Well, yeah. You know, I never thought about that. ha. I just think it's really funny how people on this thread claim to be intellects, but still asign themselves to the typical, banal stereotypes. Since i'm from North Carolina, i'm a redneck. Since I live in Bushwick I must be a trustie from CT - what ever happened to a coversation? Shit. Not to mention the age difference amoungst everyone. It seems like the older guys on this forum are taking out a lot of angst on the younger architects.
i think this thread represents a certain subcultural divide in our profession--most of us came from places that are not NY/SF/LA/CHI and some us decided to go to places that are NY/SF/LA/CHI after we graduated
the divide is that some people like the big city, some people don't
Ochona that wasnt directed at you, please dont take offense.
Seriously though, it's quiet frustrating when someone cant post an opinion without getting a personal stab in response.
Who the fuck cares if someone wants to move to NY? and who the hell cares where they end up living? Whether it's an overpriced condo 2 miles away from the hood or in the city is up to them
none taken -- i think there is a valid discussion at hand that reflects the latent urban/antiurban conflict that has riddled the US since alexander hamilton vs thomas jefferson
True... ok so who's going to buy the copyright to this discussion? Anyone want to get in on the publishing deal? Maybe we can make a broadway play out of it... we'll do the play for a year, then it'll be off to LA to shoot the film.
Funny but tribeca is the most similar to suburb living in manhattan. Don't get me wrong but Tribeca is obsessed trying to avoid a SoHo effect happen to their quiet hood.
I like it a lot as well but at night is totally dead.
Perhaps they are right, we've seen what happened to the meat packing district. Hoboken anyone?
John, I think pretty much everyone reading your thoughts is taking offense. I started by liking what you had to say about New York and other things, but you've proven to turn out to just be another asshole who loves to make people hear you. From wherever.
If you don't care about the thread then shut the fuck up and go back to work. Other people do. Like people thinking of moving to New York perhaps. As the thread is titled.
Manhattan is nice (earlier comments aside) but from an social POV the satellite towns that surround it are much more interesting right now. You have all these commuter villages and former manufacturing towns along the Hudson that are re-awakening as artists flee the "big island" for cheaper digs.
That in itself is not so interesting or new (I'm trying to bring this discussion back into what Ochona was talking about), but the tension between the old time locals and the "colonists" is so think you can cut it with a knife.
Pomo, while I agree that many of the commuter villages and post-industrial towns along the Hudson are far more interesting than they were only a few years ago, they still lack any real density to create a thriving scene of their own. I love Beacon, Peeskill, and other towns in the lower Hudson Valley, but it seems that everything these towns offer can be had in a single weekend.
Like I said earlier, urbanism is no longer simply a physical condition.
The city is the suburb and vice versa. This exists not only on a social level, but on an infrastructural one as well (you can now get as good an internet connection in the burbs as you can in Times Square). The "old world" concept of heavy accumulation is no longer valid in todays city. Even the word city is corrupt, for it is merely a cloak of nostalgia about what we want cities to be, based on what we percieve they once were.
The social atmosphere of the local pub can be felt whether you are in the midst of the metropolis or in a strip mall in the burbs. Community and culture are everywhere, you just need to readjust your way of interpreting it.
The physical conditions are what defines "urbanism" - which is why we see so many "new urbanist" developments mocking real and authentic urban streetscapes. Density is density, that's what makes a city heavily accumulated. This density cannot be simulated or emulated except through piecemeal growth and physical accumulation. Manhatten is dense because of physical boundaries, LA scrawls and sprawls because of no physical boundaries.
Pomo, unless you intend on spending your Saturday nights on the internet, physical proximity to other people still matters.
While you certainly may be able to feel a "social atmosphere" at a local pub or a strip mall, you're more likely to find more options for finding a particular "social atmosphere" in a city.
Despite high speed internet connections, density still matters.
But thats what I am saying. I think that most of the posts (I could be wrong) are coming from people who live in cities. How do you know what goes on in the suburbs if your daily life is shaped by the "urban experience" so many of us take for granted? When ever I go home to visit my parents (who live in a shitty medium sized town in Florida) I am annoyed at the lack of "urbanism" that I am used to in LA. However, since they put in a Barnes and Noble it has taken over as the town square. People from all over the town come there to socialize, drink coffee, and browse the frighteningly huge "Chirstian Faith" section. This may not be yours or my view of what urbanism is but to these people they have founded a community based on values, relationships, and social interaction that is the same as your local pub or deli.
Certainly more diversity exists in places like NYC and LA, but are the multitude of experiences that diverse? I would question it, especially since everytime I go back to NY it seems more like LA everyday and vice versa. It is a rather stange experience to get on the plane in LA, get off the plane in NYC and not feel a change. I think that large cities have become so similar in their production and display of a certain kind of spatial culture that the diversity you are talking about is a transparent condition. True it may exist in pockets, but the overall condition is the same, no matter what the scale.
And FL is not Urban either. The most Urban part of all of FL is South Beach. The rest is a huge Suburb.
what you are talking about is the new commuinity making in the suburb, not Urban though.
I would disagree strongly q+. LA is not all about the freeway. Within the city are thousands of diverse neighborhoods that can be accessed in foot, by bike, by bus, or by train. Sure the space I've lived here for 6 years and so I have a bit of perspective. Sure, I'm the perpetual tourist in Manhattan and don't know it as well as some of you (from the posts some of you could use a tour of LA from a local), but that doesn't mean my observations don't hold water. I think you all are missing the point- that urbanism is a frame of mind. Dictionary definitions and statistics are flexible, you have to look at the system through a different set of glasses.
Sure, I got a tour of LA from a few locals. Via the freeway and car. It isnt really pedestrian friendly and the public transportation is annoying and unreliable.
There is such a thing as "being alone in a crowd"... Density doesn't always mean more social, or better community. For example, its not really community if it we're talking about a density of all strangers and phonies. There are other many cultural and economic factors at work... Different places have different lifestyles and demographics. And some places have more transient and changing populations than others...
Alright, fair enough, like you I am bootser of my own town. What I am getting at is that urbanism is about a certain sense of community and a gathering of infrastructure (social or physical). I am arguing that the city become a condition and not a place because cities in the old sense are dead. Part of the reason I think New York works for people is it really plays to their nostalgic views of what cities once were. Los Angeles really represents the new global condition of clustering networks (again both socially and infrastructurally). These networks are generally disparate systems that do not necessarily share any concious objective, yet are viewed as a whole. When people talk about LA they usually are refering to the greater LA Metro area, which encompasses hundreds of cities and suburbs. These hundreds of nodes are heavily dependent on the overall wellfare of the larger system, despite having sometimes conflicting objectives. I would liken this to the approaches of Peter and Allison Smithson, who were able to look at both the Macro and Micro scales and adjust their critique accordingly. They would see a city as not only being a clustering of people on a block, but a clustering of blocks within a city, and a clustering of cities within a larger econmoic node.
I think to view walkability and the scale of the architecture as the deciding factors of urbanism is a pretty transparent way of seeing it.
I think that even Jane Jacobs (the great defender of the concept of "city") would agree that Manhattan has a certain likeness to the small villages of Europe in it's sense of community and place. She would also probably agree that the suburbs, with their strip malls, Starbucks, and lack of street life contain within them a different kind of urbanism, but one that is just as valid.
I am not saying that all suburbs exist like this, nor am I suggesting that LA is the 21st century answer to urbanism. I am merely defending a position that is able understand that New York is not an perfect example of a city, and that by blindly glorifying it as New Yorkers do, they only reaffirm its position as a museum of urban development of the 20th century.
Thats probably not much clearer, but it's the best I can for now.
johnprolly - what have you got against LA? and what's with your "local" friends giving you the "interstate tour". Surely they could have done better...
am84... if you still even bother to read this thread:
I think it is a very good idea to work between undergrad and grad school. I know I wish I did.
A few words of caution:
What you have heard is true; i.e. It is difficult to find work in progressive firms in the city. That does not mean it is impossible. A UF grad myself, I find that there is some ivy-league snobbery but every firm is different. It will take you some time to find a job. Without being here there is no chance that you are going to get any interviews.
You might want to give yourself more than a year, time flies here, and in our profession, no less than 2 years is considered substantial enough experience to get a decent salary once you do get your masters. Sadly, the more architecture related software you are proficient in - the more jobs you will qualify for, including Vectorworks. (See newyork-architects.com for examples)
If you can swing it; just move here. Plan to be unemployed for at least 3 months, more if possible, and dont get discouraged in the job search. Soak up as much of the city as you can at the same time. If you cant find anything that you want, look at other jobs that will allow you to keep looking for an internship. So even if it takes you a year to find an architecture job, you would still be living and "PLAYING" (-dont forget the playing) in arguably the most architecturally, socially and culturally interesting cities that this country has to offer.
johnprolly -
why is it that you typed you had antique hardwoods, and then like 10 posts later, brag about new floors and appliances? also, "sand in your vagina" was hardly something you started. and apparat may have missed LA, but he, fehlmann and a shitlode more didn't miss seattle. (www.dbfestival.com)
it is aways fun to read what others are saying about what's like to live in NYC and it is aways funny to me when people compare cities...
as a native new yorker, born and raised in queens...yes NYC has 5 boroghs for thos of you who don't know, and queens is one of them. watching coming to america with eddie murffie & a bronx tale always remind me of home...yes a bronx tale is actully shot at my high school in astoria queens.
anyway in response to the original post, i would recommend doing anything you think you feel comfortable, but be serious and flexible about moving to NYC. to move any where it is assumed you the desire to experience different environment, or sick of where you were, as long as you have an open mind and adopable you well do just fine. FL and NYC is 2 different worlds, as i have lived in tempa for 6 months...the biggest difference i would say is that NYC is a true pedestrian city. You can live in any of the 5 boroughs and don't need a car...even is staten island...many simply rent a car if they feel like taking a road trip.
as far as people goes, like any place on earth, there are good and there are bad...it all depends on who you meet and who you decide to hang out with. yes people are here tend to be more intense and say whats on their minds...those who pretend to be someone else or what i called posers of NYC who are actually from kansas are the kinds you should stay away from. NYC is made of many people from outside the state, some of these posers acting out their frustration can be mistakenly seemed as wacko new yorkers.
anyway, nyc is a great city, but so are tokyo, paris, barcelona and many others...experiencing different cities is an important part of an architect's education...so stay open minded, love every where you visited and stayed, because it is the only way you can get the most out of them.
Moving to NYC?
can't we just all get along?
You guys are seriously the biggest group of halfwits i've ever met. I mean, I get the douche chills everytime I read this thread.
do all your idioms involve female genitalia?
Well, yeah. You know, I never thought about that. ha. I just think it's really funny how people on this thread claim to be intellects, but still asign themselves to the typical, banal stereotypes. Since i'm from North Carolina, i'm a redneck. Since I live in Bushwick I must be a trustie from CT - what ever happened to a coversation? Shit. Not to mention the age difference amoungst everyone. It seems like the older guys on this forum are taking out a lot of angst on the younger architects.
i'm probably your age
i think this thread represents a certain subcultural divide in our profession--most of us came from places that are not NY/SF/LA/CHI and some us decided to go to places that are NY/SF/LA/CHI after we graduated
the divide is that some people like the big city, some people don't
vive la difference, y'all
Ochona that wasnt directed at you, please dont take offense.
Seriously though, it's quiet frustrating when someone cant post an opinion without getting a personal stab in response.
Who the fuck cares if someone wants to move to NY? and who the hell cares where they end up living? Whether it's an overpriced condo 2 miles away from the hood or in the city is up to them
none taken -- i think there is a valid discussion at hand that reflects the latent urban/antiurban conflict that has riddled the US since alexander hamilton vs thomas jefferson
True... ok so who's going to buy the copyright to this discussion? Anyone want to get in on the publishing deal? Maybe we can make a broadway play out of it... we'll do the play for a year, then it'll be off to LA to shoot the film.
Casting:
Redneck - John prolly
add to the list
i have been to new york...and i absolutely loooooved the triangle below canal street...the "big apple" is definitely THE place for architects
Funny but tribeca is the most similar to suburb living in manhattan. Don't get me wrong but Tribeca is obsessed trying to avoid a SoHo effect happen to their quiet hood.
I like it a lot as well but at night is totally dead.
Perhaps they are right, we've seen what happened to the meat packing district. Hoboken anyone?
John, I think pretty much everyone reading your thoughts is taking offense. I started by liking what you had to say about New York and other things, but you've proven to turn out to just be another asshole who loves to make people hear you. From wherever.
If you don't care about the thread then shut the fuck up and go back to work. Other people do. Like people thinking of moving to New York perhaps. As the thread is titled.
Yo La Tengos' home town
I love Hoboken.
Manhattan is nice (earlier comments aside) but from an social POV the satellite towns that surround it are much more interesting right now. You have all these commuter villages and former manufacturing towns along the Hudson that are re-awakening as artists flee the "big island" for cheaper digs.
That in itself is not so interesting or new (I'm trying to bring this discussion back into what Ochona was talking about), but the tension between the old time locals and the "colonists" is so think you can cut it with a knife.
Pomo, while I agree that many of the commuter villages and post-industrial towns along the Hudson are far more interesting than they were only a few years ago, they still lack any real density to create a thriving scene of their own. I love Beacon, Peeskill, and other towns in the lower Hudson Valley, but it seems that everything these towns offer can be had in a single weekend.
Like I said earlier, urbanism is no longer simply a physical condition.
The city is the suburb and vice versa. This exists not only on a social level, but on an infrastructural one as well (you can now get as good an internet connection in the burbs as you can in Times Square). The "old world" concept of heavy accumulation is no longer valid in todays city. Even the word city is corrupt, for it is merely a cloak of nostalgia about what we want cities to be, based on what we percieve they once were.
The social atmosphere of the local pub can be felt whether you are in the midst of the metropolis or in a strip mall in the burbs. Community and culture are everywhere, you just need to readjust your way of interpreting it.
The physical conditions are what defines "urbanism" - which is why we see so many "new urbanist" developments mocking real and authentic urban streetscapes. Density is density, that's what makes a city heavily accumulated. This density cannot be simulated or emulated except through piecemeal growth and physical accumulation. Manhatten is dense because of physical boundaries, LA scrawls and sprawls because of no physical boundaries.
Pomo, unless you intend on spending your Saturday nights on the internet, physical proximity to other people still matters.
While you certainly may be able to feel a "social atmosphere" at a local pub or a strip mall, you're more likely to find more options for finding a particular "social atmosphere" in a city.
Despite high speed internet connections, density still matters.
But thats what I am saying. I think that most of the posts (I could be wrong) are coming from people who live in cities. How do you know what goes on in the suburbs if your daily life is shaped by the "urban experience" so many of us take for granted? When ever I go home to visit my parents (who live in a shitty medium sized town in Florida) I am annoyed at the lack of "urbanism" that I am used to in LA. However, since they put in a Barnes and Noble it has taken over as the town square. People from all over the town come there to socialize, drink coffee, and browse the frighteningly huge "Chirstian Faith" section. This may not be yours or my view of what urbanism is but to these people they have founded a community based on values, relationships, and social interaction that is the same as your local pub or deli.
Certainly more diversity exists in places like NYC and LA, but are the multitude of experiences that diverse? I would question it, especially since everytime I go back to NY it seems more like LA everyday and vice versa. It is a rather stange experience to get on the plane in LA, get off the plane in NYC and not feel a change. I think that large cities have become so similar in their production and display of a certain kind of spatial culture that the diversity you are talking about is a transparent condition. True it may exist in pockets, but the overall condition is the same, no matter what the scale.
No freakin' way. That's just ridiculous.
sorry for being so inarticulate, I haven't finished my southeast coast suburban coffee yet...I should have just said that I disagree.
LA urban?
LA is the largest suburb in the world. No real center, No real density.
About the most urban exprience in LA is the highway.
And FL is not Urban either. The most Urban part of all of FL is South Beach. The rest is a huge Suburb.
what you are talking about is the new commuinity making in the suburb, not Urban though.
oops
I do, however, think the notion of non-urban community/place-making is a great topic for discussion though.
Good points AP - there is no point in rationalizing LA as an "urban center"
I would disagree strongly q+. LA is not all about the freeway. Within the city are thousands of diverse neighborhoods that can be accessed in foot, by bike, by bus, or by train. Sure the space I've lived here for 6 years and so I have a bit of perspective. Sure, I'm the perpetual tourist in Manhattan and don't know it as well as some of you (from the posts some of you could use a tour of LA from a local), but that doesn't mean my observations don't hold water. I think you all are missing the point- that urbanism is a frame of mind. Dictionary definitions and statistics are flexible, you have to look at the system through a different set of glasses.
And if you want to use stats. LA IS an urban center. Our port and infrastucture surpassed the NYC metro area years ago.
I wish.
"You guys are seriously the biggest group of halfwits i've ever met. I mean, I get the douche chills everytime I read this thread."
sadly you are not doing much to raise the bar.
sorry for the misquote, pomo, ...frame...
anyway, I would love it if this could be true, for instance, in suburban Orlando, which has a population approaching 3 million.
can you say what it is that you mean in a different way, I'm having trouble grasping it. (no sarcasm in my tone...sincere question).
If it has to do with urban-esque community interaction, I can get with that, but otherwise, ???
Sure, I got a tour of LA from a few locals. Via the freeway and car. It isnt really pedestrian friendly and the public transportation is annoying and unreliable.
There is such a thing as "being alone in a crowd"... Density doesn't always mean more social, or better community. For example, its not really community if it we're talking about a density of all strangers and phonies. There are other many cultural and economic factors at work... Different places have different lifestyles and demographics. And some places have more transient and changing populations than others...
Alright, fair enough, like you I am bootser of my own town. What I am getting at is that urbanism is about a certain sense of community and a gathering of infrastructure (social or physical). I am arguing that the city become a condition and not a place because cities in the old sense are dead. Part of the reason I think New York works for people is it really plays to their nostalgic views of what cities once were. Los Angeles really represents the new global condition of clustering networks (again both socially and infrastructurally). These networks are generally disparate systems that do not necessarily share any concious objective, yet are viewed as a whole. When people talk about LA they usually are refering to the greater LA Metro area, which encompasses hundreds of cities and suburbs. These hundreds of nodes are heavily dependent on the overall wellfare of the larger system, despite having sometimes conflicting objectives. I would liken this to the approaches of Peter and Allison Smithson, who were able to look at both the Macro and Micro scales and adjust their critique accordingly. They would see a city as not only being a clustering of people on a block, but a clustering of blocks within a city, and a clustering of cities within a larger econmoic node.
I think to view walkability and the scale of the architecture as the deciding factors of urbanism is a pretty transparent way of seeing it.
I think that even Jane Jacobs (the great defender of the concept of "city") would agree that Manhattan has a certain likeness to the small villages of Europe in it's sense of community and place. She would also probably agree that the suburbs, with their strip malls, Starbucks, and lack of street life contain within them a different kind of urbanism, but one that is just as valid.
I am not saying that all suburbs exist like this, nor am I suggesting that LA is the 21st century answer to urbanism. I am merely defending a position that is able understand that New York is not an perfect example of a city, and that by blindly glorifying it as New Yorkers do, they only reaffirm its position as a museum of urban development of the 20th century.
Thats probably not much clearer, but it's the best I can for now.
Back to my roofing detail.
ciao.
johnprolly - what have you got against LA? and what's with your "local" friends giving you the "interstate tour". Surely they could have done better...
am84... if you still even bother to read this thread:
I think it is a very good idea to work between undergrad and grad school. I know I wish I did.
A few words of caution:
What you have heard is true; i.e. It is difficult to find work in progressive firms in the city. That does not mean it is impossible. A UF grad myself, I find that there is some ivy-league snobbery but every firm is different. It will take you some time to find a job. Without being here there is no chance that you are going to get any interviews.
You might want to give yourself more than a year, time flies here, and in our profession, no less than 2 years is considered substantial enough experience to get a decent salary once you do get your masters. Sadly, the more architecture related software you are proficient in - the more jobs you will qualify for, including Vectorworks. (See newyork-architects.com for examples)
If you can swing it; just move here. Plan to be unemployed for at least 3 months, more if possible, and dont get discouraged in the job search. Soak up as much of the city as you can at the same time. If you cant find anything that you want, look at other jobs that will allow you to keep looking for an internship. So even if it takes you a year to find an architecture job, you would still be living and "PLAYING" (-dont forget the playing) in arguably the most architecturally, socially and culturally interesting cities that this country has to offer.
Good Luck.
Post an update some time.
johnprolly -
why is it that you typed you had antique hardwoods, and then like 10 posts later, brag about new floors and appliances? also, "sand in your vagina" was hardly something you started. and apparat may have missed LA, but he, fehlmann and a shitlode more didn't miss seattle. (www.dbfestival.com)
it is aways fun to read what others are saying about what's like to live in NYC and it is aways funny to me when people compare cities...
as a native new yorker, born and raised in queens...yes NYC has 5 boroghs for thos of you who don't know, and queens is one of them. watching coming to america with eddie murffie & a bronx tale always remind me of home...yes a bronx tale is actully shot at my high school in astoria queens.
anyway in response to the original post, i would recommend doing anything you think you feel comfortable, but be serious and flexible about moving to NYC. to move any where it is assumed you the desire to experience different environment, or sick of where you were, as long as you have an open mind and adopable you well do just fine. FL and NYC is 2 different worlds, as i have lived in tempa for 6 months...the biggest difference i would say is that NYC is a true pedestrian city. You can live in any of the 5 boroughs and don't need a car...even is staten island...many simply rent a car if they feel like taking a road trip.
as far as people goes, like any place on earth, there are good and there are bad...it all depends on who you meet and who you decide to hang out with. yes people are here tend to be more intense and say whats on their minds...those who pretend to be someone else or what i called posers of NYC who are actually from kansas are the kinds you should stay away from. NYC is made of many people from outside the state, some of these posers acting out their frustration can be mistakenly seemed as wacko new yorkers.
anyway, nyc is a great city, but so are tokyo, paris, barcelona and many others...experiencing different cities is an important part of an architect's education...so stay open minded, love every where you visited and stayed, because it is the only way you can get the most out of them.
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