What makes: New York City?
Our round-up of New York City’s core ‘sense of place’ ingredients
New York is a city that never fails to disappoint. Whether you’re a long-time local or a first-time visitor, the streets of this city feel at once familiar and alien. A hew of steam rises through manhole covers; a high-rise empire towers over street-dwellers; a cacophony of angry horns emanates from yellow taxis; a matrix of staircases decorate the facades of red-brick buildings.
It is a place direct from the movies.
But for over eight million people, New York City is also ‘home’. The unique built environment of this city facilitates the making of dreams and the building of lives. People come here for opportunity, and in the fast-moving, unforgiving, trend-defining landscape of New York City, sense of place is built on this restless pursuit of dreams.
More specifically, New York’s sense of place might be defined by three core traits:
The hustle
Famed as a city of opportunity, it seems that everyone has somewhere to be and something to do in New York. The city is defined by a restless impatience; people, cars, transactions, and time move at pace here – and city-goers quickly grow frustrated when anything gets in the way.
Practically speaking, this fast-paced hustle has several important impacts on city and public space. Firstly, there is limited dwell-time in such spaces on an average weekday. The parks and streets are hives of activity, as people negotiate their ways through the spaces, in order to keep moving on. Transit, mobility and convenience are thus an important lens through which people experience public spaces.
There is also the emotional draw of New York’s bustling potential. For well over a century, the city’s reputation as a land of opportunity has attracted millions of migrants from all around the world. Defined by this vast multiculturalism and its unique set of ethnic enclaves, New York City is a melting pot of diverse cultures and peoples, all united in their hustle for happiness.
The statement
New York is a city that goes big. This is a legacy that is literally written into the skies: over 7000 high-rise buildings tower over the city’s metropolis today – with each one built to rival the last.
The innate competitive spirit in the culture of New York has led to ever more ambitious, distinctive and outrageous ideas being played out here. Heatherwick Studio built a whole new park suspended over the Hudson River; a group of visionaries bought up a disused railway line in a struggling part of the city, and transformed it into one of New York’s greatest tourist attractions; even the historic Central Park offers 843 acres of totally uninterrupted green space, planted right in the centre of a vast urban jungle.
While these incredible projects have led to the creation of unique and well-loved public spaces, they stem from a spirit of ambition rather than pure altruism. New York inspires a culture of ‘the bigger, the bolder, the better’, and this statement-led way of life translates just as much to the people as it does to their public spaces.
The in-crowd
There aren’t many cities in the world that cultivate such a strong identity around their native city-goers. In New York, the city simply cannot be without its native ‘New Yorkers’.
A common lively debate among locals in this city surrounds how long it takes to become a true New Yorker – some say five years, some say ten, some say a whole lifetime. The fact is, there is an inherent pride among those who feel they can wear the label, and like any source of pride, this stems from the hard work involved in earning the title.
Because the truth is, New York City is a hard, unforgiving, and sometimes unglamourous place to be. Its beauty is not conventional, and its industrial cool can sometimes be enjoyed at the expense of real comfort. Undoubtedly, there is an intangible magic and energy about New York, but those who have learnt to live well here, and navigate this city with all its charms, have grafted.
The title of ‘New Yorker’ is hard-earned, and it is worn with pride.
