I’m not disagreeing with the functionality, and personally don’t find the grid to be particularly bad, but do you really think West Village isn’t dramatically more liveable feeling? I suppose this quickly veers into hard-to-define sensations so perhaps the point is moot :)
I do suspect that a lot of people would prefer to live in that part of town over the more modern areas… as evidenced by the especially insane rent.
I’ve lived in Manhattan for close to thirty years got married here and raised a family here.
What you call a dramatically more livable feeling means different things to different people. Honestly it meant different things to me at 25, 35 and 45. It also meant different things when I was stretched financially and when I was flush.
The village substantially more expensive than e.g. the upper west side? (These places are all outside of my price range so I've never really looked.)
There are also lots of other reasons the tip of manhattan may have been more expensive—for example, it's just the oldest part of the city, so everything started there and expanded outwards.
...that might not be the best metric, I bet there are fewer super small apartments to be had on the UWS! I know the village has a fair number of places that were built before current laws about minimum square feet per apartment.
I don't know what the right metric would be—maybe median rent or even family income? I guess I also don't really think you can tell much from all this.)
