Every time I visit New York, I see the city with fresh eyes.
It changes that fast. But now my eyes are especially tempered by my West Coast
perspective, as a resident of San Francisco.
San Francisco's population is diverse and international.
Then you look at New York.
San Franciscans seem fashionable and well dressed, with snug
fitting tailored clothing. Then you look at New Yorkers.
San Francisco has hipster progressives. New York City has
fashionable capitalists.
San Francisco has fantastic architecture and an urbanism in
distinct neighborhoods, with lessons to learn on every block. And then you look
back at New York.
San Francisco is a city of books, of bookstores and book
buyers and book readers. But New York still has Barnes and Nobles, lots of 'em.San Francisco has a few districts where the architecture is especially corporate, more about square footage and FARs than neighborliness. Then you look at midtown and downtown Manhattan where architecture for business has been perfected.
San Francisco has galleries and condos extending into the
fringes of the habitable city, in the Mission, SOMA, and the Bayview. New York
has the West 25th Street galleries, the West 27th Street galleries, and more
condos and rental residences (apartments) hugging the rehabilitated High Line
than you can imagine.
The ice rinks have just been reinstalled in San Francisco's
Union Square and Manhattan's Bryant Park.Brooklyn is different. It's more like a larger version of Boston than Manhattan. And it’s fantastic. It has Boston's brownstones, Sacramento's amazing tree lined streets, and Providence's scale and mix of commercial and residential architecture, hills and landmarks.
My weekend in New York was dense, filled with colleagues and
friends, art and urbanism, and a mad escape from JFK on the last flight to
leave town before Sandy. What was to be a fun fall weekend in New York turned
into a surreal mix of anticipation, anxiety and trauma. I was in New York to
witness 9/11, in London on 7/7, in Biloxi as part of a design team following
Katrina/Rita, and in Boston for the Blizzards of 2010. I was elated at
"wheels up" on Sunday (10/28) despite the 2 hour delay. And my
thoughts were and are with friends and colleagues who call New York home, as
the waters recede and the metropolis is reilluminated.
