Photo: Beth Levendis
There’s a passage in Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities that makes Greenwich Village sound like Sesame Street. “I put out the garbage can…my little clang,” the late urbanist wrote in 1961. “I watch the other rituals of morning; Mr. Halpert unlocking the laundry’s handcart…Joe Cornacchia’s son-in-law stacking out the empty crates from the delicatessen, the barber bringing out his sidewalk folding chair…” She goes on to describe the “ballet” that is her neighborhood, a ballet you recognize as “New York.”
Yet that New York has been dying, if not decomposing, for years—at least in Manhattan.
Click here to read the rest of this introduction
- Top 10 ’hoods …with New York soul. We walked nearly every block of Manhattan to track ’em down. Let the debate begin.
- #1: Alphabet City: Meet our winner—quick, before it changes.
- #2: Chinatown: Lots of street life, low on chain stores and unchanged for years.
- #3: Washington Heights: Bodegaville lives on, despite the white people.
- #4: Inwood: What’s friendlier, far north and cooler than Canada? These days, Manhattanites know the answer.
- #5: Nolita & Little Italy: Manicotti and the Man, together at last.
- #6: Hell’s Kitchen: Leave your Mace at home. Bring your Chihuahua instead.
- #7: East Village: Retirees and undergrad share these streets...with a surplus of banks.
- #8: Lower East Side: It’s practically druggie–free, except for those new caffeine addicts.
- #9: East Harlem: It’s sprouting new condos–and luring back former residents.
- #10: Greenwich Village: Seediness remains firmly planted, despite the iPods.
- Neighborhoods with soul: 11-15: Central Harlem is up and coming but not far enough for our top 10.
- Neighborhoods with soul: 16-20: No, we didn’t forget the Upper West Side. It’s right here.
- Neighborhoods with soul: 21-27: What is the most soulless locale on the island? Click to find out.
- Jane Jacobs 101: A quick guide to this feisty urbanist's influential view on how cities should work.
- Jane’s addiction: New York’s Municipal Art Society remembers the grand dame of urbanism whose ideas formed the basis of our rating criteria.
- Soul survivors: You can’t swing a cannoli in the outer boroughs without hitting neighborhood character. But will the outlook always be sunny for these unique enclaves? Here’s our local forecast.
