Peter Smirniotopoulos, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University, muses, in
New Geography, that we need a new lexicon for emerging urban forms that are neither urban nor suburban.
Smirniotopoulos, observing the changing character of inner-ring suburbs and once -exurban developments, finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish between them.
Looking at his own home town of Falls Church, a planned, tightly controlled city without panhandlers, Class D space and ethnic diversity, he wonders if it qualifies as a"real" city.
Smirniotopoulos recently visited Brooklyn, which was once considered a "suburb" of New York, and found it to be the standard-bearer of what it means to be a “real” city.
Manhattan, according to Smirniotopoulos, may be becoming an “appendage” of Brooklyn.
Two-and-a-half million people live in Brooklyn. If it were an independent city – as it was until 1898 when it was consolidated with New York – it would be 4th largest in the U.S., after New York, L.A. and Chicago.
Brooklyn's population has grown by more than 275,000 people since 1980, although its population has declined overall since 1950, when it reached its apex at over 2.7 million.
Brooklyn is the most densely populated borough of New York City, and is probably the densest city in the U.S., with over 35,600 residents per square mile in a 71-square mile area.
But it is neither total population nor population density that makes Smirniotopoulos' case for Brooklyn as America’s "quintessential city" -- ahead of Manhattan.
He finds, first, that Brooklyn neighborhoods reflect a "holistic melding of complimentary land uses", with residential, commercial, institutional, recreational, retail and entertainment in close proximity to each other.
Smirniotopoulos sees Manhattan as more "Balkanized", with its various land uses clustered together, almost in competition with each other. Manhattan's residential neighborhoods are seen as too exclusive, too transitory for New Yorkers of modest means to settle down and raise a family.
He sees Brooklyn, like a "model city", handling its density "extremely well".
Brooklyn is a city of distinct neighborhoods -- 32 in all. Remarkably, given its density, much of its housing stock is made up of three and four-story brownstones, mid-rise apartment and coop buildings.
The residential streets and the main commercial thoroughfares of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, which have a combined population of almost 105,000, strike Smirniotopolous as having a "wonderful scale", achieving both walkability and a synergistic mix of homes, businesses, public and institutional uses.
But it is Brooklyn's "incredible diversity" that, according to Smirniotopolous, defines it as a “real” city. Less than 35% of Brooklyn's population is non-Hispanic white, over 36% is Black/African-American, and almost 20% is Latino/Hispanic. Almost 38% of Brooklyn’s population is new immigrant -- with 110 ethnic regions represented, and almost 47% of the population speaks a language other than English at home.
Brooklyn is economically diverse, too, with a median income just under $30,000 per year, as against the median price of a home at $490,000 and the median price of a coop (about 25% of the market) at $267,500. The median-priced condo (about 28% of the market) is $514,216.
Just under half of the Brooklyn for-sale market is comprised of one-to three-family dwellings, with a median sales price of $584,250.
But most of Brooklyn’s housing stock is in rentals.
Smirniotopoulos sees Brooklyn, with its social, ethnic and economic diversity, as a 71-square mile "melting pot of the world".
For him, Brooklyn is the benchmark for a “real city".
The article from New Geography:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/00573-musings-urban-form-is-brooklyn-ultimate-city
Erasmus Hall Academy, one of the country's oldest secondary schools, sits in a courtyard off Flatbush Avenue behind a group of public school buildings.
According to the Nation, unemployment in New York City reached 7.4% in December. Nearly 300,000 more jobs will have disappeared by the summer of 2010.
In an earlier post
