Estimating the Perceived 'Claustrophobia' of New York City's Streets (2024)
29 comments
·October 30, 2025technothrasher
mtalantikite
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
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
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…
rayiner
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
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.
senkora
Midtown Manhattan is “too much” even for a lot of New Yorkers. I try to minimize my time there.
indoordin0saur
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
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.
FooBarBizBazz
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
Apparently the surge tolls they implemented recently contributed to less traffic, in Manhattan at least
nopalito
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
what were his preconceptions about the city other than "they're all loud and claustrophobic?"
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Herring
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.
electroly
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.
coldpie
> 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.
afavour
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
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.
shermantanktop
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
They have "Trash can", but not "giant pile of trash bags" :-)
HardwareLust
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.
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labrador
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"
kdr77
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.
quartz
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/
05bmckay
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.
flint
Obviously, he's never been to Rikers.
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.