I've been searching for a while to say things that might be appropriate to say about New York City, but it's difficult, given the subject matter at hand, my own inadequacies as a writer, and the fact that I don't want to end up looking like a
I could go through the numbers and point out the exceptionalism which is captured in these slices of data, but you can read the featured and very good wiki article yourself. A couple of things that stand out: population density (more than 5 times Sydneys', Manhattans' density is over 12 times that of Sydney) the number of households that don't have a car (more than half, and more than 3/4 in Manhattan) how incredibly environmentally friendly it is (gasoline consumption hasn't changed since the 1920s, water so clean it doesn't even need to be purified; the stats of carbon output are similarly impressive) and a subway system so large and so well-known it's available on umbrellas.
I think one of the most sensible, non-retarded things you can say about NYC is how it tends to resist generalisations of it (mine notwithstanding). But a) that's a total cop out and b) it's such a trivially simple truism that it lacks worth mentioning; pablum, in a word. It might be still be necessary, given the breath, depth and scope of diversity that NYC has.
Instead, i'll end with this:
New York City is the cities' city. It is the ultimate and quintessential realisation of what cities can be and the potential of cities as expressions of human endeavour; it is, in short, an urbanists' (wet) dream.
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