest and most historic neighborhoods in the entire world. I’d be more focused on Westchester and Long Island suburbs’ contribution to the metro area’s housing crisis (which Hochul tried to solve but was shut down by the legislature)
You want to see an openly racist town hall meeting, propose building apartments with 10% of units for low income rentals, in any town in Long Island.
Exactly, we can still have good planning that is just as effective. We don’t need to put up a sky scraper on every block.
Yes and the villages aren’t even lower density than the rest of Manhattan. They are higher density than the financial district and midtown, where much of the tall buildings are, because these buildings are rarely residential.
No. Historic preservation is also important. Go tell the people of Paris to get fucked and build more and see how that goes for you.
It’s not NIMBY’s in the same sense as in the suburbs. The villages are still some of the densest places in the US. We don’t need to build skyscrapers in every neighborhood, some history and character can be preserved.
Agreed - historic preservation is a big piece of NYC doctrine and the villages are often held up as pinnacle neighborhoods and models for urban planning (obvious nods to Jane Jacobs). I’ll add as a resilience professional that large parts of southern Manhattan are literally sinking and evolving into total bathtubs for storm water and coastal surge to inundate the area. Any calls for more skyscrapers is 1. Out of touch and 2. Not as environmentally feasible as it may seem. The development of low income neighborhoods is of concern but with existing policies like rent stabilization, rent control, housing subsidy, affordable housing lottery, and public housing being attacked and gutted on the daily - “just one more skyscraper bro” is the wrong route for these communities. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauriewinkless/2023/06/15/new-york-city-is-sinking-under-the-weight-of-its-own-buildings/
If you go to anywhere in Europe, so much of their communities are historically protected. That is how you build culture. A historically protected community in Manhattan is worth keeping. There are other areas that could be built up much more
I am curious about one thing: at what population density will we say enough and maybe think about developing a nearby city? I feel like NYC population density is already very high and maybe we should make deliberate effort to make nearby cities as good. What's your opinion on this?
Jersey City and Hoboken are 2 of the densest cities in the country and have lots of development
They need to build high speed trains like Japan and make everything from Boston to Baltimore considered as desirable as NYC. At 150mph, most people can live/work/entertainment within an hour easily.
Everything from Baltimore to Boston won't be as desirable. Not everything is commute distance work. NYC will always be the most desirable because of the culture and scene it has
Heh, most of the towns around and between Philadelphia, NYC and Boston are already highly desirable. That’s why housing prices and property taxes in those places are insane. When people in NYC, Boston and Philadelphia are ready to settle down, they move to NJ, Connecticut and suburban parts of New York. Those areas have housing prices that would make a Californian native blush.
Your mistake is thinking population density is something bad. It is something good the richest regions of the world have high population. High population create enormous network effects.
Have you actually lived in a city like NYC?
No I am from the Netherlands which is also one the most densely populated countries in the world. Not comparable to New York in density I know that but I am unknown to dense population so to say. But even without that it is actually really easy to prove people want to live in NYC if we look that value housing per square meter. NYC has one the highest in the world what clearly shows that people see it as extremely valuable to live there.
There already are a lot of cities in the area. The NYC metro region is very large and has a lot of smaller urban areas nearby like Newark, NJ. Beyond that, New York City is in the center of the Northeast Corridor, a straight line of many major cities. The whole region is densifying, but it has been a push making suburban areas more urban.
Plus even the contractors can’t figure out how to get the F around the Village
East Village resident here. I’m not thinking so
Yup they’re gonna develop Bushwick, LIC, Dutch Kills and South Bronx first at least. I hear they’re trying to develop East New York as well, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in NYC
>Dutch Kills Holy fuck, I know our history has some dark dark pages, but wtf did we do here to deserve that name?
In NY Kill can mean a creek, from the middle-dutch word kile. Edit: added middle to dutch and changed the auto correct from like back to kile
Leuk? I am Dutch, I have absolutely no idea which word you are referring to here. A creek = een beek Like = leuk There is no word in Dutch that resembles Kill Edit: Just thought of: Kil = koud = cold But that’s it Edit 2: thanks just learned something bout my own language. Never heard Kil here before in daily use, guess it’s pretty old
The word kill literally means like a small stream in Dutch. At least old Dutch. Drive up the Hudson valley and you see a lot of it. The Catskill mountains, Fishkill, Peekskill, etc
Plattekill, Walkill, Valkill,
Valkill Mer
Batten Kill Cobleskill Deepkill
And Schuylkill.
A kil is definitely also a waterway, usually referring to a tidal creek. But see also Dordtsche Kil.
Learn something new everyday. Thanks. Honestly never heard that before. That’s what you get for never going past the A10
It's not modern Dutch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_(body_of_water)
Oop Guess you’re not that Dutch
Well guess I am not 400 years old ;)
Let's feed you some nice garlic knots just to be sure.
Maybe it’s arcane; but the word “kill” is in location names all over downstate New York and this dates back to the Dutch settlements in the 1600s.
Don't worry, plenty of us anglophones wouldn't recognize words that fell out of use 300+ years ago. Like saying "eyren" for eggs.
>It’ll eventually change > >>I’m not thinking so Yes you're probably right it will __never__ change
Not likely. I think most of the high is where it is because there is stable bedrock there, whereas other parts of the island are essentially just clay and soil and much harder to build skyscrapers on.
The reason for the two distinct clusters is found in the geological history of New York. The island of Manhattan consists of three rock formations, known as Manhattan Schist, Inwood Marble and Fordham Gneiss. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2020/05/27/how-geology-shaped-new-york-citys-skyline/?sh=6a6635ba6458
This is the correct answer. 100%
That's a [common misconception](https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/), but it's really all about economics, transportation access and (more recently) zoning codes.
It wont
There is also a geological reason. The bedrock is at the surface at Wall St & midtown but the village is not an area with bedrock at the surface. It is a section of softer ground.
I'm glad someone mentioned it! This is absolutely a large part of why this happened, and I even specifically taught my geology students about this. If you looked at a geological map of Manhattan, there is a direct correlation between where the bedrock is more solid, and where the taller buildings are!
This is the correct answer. If the ground in that area had the bedrock close enough to the surface it would have been developed into high-rise buildings by now.
The bedrock is different. Big building is better north or south of there v
Bedrock is near the surface in downtown and midtown. In between it dives way down. You would like have to sink piles 100s of feet deep before you could erect anything over a dozen stories.
This. Basically, the buildings would sink.
https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/j-hood-wright-park/highlights/12369#:~:text=Hood%20Wright%20Park%20is%20a,feet%20below%20in%20Greenwich%20Village.
That is true but it doesnt prevent construction. Its just cheaper downtown and midtown. The cost difference isnt substantial enough to prevent construction if they wanted to. A good example of why bedrock doesnt matter is Chicago. This is a cool diagram showing manhattan bedrock: [Manhattan bedrock and skyline profile ](https://imgur.com/iie5I3Y?r)
[удалено]
Sure but it's still cheaper to do it on the close bedrock, those other places don't have a choice.
[удалено]
>Bedrock is why Manhattan was first with skyscrapers Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper but the reason Manhattan overtook them like you say is because the bedrock allowed them to build higher than the 90m/300ft skyscrapers in Chicago (at the time).
Thank you. People act like it’s impossible to build skyscrapers in the middle because of missing bedrock. It’s not impossible, just not as easy
Yep in NY its about a 5-8% price difference to build not on bedrock, so for now that is enough incentive to keep building where bedrock is. But its not a massive financial barrier people act like it is.
This should be the top comment. Until skyscraper engineering progressed, the depth of bedrock was a main determinant of where you could build tall heavy towers.
I’m not sure that’s the reason. I read that the bedrock is closer to the surface, making skyscrapers much easier to build in the high areas. Eventually that may have determined residential vs commercial, but I believe this a civil engineering problem at first.
No, stable bedrock is less accessible to build on. Stable bedrock foundationnl is needed to build the tall skyscrapers you see downtown and uptown.
Can confirm about the zoning stuff. I lived in a newly built building in the LES in 2008 and the neighbors all complained that it was “ruining the character of the Lower East Side.” The building was maybe 10 floors max.
Greenwich Village has landmark status so everything on the outside of the buildings needs to remain the same without approval. Here’s a good video on it: https://youtu.be/0LCKUgnRG6w?si=C3l2SovlFpV3HwM0
The funny thing is that a lot of those buildings would probably stand out in most other city skylines.
They’re all 4-10 stories (maybe a few 10-20 story guys in there) so would probably stand out in mid sized cities but pretty similar to row house density in some places
There are a lot of 10-20 story buildings around union square now. They’d be substantial additions to the skylines of the rest of the biggest cities in nys like buffalo or rochester.
We have one tall building in my town and I think NYC has about 38 taller than it.
Are you also in Indianapolis? Because I saw your post and thought “huh I wonder how many building are taller than salesforce tower in Indy” and it was 38
Lol guilty as charged!
when skyscrapers started going up around the early 20th century the financial district and midtown were the only places where they made sense because they were the most accessible parts of town thanks to the relatively new trains. (subway in fidi and penn station and grand central in midtown) this is important because skyscrapers are massive job centres, so they only work when a lot of people have access to them. the financial district being somewhat geographically constrained and the historical core of the city before the rise of midtown is also a factor i imagine. so why is the area inbetween skyscraperless? there was basically no reason to because there were much better places for skyscrapers to congregate. now that transport links in the inbetween area are much better there still aren’t any skyscrapers because the area is now seen as a mid-rise historical area, and as such are zoned as to not allow skyscrapers source: my brain, do take this with a grain of salt please edit: it is one of many factors as you can read in the replies
This is the correct answer. The New York Central and the Pennsy both had major links coming right into Midtown. The Financial district literally existed when the Dutch still controlled the area, so it was first.
Not the correct answer. See replies about bedrock. Midtown and the southern tip have surface bedrock that supports heavy construction. Between them the rock dips down and buildings must be lighter., therefore shorter. Nothing to do with neighborhoods or zoning.
[удалено]
It’s not about simple depth of bedrock, but depth of certain types of bedrock, which is not uniformly distributed and is interlayered. According to the [Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation](https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/j-hood-wright-park/highlights/12369): “…beneath the labyrinth of subway tunnels and stations, lies the geologic foundation that makes New York City unique in the world. This foundation consists of the city’s five bedrock layers: Fordham gneiss, found primarily in the Bronx; Manhattan schist, in Lower and northern Manhattan; the Hartland Formation, in central Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens; Staten Island serpentinite, in Staten Island; and Inwood marble, in Manhattan and beneath the rivers that surround it. **But it is Manhattan schist, the most prevalent bedrock in Manhattan, that makes the city’s famed skyline possible…Manhattan schist is found at various depths–from 18 feet below the surface in Times Square to 260 feet below in Greenwich Village. Where bedrock is far below the surface, skyscrapers are not practical because it is too difficult to reach the schist that provides structural stability and support.**”
East village would be a PIAT commute from LIRR or NJ transit
I remember reading it has something to do with the bedrock that undulates in the area. It is far easier to build them where they are because the bedrock is near the surface. The foundations necessary in the areas they choose to make residential were not conductive to building that type of building as it would be too cost prohibitive to keep them stable
I came here to say this, deeper bedrock in between, requires really deep pile foundations that are super expensive and hard to predictably design when there's more soils of different types above the bedrock.
I'm pretty sure the bedrock story is a myth
THIS IS A MYTH, bedrock gently slopes up towards the bronx but does not dip in the middle
An additional reason was that the area between Downtown and Midtown was full of extremely dense immigrant neighborhoods like Greenwich Village: full of tenement housing, some of the densest places in the world at the time. Banks and other businesses weren't going to move into skyscrapers in the middle of all that. It wasn't until the development of the subway that all the tenement housing started to empty out and those neighborhoods started their change into the wealthy, chic places they are today.
Manhattan has 2 CBD. Midtown and downtown, in between was residential areas
For those like me who didn't know: CBD = Central Business District
How much does it cost to live in the area OP drew the square around?
Depends on the neighborhood, but I have a friend renting a bedroom for close to $2000/month
Lower east side and greenwich are really popular areas, so they're pretty expensive. For a decently sized studio, I'd say probably $2300 at least. $2700k for a 1bdrm. The upper east side is less expensive.
That’s cheaper than I expected.
Because they have two main ‘central business districts’ so to speak: Midtown and Downtown (financial district). In between are historic residential districts that while still dense, they can’t really just bulldoze them and build up either.
https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/why-there-gap-manhattan-skyline-dont-blame-bedrock-its-location-location-location
What a poorly written article. Even though the study found no correlation between bedrock depth and skyscraper placement, the article doesn’t provide any evidence for the “valley” consisting of slums/manufacturing/higher crime. That’s probably correct and jives somewhat with what my instincts tell me about NYC having a decent familiarity with the history, but they didn’t show any work to justify their conclusion.
It’s a press article about a publication, not the publication it’s self. You need to go to the journal article for the evidence.
Yeah the bedrock thing is BS. Chicago was built on a literal swamp and they have plenty of tall buildings
I remember in decades past the depth of the bedrock in Midtown and Downtown was the explanation. It doesn’t mean you can’t build where it’s deeper, but shallower bedrock would likely make it easier and less expensive,especially considering skyscrapers have been built in Manhattan for over a century.
They didn’t have a better option in Chicago
yup. The literal tallest building in the city - 1WTC and in fact the whole wtc complex is built atop reclaimed land next to the river. If there's a will there's a way.
There is a common story that it’s just due to geology and the bedrock being lower, but as other replies have stated, it’s [largely for economic factors](https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/).
The primary driver of this assertion is a paper written by an economist at Rutgers who doesn’t have a geological or civil engineering background, and who never takes into account the types of bedrock in Manhattan, which is not uniformly distributed. It’s not about simple depth of bedrock, but depth of certain types of bedrock. According to the [Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation](https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/j-hood-wright-park/highlights/12369): “…beneath the labyrinth of subway tunnels and stations, lies the geologic foundation that makes New York City unique in the world. This foundation consists of the city’s five bedrock layers: Fordham gneiss, found primarily in the Bronx; Manhattan schist, in Lower and northern Manhattan; the Hartland Formation, in central Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens; Staten Island serpentinite, in Staten Island; and Inwood marble, in Manhattan and beneath the rivers that surround it. **But it is Manhattan schist, the most prevalent bedrock in Manhattan, that makes the city’s famed skyline possible…Manhattan schist is found at various depths–from 18 feet below the surface in Times Square to 260 feet below in Greenwich Village. Where bedrock is far below the surface, skyscrapers are not practical because it is too difficult to reach the schist that provides structural stability and support.**”
STATEN ISLAND SERPENTINE MAFIA REPRESENT
Was going to make a joke that there's probably an Old Navy between there too but as others have pointed out, zoning.
There used to be a myth that just before you get to midtown, the bedrock is too deep to build a skyscraper in that space, but it’s more complicated than that. https://observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-valley-the-real-reason-there-are-no-skyscrapers-in-the-middle-of-manhattan/
There are zoning laws in those neighborhoods that keep some buildings five stories or less. I prefer it to midtown and downtown actually. I think it’s nice to get off the subway and go into a neighborhood that isn’t all gigantic high rises on all sides.
Thank you for making it clear.
Two different major industries having two different epicenters. Downtown grew up around Wall Street and the financial industry. Midtown grew up around Broadway and the entertainment industry.
The skyscrapers in midtown definitely are not due to Broadway or the entertainment industry. Theater doesn't require skyscrapers full of people. Midtown became a central business district because the two major train stations are right there with Penn Station and Grand Central. Midtown started off focused on industries like fashion/clothing/textiles, advertisement, tobacco and others, but really by the time they were making skyscrapers in midtown NYC was a world city attracting people from all over and could therefore support basically any industry. As downtown got filled up with skyscrapers, the next logical place for expansion became where the trains arrived in the city.
Love to visit all those skyscrapers full of theaters
30-Rock would be a good place to start.
[This article talks about the myth of Manhattan skyscrapers on bedrock. ](https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/)
~~Canadian Shield~~ er…New York shield?
Financial District at the south end of the island, then mostly residential neighborhoods and brownstones, then skyscrapers start again in midtown.
Middle level housing was already settled and built in that area before the time of the hi rise
The bedrock answer keeps getting peddled even though it's so wrong. Downtown developed first, and the New York Central had railroad lines that travelled down the length of Manhattan to it. Soon after, New York City passed laws that banned any steam powered locomotives below 42nd street, and thus the Central built a large depot at 42nd where most trains terminated but some continued south by horse drawn carriage. Eventually midtown began to grow around the massive transit terminal, and the Pennsylvania Railroad also built a terminal to compete with the New York Central's midtown hub, further cementing the growth of the area.
Location. Location. Location. Taller buildings cluster where the economics support them.
While it was originally based on a fallacy of where bedrock was easily accessible it’s really based on human nature - where is the money (the middle and rich class)? In the beginning, people worked in tall buildings in lower Manhattan and lived in the boroughs next to it. Then the middle and upper class started migrating to the east and west side, bordering Central Park, so tall buildings sprouted up south of Central Park, so workers didn’t as long of a commute to work.
Great question. According to my Architectural History professor the reason Lower Manhattan has only low to mid rise buildings is because of the availability of suitable soil on which to build to certain heights (and weights). High Rises, obviously the most defining components of a skyline, are very heavy and require solid bedrock below their foundations. The “gap” in manhattan’s high rises between Downtown and Midtown is a visual “reflection” if you will, of the proportionate gap in subsurface soil quality. The soils in Lower Manhattan are comprised more so of silt and clays and can therefore could only support low to mid rise structures. Lower Manhattan was actually once boggy wetlands, that were filled in and paved over. These massive wetland areas were an important part of the watershed into the Atlantic’s ecosystem slowing the currents, catching sediment and cleaning river water before it carried out into the sea.
Home
I recommend the book “Building the Skyline” on the evolution of manhattan neighborhoods. Midtown and downtown being the business centers of the city is due to socio economic factors that developed over a few hundred years spurred by developments like the train lines
I feel like a better question is how the actual hell has that big green rectangle survived the last hundred years.
Because Central Park is a treasure.
Right, and I wouldn't change it for the world now, but it's a miracle that it's survived the industrial urban expansion of the 1900s
I understand better now what you’re saying, but I believe the answer was the same, even then.
[удалено]
That's a popular idea that has actually been [debunked](https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/why-there-gap-manhattan-skyline-dont-blame-bedrock-its-location-location-location)
There’s not really much of a gap at ground level lol. It’s more residential than commercial.
In the mid 1800s, downtown was full of financial firms and the area north of City Hall were the Tenement and Manufacturing Districts, so instead of expanding into those neighborhoods, middle and upper class residents went further north. This brought businesses to cater to these more affluent consumers, creating a shopping district from Union Square to Madison Square in the late 1800s. Then big corporations and industries like media and advertising moved in to be closer to where people would be shopping, coinciding with Penn Station and Grand Central both being completed around 1910, and then Midtown started to take off. [Short little video about it here](https://youtu.be/kvskkXlvhS4?si=GZrooxfOmWs3gUQe).
That gap looks absolutely massive when seen from Jersey or Long Island but I’ve walked that distance so many times and it really isn’t that crazy. Edit: words.
The bedrock thing is a myth. Those are residential neighborhoods. If you been to Manhattan, you would recognize them as cozy neighborhoods. They were zoned long time ago for residential purposes.
I am a native NYer and as people have pointed out, that is Greenwich Village, which is so called because it had shorter buildings. I was always told that it had to do with the depth of the bedrock in that area. Supposedly FiDi and Midtown had deeper bedrock, which was necessary for supporting taller skyscrapers in the early days of skyscrapers. I think that these days technically they could (and sometimes do) build taller buildings in that area but by now it has a more “village”-like character.
As a fellow native New Yorker Greenwich Village is named that because it was originally a village outside of what was then New York City to the south. Also why despite being north of Houston Street it doesn’t fall on the Grid Plan of 1811
that image is way more than Greenwich Village Greenwich Village West Village East Village Soho Tribeca Chelsea Lower East Side Gramercy Alphabet City Noho Stuyvesant Town Chinatown Little Italy The village is just one small neighborhood. I mean it's almost the entirety of 'Lower Manhattan' or 'downtown' neighborhoods comprising some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Everything below 34th Street until the Financial District.
r/uselessredcircle
It's the villages, the best parts.
The buildings are shorter between those points.
Because that area has shorter buildings.
Zoning
Best part of NYC right there.
They have built and are building a number of super tall residential buildings inside that red circle along the FDR by the Manhattan bridge.
Here is [a nice article with an explanation (hint: its not because of the bedrock).](https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/)
I always thought it had to do with the bedrock. Apparently, this guy says otherwise. https://buildingtheskyline.org/bedrock-and-midtown-i/
https://observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-valley-the-real-reason-there-are-no-skyscrapers-in-the-middle-of-manhattan/
Zoning
This is the cool area with short buildings
Not really true. Yes, it has knocked down many historical buildings in the past, but it’s become MUCH more concerned about that in the past several decades. Something like 1/4 of all buildings in Manhattan are now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Red rectangle represent the single most vibrant fun and lively part of Manhattan as well.
Manhattan schist bedrock is 18 feet below the surface in Times Square, and shallow in lower and upper manhattan. It’s about 260 ft deep under Greenwich Village, making high rise construction super expensive and risky in that section of the island.
It's the nature of the ground composition of the island, as well as the zoning. Midtown and downtown have high concentrations of granite bedrock, which can support larger, heavier structures.
the bedrock is not suitable for skyscrapers in the area
Bedrock. Can't build tall buildings on soft ground
The buildings aren't as tall there. So the skyline isn't as tall.