Living in New York vs. London

[Kikujiro]

Wilfrid, let's do this your way. We'll compare the entire fucking cities. We'll take your figure of 28,000 acres for NYC. We'll even assume you've underestimated it. Hell, let's bump it up by 50%. So you get 42k acres, or 170 square kilometers. Now, the five boros are 785km2 (please don't make me find a source for that), which means that nearly 22 per cent of New York is green space (yeah, right).

Now, let's check the London Biodiversity Action Plan.

The 33 Greater London boroughs cover nearly 158,000 hectares (over 600 square miles). More than 40% of the total land area is green open space and nearly half of that is considered valuable as wildlife habitat.

That's 1554 square kilometers, by the way. So despite being considerably bigger, London has not only more green space in terms of quantity (nearly 4 times as much) but in terms of proportion of the city too.

Are we done?

[Wilfrid]

I think listing accurate figures with citations is not so much "Wilfrid's way" as the "sensible way". You continue to compare apples and oranges, of course, since the figures I gave were not for "green spaces" but for parks managed by the New York Parks Department.

And you have indeed included the entire city, with a vengeance. If you want to talk about the Thames Valley, the Ingrebourne marshes and the River Lea, I think we should be permitted to haul in the Adirondacks. Would you like to tell the class how many miles Ingrebourne is from Trafalgar Square?

Not necessary. It's over twenty miles. Which distance, from Times Square, would take you way into New Jersey or the other end of Westchester County in upstate New York.

Edited January 10, 2003 by Wilfrid (log)

[SobaAddict70]

Just to make myself clear:

I don't care who made the initial comparison -- the subtext continues to pop up in our wonderful continuing discussion.

When people have made comparisons between NYC and X, they really mean between Manhattan and X. The Manhattan-centric view is a little off-putting to me. Although I currently live in Manhattan, I had resided in Queens for 10 years prior to moving into my current apartment -- so you'll forgive me when I get a little nonplussed when people continue to dismiss the rest of the city as irrelevant to any discussion at hand that involves the totality of the City.

I'm sure you'd feel the same way if people thought that Shakespeare, Milton and Chaucer were all that mattered in British literature; that Dickens, Wordsworth, Keats and Woolf are irrelevant.

SA

[g.johnson]

Not necessary.  It's over twenty miles.  Which distance, from Times Square, would take you way into New Jersey

Not that adding New Jersey would increase the area of parkland.

[Liza]

(Cheap shot, G, and inaccurate. )

[yvonne johnson]

OK, here are some more figures:

"NYC has by far the largest urban parks system in the US, occupying some 26,000 acres (10,350 hectares) exclusive of state and federal lands...comprisng more than fifteen hundred parks and playgrounds...golfcourses, historic houses...wetlands" The Encyclopedia of New York, edited by Kenneth T Jackson (1995)

"London has over 17,200 hectares of urban park."

http://www.independence.org.uk/html/body_l...ondon_info.html

I'm finding it hard to come up with other on-line sources for London, but several tourist sites say London has 1700 parks.

Edited January 10, 2003 by yvonne johnson (log)

[g.johnson]

"NYC has by far the largest urban parks system in the US, occupying some 26,000 acres (10,350 hectares) exclusive of state and federal lands...comprisng more than fifteen hundred parks and  playgrounds...golfcourses, historic houses...wetlands" The Encyclopedia of New York, edited by Kenneth T Jackson (1995)

We've had this trouble with you before. How do we know you're quoting Jackson accurately? Photograph the page and post it immediately.

[=Mark]

I'm surprised the Topic Police have not chimed in about this thread having very definately gone "off."

[Wilfrid]

I apologize for getting my hectares and acres wrong. I am clearly right about everything else.

Turning momentarily to restaurants, I was trying to come up with a sample of London restaurants which might be described as just a step down from the top tier. I am not sure that I've done very well, but I came up with:

Bibendum

Chez Bruce

Club Gascon

Pied a Terre

Richard Corrigan

St John

Zafferano

And then I tried pairing them against a New York bunch:

Blue Hill

Cafe Boulud

Craft

Gotham Bar and Grill

March

Union Pacific

Veritas

What do you all think? It may be that someone could come up with a better list for London (it's not supposed to be comprehensive, but I tried to make a list of good places).

Earlier, Yvonne compared St John favorably with Blue Hill. Intriguing. St John's menu is more up my street than the menu at Blue Hill, and I have a lot of respect for Fergus Henderson, but the technical standards at Blue Hill seem a lot higher. I have had many more imprecise dishes at St John, even though the style of cooking requires less expertise.

(Mark - not off topic, just a heavy emphasis on one aspect. Remember, this is "restaurants, cuisine and travel, and boy do you need to travel to get to Hornchurch Country Park from Central London )

Edited January 10, 2003 by Wilfrid (log)

[g.johnson]

I'm surprised the Topic Police have not chimed in about this thread having very definately gone "off." 

Think picnic.

[hollywood]

I'm surprised the Topic Police have not chimed in about this thread having very definately gone "off." 

Perhaps a ticket for parking overtime will suffice.

[Stone]

I believe this inter-racial couple lives in New York:

Edited January 10, 2003 by Dstone001 (log)

[anil]

Daintily as ever...

I live in NYC though I used to live in London. My biggest problem with London, after the tubes closing, the pubs closing, the meagre whisky pours .....

The measured and puny-little pourings of whiskey in London is a major negetive - And no third on the house The number of buybacks I've had in NYC are enough to quench the thirst of the whole of London.

[Kikujiro]

Not necessary.  It's over twenty miles.  Which distance, from Times Square, would take you way into New Jersey or the other end of Westchester County in upstate New York.

Which is about as far as you have so far moved the goalposts.

[201]

Not necessary.  It's over twenty miles.  Which distance, from Times Square, would take you way into New Jersey

Not that adding New Jersey would increase the area of parkland.

I'm willing to go outside and measure my yard if it will help advance the discussion any. It probably has more grass area than Union Square Park.

[Steve Plotnicki]

I haven't read through this thread but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. I think that NYC used to win over London hands down. But over the last five years, London has become an exciting place. And I think that especially sinece 9/11, NYC has been more then a bit of a drag. Sure it has great stuff going on but it has lost its edge when it comes to energy and intensity. To me, London could be a more interesting place to live right now, especially if it isn't permanent. And I don't think this has to do with any one thing like restaurants, parks etc. I think the general vibe in London is good and the general vibe in NYC is a bit lagging.

[g.johnson]

I think the general vibe in London is good and the general vibe in NYC is a bit lagging.

Plotnicki, we agree. Which, disturbingly, is becoming something of a habit.

[jamal]

As a Londoner living in NY for the past 4 years I have to agree with Plotnicki as well. NY has definitely lost the edge it had over London in terms of the general vibe and sense of life in the city, this seems especially true living in SoHo which has definitely lost a lot over the past few years

[jciel]

Many moons ago, I was privelged enough to live in both of these fine cities. At that time, I would have given NY the hands down championship of urban living, and London the urbane championship. There are many redeeming qualities to life in both, but I always believed that London felt, and to this day, feels like home. I think the differences in vibe are attributable to 9/11 when NY lost its feeling of invinceability. London has always had some underlying theme of terrorism whether from the IRA or some other of the Euro/ME fringe groups. In London, at least in my tenure, this was a given fact of everyday life, and one was not slowed in the least by its presence. NY has yet to come to terms with its new status as target, whereas London has dismissed same. My strangest day in London was when my neighbor was arrested for bomb making activities related to the IRA. Oddly, none of the other neighbors seemed much surprised, nor very much concerned, and this was in Knightsbridge! I must concur with the previous mention that these are really the only two cities that matter, otherwise this thread would not have produced the volumes of entertaining dialogue.

[Kikujiro]

When I was a kid the police found an IRA bomb factory in the house just on the other side of our back garden. They were alerted to the place when an alumnus of my school was breaking into a car and someone who was asleep inside woke up and shot him. Guns were more unusual then.

[SobaAddict70]

Does anyone think that the "aura" will return over time in the next ten years?

For example (not that this is necessarily a bad thing), NYC will be host to the Republican presidential convention in 2004, which will bring a badly needed boost to the local economy. (Republican delegates are noted for being big spenders and "socialites", although this remains to be seen.)

Also, there is the (remote) chance that the city will be selected to host the 2012 Olympics.

I would say that 9/11 may have taken off the sheen of invincibility but I think that things have a way of reasserting themselves. This is after all, "the city that never sleeps"....a tired cliche but true in so many ways.

SA

[g.johnson]

I think the differences in vibe are attributable to 9/11 when NY lost its feeling of invinceability.

I think it's more attributable to a London upswing than a NYC downswing. I was conscious of greater vitality in London several years ago, possibly starting when the Labour government was elected.

[stefanyb]

NYC will be host to the Republican presidential convention in 2004, which will bring a badly needed boost to the local economy.

This is going to be at Madison Square Garden, no less. I've started making my placards already

[Steve Plotnicki]

I think that it's 60% London upswing and 40 % 9/11. But I think the London upswing is more than temporary. I just think that London is more of an international city then NYC is at this point and that is the main driver. The big foreign money seems to be landing in London and I think that as much as people hate to admit it, strong capital markets are the first peg in having an interesting city in the way we're speaking. It also helps to have a government that is interested in modernizing things and creating a certain hipness. No way Giuliiani did that for NYC.

Johnson - I knew you'd come around.

[Wilfrid]

Since I did do a little research yesterday, I thought I'd share the findings. I happened to have recent Time Out's for the same week in London and New York. While the listings aren't comprehensive, I think they represent a reasonable thumbnail guide to what's happening.

I don't think anyone queried my earlier assertion about the vitality of New York's art scene, and indeed New York turns out to have about twice as many exhibition spaces, outside the museums and large institutions, as London. I wasn't so sure how theater would compare, but when I added up the off and off-off Broadway spaces and compared the analogous London categories, I discovered New York did have a greater quantity of activity - about sixty active venues compared with forty-five. Comparing the quality would be a difficult exercize - I'm sure there are good shows in both cities. Incidentally, this didn't include cabaret venues, which are separately listed. Here New York must outstrip London about ten to one. There are no London cabaret listings in Time Out.