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Life on the Edge—of the City
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness…
–From “Here is New York” by E.B. White
Driving through the parkland north of New York City and heading up the Taconic Parkway sets our current economic troubles in geologic perspective. Boulders the size of houses and trees—maples and pines and elms, some of them a hundred years old— sit imperiously as traffic flows by. The to-ings and fro-ings of the drivers and the speed and mania of commutation ebb and flow with the rising and falling of dollars to be gotten in Gotham.
My friend Steve is one person who flowed and is now ebbed, thanks to the loss of his job this spring. Over the years, he had commuted in from parts of Westchester, making his way progressively north until he was grinding it out with a car ride to a train ride. The job allowed him to support a growing family and still have access to woods and alone time.
“I never thought once about moving into the City,” says Steve. “It’s all the stuff you hear about— and that I found out when I was dating my soon-to-be wife. She really liked going into the City because it was exciting … but for me it was just expensive and a hassle and people giving you attitude.”
And now that New York City is no longer the center of his livelihood, it’s made him rethink his proximity to the city and what it means. “You do a complete analysis of worst-case scenarios — how long you can go without a job and what will happen to your savings — all the stuff anybody would do. But here, you also have to look at how expensive taxes and just living are,” he says. “We easily considered leaving the state. We have some great friends, but in the end you have to take care of your immediate family and that’s it. If New York makes it so hard on me, it will be an easy choice.”
People like Steve are not so unusual these days. Right now, the tide is out.The money has receded. And so those who have lived beyond the city’s borders are rethinking their relationship to Gotham. For many of them, its pull has dramatically weakened: not only are there fewer employers paying the big salaries, but the cost of getting to any jobs that are left is on the dramatic increase.
With 10-plus percent increases proposed in the immediate future on Metro North trains and big price jumps on toll bridges and toll roads, the cost of working in the City is quickly ratcheting up. Townships that provide parking for commuters have in many cases put off raising parking fees, but now, locales are looking at all options for raising cash, and steep parking increases are on the table. The tab for a Metro North rider, as for the Jersey transit rider, is easily more than $1,000 after-tax dollars a year; nearly $2,000 for some Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess townships. Add to that the New York commuter tax, which is pending restoration and comes right off the top line. An extra several thousand in cost makes a big difference to stressed incomes. What will happen if gasoline returns to its perch above $4 a gallon?
The far-reaching effects of the City’s ailments make financial pages and television programs, but for many people on the urban periphery, the damage is more personal and intimate. The love affair with the City that the Sinatra songs and Woody Allen movies spoke to…that love affair is fraying, perhaps irreparably. All romances, after all, need to have great distractions or great dreams to survive. If there is less cash for great distraction and the great dream is diminished, how does the City keep its hold on hearts?
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, writing on Harvard Business Review’s site, sees an inherent contradiction in the myth of the urban core’s unlimited attractive powers and the “industrial age rhythms” that keep people tethered to the City for work.
Many U.S. cities have become commuter nightmares as urban sprawl sends people across longer distances in their cars every weekday. According to the 2008 U.S. Census estimates, 84 percent of the U.S. population lives within 363 metropolitan areas that spill over central city boundaries and, in some cases, over state lines. Jobs within central business districts have been declining, while jobs outside a ten-mile ring have been growing.
The striving, relentless push of the long commuters to take part fully in the life of the City may be easing up because of the downturn. The intensity has undoubtedly dimmed, and New York Ciry without that push brings to mind an image of Grand Central terminal being more of a curiosity than a spectacularly vibrant public space.
Poor Richard lives in the country north of New York, and commutes to the City for a job in media.
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14 comments for “Life on the Edge—of the City”
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I couldn’t agree more. I recently moved to West Hartford, CT and it has resulted in a dramatic increase in the quality of life for myself and my family. I love the city and miss many things about working there, but now I have a 10 minute commute to my office here in town, I spend less on gas in a year’s commute than I did on a monthly Metro-North ticket, and my local taxes are two-thirds lower than they were in Westchester. Having a small urban center (Hartford) nearby means we can still go out and have a good meal or catch a show, and we are still within a two hour drive of both NY and Boston. Getting out of the NYC commuter culture was the best thing to happen to me in past few years.
An enlightening perspective for a college student living in a bubble that only really includes Main St. and the nearest Wegman’s. New York City is only known to me as the home of the Met, Canal St., Rita Ford’s Music Boxes and petite Thai restaurants. To hear the city classified as the dark and gloomy Gotham, underlined by the fatigue of the average subway-rider, is both eye-opening and disturbing. I reside on Main St. now, but when will it be my turn to join the the ebb and flow of the tired commuter? And will I ever have even the opportunity to do that?
It’s a sad reality about the expense of NYC and commuting into it. I live outside of the City and love it. I was a commuter for 25+ years on NJ Transit and the cost was very high and time-consuming. Once in the City,
there were subway fares, etc. A recent trip into the City was a lot of money-a big deterrent for frequent visits. NYC was where I worked for many years, but now I think I’ll stick to something outside of the City!
I’m sad to report this, Han, but Rita Ford’s Music Boxes–for decades one of my favorite places in my beloved New York–is no longer on East 65th St. or in any other storefront. You can still order from them at http://www.ritafordmusicboxes.com
Poor Richard, I applaud your thinking out loud. However, if you have any plan of selling to a greater fool (should you plan to sell your home North of The Metropolis) I would keep your thoughts to yourself. Happy listing. Your Obd’t Sv’t, Complete Idiot
I watch from the country as my husband’s commute gets longer and more expensive, he sleeps less, shrinks into himself more each day as the burden weighs him down. What words of comfort could possibly be said?
It would seem smart in many ways for NYC employers to consider offering their staff the chance to work from home — even just two days a week would ease the commuting cost and the emotional/physical toll on the employees.
It’s sort of a slap in the face for commuters–many are living outside the city because New York is so expensive, and how they’re finding even that isn’t worth it…
Good stuff, Poor Richard. I hope this is just the start of an almanac that will further probe this vital issue.
A few ideas:
1. Let’s think about this issue across lines of class, ethnicity, race, and age. The type of commuter you’re describing seems most probably a white, middle-class, middle-aged professional. But not necessarily, to the extent the suburbs and exurbs have diversified ethno-racially. I’d be interested in some hard numbers, especially ones sensitive to population trend lines over time (e.g. white population getting older, Latino population getting younger). If the urban economic core whittles away, and commuting patterns shift accordingly, what will this mean for the broader geography of race/ethnicity/class in the metro region?
2. On the cultural side, let’s hope the romantic Gotham of SInatra and Woody Allen never dies. But, again, thinking cross-culturally: for a great many New Yorkers, romance has been carried more by artists like Billy Eckstine, Johnny Hartman, Betty Carter, Hector Lavoe, Mark Anthony and the like. And this romance is connected to very different neighborhoods of the city. How is this impacted by the shifting jobs/housing/transportation paradigm?
3. Everybody knows that Brooklyn is emerging as a much stronger “core,” both economically and culturally. Time may come when Manhattan strives to become the new Brooklyn. Perhaps the other boroughs and Hoboken/Jersey City are not far behind. Even within Manhattan, smart money has been moving uptown to Harlem and other formerly woebegone corners of the island. How do these shifting eco-cultural contours of NYC itself shape the suburban/exurban corridors?
4. I think your sense of the basic trendline is sound. But let’s not underestimate what appears to be a sturdy strain of masochism in the New York metro commuter. The lifestyle advantages of giving up the hellish commute for the community life of an outlying burgh have been obvious for a good long time. And yet, seemingly against reason, millions have opted for the commute. Relatedly: post 9/11, you heard stories of people paying cash for houses up in the Berkshires and hightailing out of the city. But it didn’t take long for NYC to turn the tide both economically and psychologically, and NYC pre-2008 financial crash will be remembered as a good time for the city. Point being: in spite of the irrationality of the current set-up (e.g. in a digital age, still having people mass in skyscrapers in midtown Manhattan), there’s a draw to the old core that will not dissipate rapidly.
A thoughtful perspective on the dynamic relationship between the city and the suburbs – a relationship cast in stark relief during a period of economic turmoil. Great addition to the site! A very relevant dialogue from across the bridges and tunnels.
Good piece Poor Richard. The moment the economics no longer favor a commute versus hacking out a living in the exurbs there will certainly be fewer metro north riders. At the end of the day, any sane person would rather not spend his/her time commuting. Migration patterns will change slowly. undoubtedly, there are too many homes in the exurbs for the economics presently unfolding with the Manhattan job market shrunken. People are slow to just move to low cost areas. As much as you may hate it, there is an addiction to the throb of the city’s cultural heart beat. While exurbanites may love to curse city dwellers, most moved from the city at some point and the tension is unmistakable.
Personally I’ve always been drawn to the city because of opportunity, not the culture. I never desired to live there but some of my kids do and all would like to. Now that my industry is dying, and I’m no longer well compensated I wonder now if the priorities set years ago were wrong right from the start. I need to reinvent myself, and I’ll certainly will try to do so much closer to my tomatoes and my motorcycle.
As a former NYC commuter turned semi-suburban, sometimes-work-from-home, self employed Coloradoan, I have to tell you that the Daily to-and-fro is one of the things I miss least about the city grind. In addition to the potentially crippling economic fall-out so astutely pointed out by PR in this article, there is also our personal well-being to consider. Spending 30, 45, 60 minutes or more in a brutal commute surrounded by thousands of other aggravated people was always a soul-crushing experience for me.
Perhaps this ties into a larger issue of what this recession means in the long-term for us as individuals. I for one am convinced that the pre-recession glory days are gone for good. To live in the hope that the economy is going to rebound and bring back those heady salad days is, perhaps, delusional. Maybe it’s time to adjust our collective expectations and begin living our lives feeding our sense of self-fulfillment as opposed to “the beast called portfolio” as a wise troubadour once put it. I appreciate the lure of the city and it’s mystique as much as anyone, but I’ve yet to put my finger on a single thing that Gotham can provide that I can’t find in my new life. Just a thought….
Thanks for the piece PR!