[HN Gopher] Estimating the perceived 'claustrophobia' of New Yor...
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Estimating the perceived 'claustrophobia' of New York City's
streets (2024)
Author : jxmorris12
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-10-30 13:10 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mfranchi.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (mfranchi.net)
| flint wrote:
| Obviously, he's never been to Rikers.
| afavour wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rkeene2 wrote:
| There is a good reason though, right? My understanding is that
| local ordinances require very frequent window inspections
| (following a highly publicized death), so to perform those
| inspections they need the scaffolding to protect the under-
| walking pedestrians from the inspectors. Because they are so
| frequent, it's cheaper to just leave the scaffolding up and
| take it down and put it up for every inspection.
|
| With drones becoming more common and robust, though, it will
| hopefully soon be easier and faster to do the inspections and
| so the scaffolding may become cheaper to remove and replace
| each cycle
| lokar wrote:
| The inspection rules are kind of extreme, supported by the
| people who do the work and the scaffold companies. Once you
| "start work" (put up the scaffolding) the clock stops. You
| see buildings with scaffolding for years with little to non
| actual work.
| afavour wrote:
| No, it's because putting up scaffolding is cheaper than
| actually performing facade repairs. Inspections are only
| every five years.
|
| https://thehustle.co/originals/why-so-many-new-york-city-
| sid...
| technothrasher wrote:
| 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.
| senkora wrote:
| Midtown Manhattan is "too much" even for a lot of New Yorkers.
| I try to minimize my time there.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's interesting. When I lived in Manhattan I didn't mind
| the density at all. But I was apartment hunting in Brooklyn
| one day and literally had a panic attack at how chaotic it
| was. I made it two blocks from the 4/5/6 station (I forget
| which one) before heading back.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _made it two blocks from the 4 /5/6 station (I forget
| which one)_
|
| 4 or 5. If you fall asleep on those, you go to Brooklyn
| or the Bronx. If you fall asleep on the 6, you always
| wake up in the Bronx. (Well, or City Hall. But then you
| can get dumplings.)
| nopalito wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| what were his preconceptions about the city other than
| "they're all loud and claustrophobic?"
| mtalantikite wrote:
| 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".
| lelandfe wrote:
| Something that surprises often is that NYC used to be far,
| far denser. See the second image:
| https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-
| manhat...
|
| I recommend to people the Tenement Museum for their second
| trip to NYC - it was eye opening (but pretty grim)
| shermantanktop wrote:
| What amazes me is that people did not flee. I assume the
| hand-to-mouth existence they had in these slums was
| apparently a little better than their prospects elsewhere.
| Or perhaps they were moving out but immigration and
| reproduction was more than making up for it...
| crazygringo wrote:
| To where?
|
| You have no money, very little skills, you don't speak
| English. Even if you cobbled together money to take the
| train to some small town in Ohio or Iowa or something,
| what are you going to do as a complete social outsider
| who doesn't speak the language?
|
| The idea was to stick around in the LES where you had an
| actual community. Try to make some money, learn English,
| develop some skills, and _then_ move out. Which is
| exactly what people did. And the new immigrants took
| their places.
|
| Also -- they had _already_ fled. This was the fleeing.
| From Ireland, from Italy, from Poland, etc.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Their kids were the ones who were better educated and
| could move on.
|
| It's still happening today.
| kulahan wrote:
| This is the entire reason why people emigrate.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Sure, my point is that - no matter how bad this looks, it
| was approximately better than their alternatives. So it's
| a testament to human resilience.
|
| That aside, that there was literally no going back, given
| the travel to get to NY. I had an ancestor come to NYC in
| the 19th c. and return back to Sweden, but he was not in
| the desperate straits that many were. I'm sure some would
| have returned, given the opportunity.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| A lot of these people were in immigrant enclaves. Their
| neighborhoods may have been the only place in the country
| people spoke their language or shared their religion, so
| serving that community was their best bet for employment.
| rayiner wrote:
| Who does the best job managing density? Tokyo is lovely and
| orderly, but it's not that dense--similar to San Francisco.
| Maybe Seoul?
| ghaff wrote:
| Depends where in San Francisco. A lot of business travelers
| in particular perceptions of SF are probably colored by the
| areas near the Moscone (and Fishermans Wharf). Though most
| of SF is relatively sane in general--certainly not like the
| Times Square area in NYC.
| rayiner wrote:
| San Francisco doesn't feel dense to me at all.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| San Francisco is the 5th densest county in the USA, the
| top four are also the four densest burroughs of New York
| City.
|
| There is a good argument that San Francisco could and
| should be denser than it is, but its ludicrous to call it
| not dense at all.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Times Square area in NYC.
|
| quick funny story, my family and i were in Times Square
| last year for New Year's. Thousands of people everywhere
| as you can imagine. We're walking down the sidewalk and
| right as rain my wife runs into someone she knows from
| all the way back in Texas. Among all those people from
| all over the world she still manages to run into someone
| she knows. My wife and her talk while me and the boys
| hang around waiting just like we've had to do at our
| local grocery store back home. My kids and I still laugh
| at that story.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've actually run into people I knew in Manhattan. But
| they were from the Northeast so it wasn't _that_ unusual.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Honestly, I feel like Paris does a great job. I know it's
| relatively small population wise for a major international
| city (~2 million), but it's population density is about 50%
| more than NYC without ever feeling overwhelming. Just
| having those 6-story Haussmann style buildings everywhere
| with wide boulevards makes it feel very human scale.
| rayiner wrote:
| Good point. It's dirty, but the density does seem nicely
| managed.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| When I have been in NYC recently, it's seemed remarkably
| _quiet_ to me. In particular, I don 't see many cars.
|
| (Only the subway is loud. But that doesn't stress me out,
| because I don't have to do anything. You get on, you let your
| mind wander, you get off, you take a little walk.)
|
| When I was a child, I saw movies set in New York, and the
| streets were always choked with traffic. The sound of a car
| horn was almost a shorthand for the city. You'd hear it in
| music. They'd use it in establishing shots in films. Always
| yellow cabs.
|
| Even a decade or two ago, you'd stand, as a pedestrian, at the
| crosswalk, waiting for the light to change.
|
| Now, often you look both ways and the street is clear for a
| whole block. You don't wait, you just cross.
|
| Sure, there's a rhythm to it. Even decades ago, the Financial
| District, choked during rush hour, was spookily-empty on the
| weekends. So maybe I have more recently walked around in the
| places and times that are at the troughs of that rhythm.
|
| But I suspect there is also a longer-term trend, or perhaps a
| step change, caused by COVID: Cities just seem quieter now.
|
| To an extent it is good. I'm happy to see a city by for and of
| people, rather than ditto for cars, their manufacturers, and
| their buyers (who lack alternatives). By all means, let
| restaurants build decks on the street; decorate them with
| flower boxes; let people meet there for brunch or after work.
|
| There is also a negative aspect. There is still, I think, a
| suburban hangover. I see this in friends who it is now
| difficult to drag out of their apartments and away from their
| video games; in other people who one might frustratedly
| describe as "suburban women voters" who, in rare acts of
| personal courage, mask up and use the subway (they stand out
| from the people who actually live and work in the city. ... I
| shouldn't mock them; at least by seeing the reality they will
| overcome their fears); and in the rhetoric of the political
| Right, which seems more grounded in _Escape from New York_ than
| in reality.
|
| So I suppose several forces have made the city quieter. Some
| positive, some negative. And popular perception lags (as it
| must; this is the nature of information transmission).
| foobarian wrote:
| Apparently the surge tolls they implemented recently
| contributed to less traffic, in Manhattan at least
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| The loudness of cities is generally a product of cars.
|
| Very busy areas of cities without many cars are fairly quiet.
|
| Tire noise, exhaust noise, horns, etc all make a ton of
| noise. Living near a highway in the suburbs is probably
| inherently more noisy than many cities.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I like to think about the time around 1900 when the
| population was far far higher than today, but there were no
| cars. Horses don't make the same noise.
|
| Of course there was heavy industry in that day so that
| would be loud and filthy.
|
| How quiet was dense NYC in 1830 though?
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I guess it would depend on where you were. If you're in a
| high traffic area full of horses wearing metal shoes
| stepping on cobble stones and handcarts with metal rims
| rolling over cobble stones, it could probably get pretty
| loud.
|
| I bet it could get pretty quiet, even with the density.
| shaftway wrote:
| I had the same experience being in downtown SF (near Market)
| for the first time in a few years, but I attributed it to the
| number of electric cars.
|
| The whole visit felt weird, and eerie, and off somehow, but I
| couldn't figure out what it was. And then I was standing
| waiting for a crossing light and heard the clicking of a
| scooter's turn signal ~20 feet away. It stood out because it
| took a few seconds to realize that I shouldn't be hearing it
| because of other noise.
| Arrath wrote:
| Its funny for me, born and raised in the endless river valleys
| of the PNW, that I am so used to this topology that I'm much
| more comfortable in cities with an "opposite valley wall" (even
| if it's a building facade on the other side of the street and
| not the next row of hills a couple miles distant) in sight,
| than I am in Florida, on islands, or other big flatlands areas
| with nothing at all to break up the great sweep of the horizon.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I'm the same. Land that isn't mountainous is terrifying to
| me. It's like an instinct that The Horde could approach from
| any angle.
|
| The Midwest creeps me out.
|
| I come from a part of North America as jagged as Norway.
| paganel wrote:
| I'm the opposite, I'm always more at ease in the great
| plains (I'm from Eastern-Europe, for context), while when
| I'm at the mountainside I feel like there's something
| that's just about to "fall on my head" or similar,
| something that hangs over me.
| da02 wrote:
| What he is studying at Fordham? Is he and his friends worried
| about the job market after graduation?
| labrador wrote:
| Mapping the Psychogeography of New York City
|
| "map the emotional terrain of the world's most famous and
| influential urban center, New York City, and explore the effect
| of the city's powerful moods on those who live and work here."
|
| https://urbanomnibus.net/2010/10/you-are-here-mapping-the-ps...
|
| Psychogeography
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography
|
| Speed Levitch: The New York City "Grid Plan"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9awJCyjt550
| 05bmckay wrote:
| Is it terrible that I read the headline and immediately thought
| they were talking about Claude?
|
| I reread it and realized I'm in too deep.
| Herring wrote:
| I"m not sure I agree with the setup. He's weighting clutter types
| based on his personal experience, eg a newsstand (=3) is weighted
| 20 times higher than a tree (=0.15). It's very subjective, and
| like the model implies a desolate empty parking lot with no trees
| is somehow ideal. Important factors like urban vitality, utility,
| or aesthetic quality are not quantified so easily.
|
| If you want to see well-designed cities, look at Europe. Helsinki
| has both deep integration with nature, and high-quality public
| services. Denmark does very well with cycling, which improves
| public health and noise and air quality. Etc. I like to focus on
| countries that rank highly on the World Happiness Report, and try
| figure out what they're doing right.
| coldpie wrote:
| > a desolate empty parking lot with no trees is somehow ideal
|
| The author is trying to measure "claustrophobia" specifically,
| not ideal-ness. An empty parking lot would be less
| claustrophobic than most other kinds of places, yes. The
| measured claustrophobia factor appears to be just one part of a
| larger analysis that resulted in a NYT article, but
| unfortunately the article isn't linked.
| electroly wrote:
| An empty parking lot is effectively the gold standard for
| opposite-of-claustrophobia as the article seems to intend the
| term. It's the least claustrophobic space possible on the
| surface of the Earth. Even an open meadow is less open than an
| empty paved parking lot because it has small bushes and shrubs
| everywhere. This matches my intuition as a mild sufferer--I
| actually try to picture a brightly lit gas station parking lot
| if I'm feeling claustrophobic.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Greenwich village in third place is weird when most of the
| residential side streets have dense tree canopies and minimal
| traffic.
| Herring wrote:
| Yeah this is probably the only metric where Rikers island
| beats SoHo.
| quartz wrote:
| Agree with a lot of this methodology-- having lived in NYC with
| kids the #1 contributing factor to a feeling of claustrophobia
| for me is the size of the sidewalk and its buffering from the
| road.
|
| Compared to even the suburbs where 1-2 people on a sidewalk can
| feel like you're dangerously close to having to step into an
| active roadway, sidewalks in NYC neighborhoods like the upper
| east side feel gigantic and are bordered by parked cars that
| provide a buffer to the roadway.
|
| In 1811 the grid plan designated sidewalk widths to be 20ft for
| major cross-town roads vs. many suburban sidewalk widths at 4-5
| feet.
|
| I'm a big fan of this sidewalk width map:
| https://sidewalkwidths.nyc/
| kdr77 wrote:
| I think this misses the point that a large contributor to feeling
| claustrophobic is on-street parking in residential neighborhoods.
| The author mentions Cobble Hill as "quaint and quiet" but it has
| multiple main streets with two parking lanes and one travel lane.
| Combine that with narrow sidewalks and pedestrians who aren't six
| feet tall can't see across the street. It's like walking down a
| canyon made of SUVs on one side and brownstone staircases on
| another.
|
| I think a simpler analysis of sidewalk width plus the presence of
| curb parking would provide a closer representation of the lived
| experience. In mid-town, you have wide avenues and wide streets
| yet that's singled out as the worst area. Doesn't really add up
| IMO.
| HardwareLust wrote:
| Interesting. One anecdote is that having spent a considerable
| amount of time walking in a number of major cities (Tokyo,
| Singapore, SF, LA, Seattle, etc.) I've never felt anything
| remotely like 'claustrophobia' on the streets of NYC.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| They don't have data for "Cellars (not a problem unless open)"
|
| Walking past a random 10 foot deep open hole is very unnerving to
| me. It's also just one of the many ways the city is inhospitable
| for people with accessibility needs. But of course the NYCers
| probably don't even notice.
| foobarian wrote:
| They have "Trash can", but not "giant pile of trash bags" :-)
| grokgrok wrote:
| The random danger of NYC is part of its allure. People also
| benefit from appropriately challenging physical environments,
| as it enlivens and engages the body. Inattention in dense
| environments can lead to conflict and congestion, and so I
| suspect that the random observable dangers can serve some
| public good by causing general awareness and the self-exclusion
| of those who do not adapt to the needs of a dense place.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Another advantageous random danger in NYC is the roving
| squads of ninjas. Good opportunity to keep practicing your
| nunchuck skills.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Friend of mine when he lived in Greenwich, CT commented on
| the "roving bands of preppie youth."
|
| I think they were mostly harmless :-)
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| They might grow up to be managing directors at Bain
| Capital!
| chasd00 wrote:
| Read up on people being electrocuted by stepping on a manhole
| cover that has been energized by a utility line fault
| underneath. Every time I see one i think of those stories and
| wonder if it's going to kill me or not haha.
| xnx wrote:
| How is building height not the primary factor? Building setbacks
| are intended to reduce the claustrophobic feeling of deep
| shadowed canyons.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > In SoHo these days, there are so many pedestrians that they
| spill off the narrow sidewalks.
|
| Yeah, there you have it. I wonder why the sidewalks are so narrow
| (/s).
| BergAndCo wrote:
| Wow, the least crowded place is Rikers Island? I'm moving there
| right now!
| keernan wrote:
| I lived two blocks off Times Square for two years. The
| 'claustrophobia' described by the article provided me with a
| sense of anonymity which in turn made me feel safe.
|
| Living in the suburbs is much more like living in a fish bowl. I
| can't leave my house and take a walk around the neighborhood
| without the neighborhood being aware of my presence.
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(page generated 2025-10-30 23:01 UTC)