Central Paris has a residential density higher than NYC despite composed almost entirely of 4-5 story mixed use walkups. There are lots of reasons that this is a pretty ideal, human scale existence.
Those 4-5 story walkups in the East Village have a population density of 113,000 per square mile. If a half of NYC had the same density, our population could be 16 million people which is 2x the total population in NYC.
If the greater NY metro area (13,000 sq mi) had the density of 4-5 story walkups in the East Village we could house 1.5 BILLION people or many times the entire population of the United States. Of course all of this assumes linear scaling which is entirely inaccurate but the point is that 4-5 story walkup density is entirely sufficient to meet housing needs.
The challenge is getting other neighborhoods to 4-5 story walkup equivalent density.
4-5 stories (at 2-4 apartments per) is quite good density, actually.
And it's what you'd call a tradeoff, not a one-way restriction.
>Not when it's artificially restricting supply
Wrong. You are neglecting the very non-artificial fact that bedrock depth has always been the main limiting factor for that part of Manhattan between Midtown and FiDi, or more so that its only because of the uniquely solid and deep bedrock under FiDi and Midtown that skyscrapers exist here at all. If they could have built skyscrapers there, they would have. As building technology permits, gradually, they are. Regardless, the housing that does exist is simply not as you describe. When was the last time you spent any time in New York?
>It's good density for a mid-size city, terrible for a city as large (and growing) as New York.
The area we are talking about, between FiDi and Midtown, holds over 250k housing units for close to half a million people. 75% of those units feature 20 or more units. That's a range of about 100-150 people per acre. Manhattan overall contains 70k residents per square mile, across all boroughs its 27k per sq. mile, the highest density in America. That's not including office space, or the daily working and visiting population which is easily double that. Even Brooklyn has over 3x the density of Chicago and almost as many people. Its not Tokyo, but it sure as heck isn't Indianapolis, not even close...
Btw, we aren't ants. Quality of life is a thing and building density not to mention aesthetics and history are huge factors to the desirability and livability of the city. Go to Hong Kong if you want to live in a cage with 20 other people to a room in some modern-industrial neo-commie-block. You are basically picking on the only parts of the city with any actual character or beauty that anybody with a clue would want to live or visit and saying they should be destroyed because you ignorantly think that the most densely populated city in the country needs more housing density? Talk about artificial factors.
You don't just seize and destroy neighborhoods that have been thriving and integrated for 150+ years, like the East Village for example. Which seems to be what you're proposing.
(BTW I say "seize" because what you're proposing would never happen alone on any significant scale without eminent domain).
How so? Landlords would jump to sell their rent-controlled buildings to developers who are champing at the bit. City programs are the only thing preventing development from happening.
This is wishful thinking, on a number of fronts.
For example one does not simply "sell" (meaning, in the context of proposed redevelopment: purge all the tenants from) a rent-controlled building in NYC. Or even an existing coop or condo building, for example.
As you go beyond 5 stories the construction methods required to support the building change. (this obviously is an engineering consideration, you can get a little higher with good engineering). Thus this is ideal because you cannot get denser without increasing the costs to residents. For the poor a small apartment in a 5 story building is as cheap as you can get (this is just equal share fixed costs and ignores supply/demand, taxes, and all the other considerations that go into rent prices). We can build taller of course but the per unit rents must be higher to support the increased construction costs.
The best to honor the history of those neighborhoods would be to build and build and build until units became affordable again.
What? Almost everything between Midtown and Downtown is a 4-5 story walkup, how is that ideal? It's why they're redeveloping old office buildings in the Financial District to be apartments -- it's one of the few spots in lower Manhattan that allow high density housing.
> You know perfectly well this isn't true. Not even half of the lots in that area meet that description.
I was being slightly hyperbolic but the effect is the same. The strict height/density restrictions are intended to preserve the "historic" neighborhoods.