Midtown Manhattan is Losing Its Pedestrian Pizzaz
Here’s why streetlife has suffered over the past 50 years
Groundbreaking Research. As part of Holly Whyte’s Street Life Project, we studied two blocks on Lexington Avenue near Bloomingdale’s Department Store in the 1970s. This research about how a lively street functions was groundbreaking for the time, giving us as a baseline to look at how much Midtown has fundamentally changed over 50 years.
Our Unorthodox Approach:
- We learned about pick pocketing along these two blocks by accompanying NYPD detectives to understand the specific places where pick pocketing occured. One place was at the revolving doors into Bloomingdales where a pick pocket would enter the door with another person, picking their pocket. The other where pairs would operate together, especially crossing the street…one would accidentally bump into a candidate while the other with a newspaper wrapped around his hand to hide while he would would pick a persons pocket or purse.
- We observed the activity around a single wastebasket during the course of a day. We saw how the waste basket served as a desk for one person who laid a briefcase across the top. He was almost immediately accosted by a woman who came from across the street yelling at the man, “It is a wastebasket”. Because of the wastebasket’s design with a 8inch hole on the top, we noticed one well dressed man stuffing his newspaper in the round throat of the basket leaving it sticking out. Shortly after another man came along pulled it out, looked at it, and put it back in. Then a third well dressed man, without skipping a beat, pulled it out and went on.
- We noticed how the position of the waste basket next to lamp pole provided a place to get a break from the heavy fast-paced pedestrian flow.
- We studied a corner food store with takeout window right on the street, which narrowed the sidewalk enough to slow traffic and give passers-by a chance to see what was available to eat. This generated business throughout the day.
- We analyzed how a bank with a 25 foot blank wall facing the street harms the stores immediately next to it. The owner of a store immediately next door told us that when people walked by the bank they automatically sped up, and it took two or three storefronts for them to get back into a window-shopping pace. He had wisely canted his store window so potential customers would find it easier to see what he was offering.
- We discovered how a small convenience store merchant leased the sidewalk in front of hi very narrow store to a vender who sold wigs on a rack. The display of wigs slowed down pedestrians long enough that some decided to pop into his store.
Less Life on the Street. Lexington Avenue has changed fundamentally since 1972 when we first studied it . There’s a noticeable decline in the number of storefronts as new buildings take over entire blocks. In the photo at top, there are around 15 storefronts in a 200 foot block. There were also a significant number of second level businesses. Today there are three storefronts, and one is empty.
Soulless Sidewalks. As the decades passed, Lexington Avenue, along with most of midtown has lost a lot of its pizzazz. Large sections of Midtown and lower Manhattan are soulless, with bland boring streetscapes, empty plazas and limited food offerings.
Sidewalks have too little “friction” — which refers to the interesting sights and activities that entice people on foot to slow down and enjoy what’s going on around them.
Adios, Midtown? As vehicle traffic increases and new, monolithic buildings occupy entire blocks, in Midtown Manhattan has become less attractive as a place to spend time. Large swaths of Midtown are now dead on weekends. Fast moving traffic decimates streetlife. For tech businesses and a growing number of other office tenants, Midtown is losing popularity to older, more fine-grained neighborhoods such as in Soho, The West Village and DUMBO in Brooklyn.
