Monday, January 7, 2008

you live next to whaaaaa??!

HH hears a lot of talk around Hoboken about the far west side of town about how people can live so close to public housing, or on top of trains, etc. and be ok with it. On many web-sites including my own, reader comments have been quite negative about this aspect of city living (check out some comments from my Velocity Hoboken posts). I myself don't agree with such close-minded people. As I said from the beginning of our move, it's common place in Manhattan to have multi-million dollar condos right next to things like public housing, and most New Yorker's don't think twice about it. Because in reality it is no big deal. I think there's more of a stigma to this in Hoboken because many new residents of our square mile aren't coming from across the river. They're coming from suburbs farther away and are not used to this aspect of city life.

To further enhance my little Monday evening topic, please click below to read a New York Post article about recent new buildings going up smack dab next to what many people would think of as horrifying neighbors, such as prisons, garbage dumps, and porno shops. Yet there they are, selling at $2000 a square foot to live on top of the BQE, and it's no big deal:

The New York Post - Views You Could Lose

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you HH. I live near the lightrail and I dont really hear it. Even when it beeps every so often, I think of the night I heard the beeping and cars living near the FDR on the upper east side. And I lived on the 21st floor of a luxury doorman building! I think as it (it meaning Manhattan) continues to becomes too expensive for most people, people will realize the value and convenience of living right next to something like the light rail.