Week Two

               If money was not an option, once I graduate college I would love to move to an apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City. Aside from the fact that New York City is my favorite place in the world, it is also a great place for every career opportunity imaginable, a major hub for the arts, and is brimming with culture. My personal reasons for wanting to move to Greenwich Village are that I love the hustle and bustle of the city, I love the art scene, and that the feeling that the city possesses makes me incredibly happy. Greenwich Village also has many aspects that we discussed in class which make it, in my opinion, an excellent place to live.

                One of the huge issues that we discussed in class was the trade-off between transportation expenses and home values. Home values go down when they are further away from the center of the city. This seems like an excellent thing, but being further away from the city means a longer, and therefore more expensive commute to work or school in the city every day. When you live further away, you may be able to rely on public transportation if there is a bus route near your home that can get you to your place of work, but most people commute by car. Driving a car means that you have to make car payments, insurance payments, fill it with gas, and pay for all repairs it needs. In a place like Greenwich Village, however, you can live walking distance from basic necessities, like a grocery store, park, the theatre, and doctor’s offices, and if you need something elsewhere in the city, you can hop on the subway. This trade off does mean that housing prices rise, but to me, this trade off is well worth it. I would love to live in a city where I could walk out my front door and go down the street to get a cup of coffee, as opposed to my current situation in Scottsdale where I have to drive a few miles just to get to a Starbucks. Less reliance on cars means that residents will be healthier and happier, and therefore will positively contribute to the life of the neighborhood. For me, one of the biggest factors in my choice of Greenwich Village was its proximity to the city as well as its abundance of public transportation.

                Although Greenwich Village has already been gentrified, and is no longer home to starving artists and a Bohemian crowd, it keeps that artistic feeling alive, unlike other cities where gentrification ends up killing the spirit of what originally made the place so great. This could still happen to Greenwich Village, but with NYU so close to the neighborhoods, the young college students will help to keep that hip, artistic feeling alive. According to the author of the textbook, Sharon Zukin, “significantly, cultural value is now related to economic value.” The culture and art scene of Greenwich Village is what brought people there in the first place, and it is what drove housing prices sky-high. Affluent young people, businesses, and real estate agents alike all saw the promise of this up and coming neighborhood, and many people moved in to try to soak up the culture. This caused housing prices to become way to high for the artists and performers to continue living there, but they still perform every day in Washington Square Park, keeping the energy alive. Greenwich Village is now one of the best neighborhoods in New York City because it has become a much safer place to raise a family, yet it still manages to keep the artsy vibe which drew people in originally. If I could live anywhere in the world as a single, affluent, young adult, I could think of no better place to live than here. Greenwich Village is within walking distance to almost all of your needs, and is a short subway or bus ride to everything else. It is an affluent, growing neighborhood, full of life and of people who enjoy art and culture. Gentrification is no longer a huge issue, and the neighborhood still manages to keep its Bohemian vibe. This city has everything I could ask for, and would be the perfect place to move to.