2.27.2008

The Staten Island of Tomorrow

The following comment was made in response to a post at the NY Times blog Dot Earth about the future of suburbia:

"The answer to can we uninvent Suburbia is Queens, which in my youth was essentially a suburb and is now a city. Before that in my father’s time it was Brooklyn, a borough of little villages, and more recently Staten Island. The best way of accomplishing this is through good urban transit. In the DC area where I now live, the biggest mall (Tyson’s corner) is in despair trying to attract a new Metro line. The most successful new malls (White Flint and Pentagon City) are on the Metro."
— Posted by Eli Rabett


Building on yesterday's post, how plausible might it be to link Staten Island to Brooklyn or Manhattan with an underwater tunnel neighborhood? Would it be possible to extend the 1 train from South Ferry to Tottenville? Could an entire transit corridor lined with high-density underwater apartment complexes and shopping centers finally provide a high-speed link between the forgotten fifth borough and "The City"? Lord, maybe they could bring back the 9 so that it could run express and actually serve a purpose.

But then, who would want to live in New York Harbor? Something tells me the view is less than pristine.

Still, it's an interesting concept; Staten Island as the new frontier in New York City...

(Photo from Flickr user dclarson. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Can We Uninvent Suburbia? (Dot Earth)

2 comments:

epc said...

It’d be easier to connect SI to the city via Bayonne and Jersey City, but that would require NYC to acknowledge that there's something on the other side of the river and for the multiple governments to work together.

Brendan Crain said...

Heh...very true. Come to think of it, it'd probably be easier to get New York to build a multi-billion dollar tunnel city under their half of the harbor than get them to work with New Jersey, hey? ;-)