TRANSPORTATION PLANNING STUDY REPORT
ZIP CODE AREA: 10024
UPPER WEST SIDE
Beatriz Serrano
CE-351 Urban Transportation Planning
Professor Lennon Lawrence
Fall 2015
Table of contents
Section 1- Executive summary3
Section 2 – Historical context4
Section 3 – Urban planning and land use6
Section 4 – Socioeconomic characteristics9
List of figures12
List of Tables13
References14
Base Map15
Section 1 – Executive Summary Only in final submittal
-------------------------------------------------
Section 2 – Historical context
1024 zip code area is bounded on the South by 76th street, Central Park the East, the Hudson River on the West, and by 91st street on the North. From West to East, the avenues of the zip code area are Riverside Drive, West End Avenue (11th Avenue), Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue (10th Avenue), Columbus Avenue (9th Avenue), and Central Park West (8th Avenue).
This area is an affluent, primarily residential area with many of its residents working in more commercial areas in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. It has the reputation of being home to New York City's cultural, intellectual hub (with Columbia University located at the North end of the neighborhood), and artistic workers. Because of his boundary with the Hudson River, the riverfront of this area used to be a shipping, transportation, and manufacturing corridor. The Hudson River Railroad line tight-of-way was granted in the late 1830s to connect New York City with Albany, and soon ran along the riverbank. Also, the area is bounded on the East by Central Park, which was created in the 1850s and 60s. But it was not until 1885 when the area suffered a building boom. From 1885 to 1910, thanks in large part to the 1904 opening of the city’s first subway line, the neighborhood experimented a considerable growing. Now, this subway line is a portion of the IRT Broadway- Seventh Avenue Line.
Figure 1: townhouses between Columbus and Amsterdam Av
This further stimulated a residential development of the area. The neighborhood is characterized by tall apartment blocks on West End Avenue, and townhouses on the streets between Amsterdam Avenue and Riverside Drive. The arrival of the subway, or the elevator made it possible to construct large apartment buildings for the middle classes, and the style of these buildings has remained largely unchanged into the twenty-first century. Before that, the area also changed from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 1932, the IND Eighth Avenue Line opened under Central Park West, and in 1940, the elevated IRT Ninth Avenue Line over Columbus Avenue closed. This caused that immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean moved in during the '50s and the '60s to this area.
Figure 2: subways line in the area As of today, two subway lines serve the 10024 zip code area. The IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line (1 2 3 trains) runs along Broadway. The IND Eighth Avenue Line (A B CD trains) runs along Central Park West. There are five different bus routes — M5, M7, M10, M11, M104 buses, that go up and down the Upper West Side, and the M57 goes up West End Avenue for 15 blocks in the neighborhood. Additionally, crosstown routes include the M66, M72, M79, M86, M96, M106. The M20 terminates at Lincoln Center.
Figure 3: Natural History Museum
One of the most important elements that are covered in this zip code area is the American Museum of Natural History. Located between 77th street and 81th street, in park-like grounds across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 27 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. It started to be built in 1874.
Section 3 – Urban planning and land use
Generally, the Upper West Side was first developed a generation later than its Upper East Side counterpart. Starting in the 1860s, city planners started commissioning parks for this area. After that, they began to incorporate things like monuments, footpaths (riverside) and promenades.
The neighborhood, liberally adorned with green space, became arguably the most beautifully laid out in the city. Following the initial wave of single-family mansions and townhouses, developers commissioned the best architects of the Gilded Age to design apartment buildings along Riverside Drive, Broadway, and Central Park West.
Figure 4: Riverside Park
Despite of that, the area has never caught on as Manhattan’s most desirable location. By the 1930s, landlords had subdivided many of the neighborhood’s most spacious apartments into more affordable rentals (the concept of apartment ownership remained far off). Townhouse and brownstone owners broke up their single-family homes and took in lodgers. It didn’t help that the New York Central rail line, with meatpacking trains burning oil and coal, ran uncovered along the Hudson River for the length of Riverside Park, depositing a layer of ash over the area. In the 1930s, Robert Moses, who looked out on the tracks from his Riverside Drive apartment, commissioned what would be the last great public works improvement for the neighborhood, dramatically enhancing the beauty of Olmsted’s original plan. For twice the cost of the Hoover Dam—$100 million—he covered the tracks from 72nd to 120th Streets, extended Riverside Park farther out into the Hudson, and wrapped the new Henry Hudson Parkway through the addition in a way that opened the waterfront to foot traffic.
Another addition to the modernization of this area was the subway system--the first in the country--which opened in 1904. It revolutionized public transportation and shoved the rickety el into obscurity: the el was nonetheless left standing until 1940. Improved access enhanced the appeal of the Upper West Side, and as the nineteenth century came to a close apartment buildings proliferated, citifying the once rural West End.
In 2014, the land use for the neighborhood was as shown in the following image:
Figure 5: Land use
For that distribution: * 793,5 sq.ft for 1-2 family residential (2.1%) * 14,588.9 sq.ft for multi-family residential (38.5%) * 6,655.1 sq.ft for mixed residential/commercial * 1,587.7 sq.ft for commercial/office use (4.2%) * For industrial use, 30.2 sq.ft (0.1%) * Transportation and utility 1,048.2 (2.8%). * Institutions 4,146.2 sq.ft (10.9%) * One space/recreation 7,024.6 sq.ft (18.5%) * Parking facilities 323,5 sq.ft (0.9%). * Vacant land (1,686.1 sq.ft (4.5%) * Miscellaneous 7.3 sq.ft.
The study area has a wide variety of built environments, from the modernist "tower-in-the-park" developments of Park West Village and Frederick Douglass Houses, to the three-story town houses between Riverside Drive and Broadway, to the up-and-down character of Broadway itself – the area’s curvilinear commercial center. Generally, however, the study area can be separated into two distinct sub-areas: * Figure 6: tall buildings in main avenues
Development in the area west of Amsterdam Avenue is fairly consistent, of a type that has become synonymous with the residential neighborhoods of the Upper West Side, where dense, tall buildings on wide avenues share the same block with small-scale townhouses and multifamily apartment buildings on narrow streets. Large, pre-war apartment buildings with high street walls are found on Riverside Drive and West End Avenues, and to a lesser extent along Broadway. Between the avenues, three-to five-story townhouses or multiple dwellings generally line the narrow side streets. Broadway contains a mixture of building types and styles, ranging from one- and two-story commercial structures to 17-story apartment buildings. Figure 7: five-stores buildings | * Historic area: as part of the comprehensive study of the area, historic assets were identified in Manhattan Valley. They are characterized for three-story structures built in the early years of the 20th century, creating a lower-scale neighborhood framed by Central Park West, which are wide streets with several larger residential and community facility buildings.
Section 4 – Socioeconomic characteristics
As of 2010, the area between 77th street and 91th street has a population of 30,642. Of the population, 27,506 (89.8%) are White Non Hispanic, 1465 (4.8%) of Hispanic origin, 383 (1.2%) are African American, 428 (1.4%) Asian or Pacific Islander, 221 (0.1%) American Indian or Native Alaskan, and the rest of some other race. As of today, the post code area referred to this work cannot look better. It is a quiet residential area, with grand apartment buildings, cool air sweeping over the Hudson River. It cannot be compared this situation with the 1970s, when the neighborhood was in chaos. These residents—through their co-op boards, self-started nonprofits, and free associations, and with some help from city hall—have worked tirelessly these years to restore the beauty of these area. Block by block, tree by tree, they have turned this neighborhood from a forsaken zone into one of the most tranquil and desirable in the city.
Since 1940, this neighborhood is well connected by buses and by numerous subway lines that connect with other areas of the city. Undoubtedly, this fact only increases the value of homes in the area, and therefore affects the socioeconomics and demographics of this zip code zone. The income per capita is $101,078, which includes all adults and children. The median household income is $110,091.
ECONOMY | 10024 zip code York | New York | Unemployment Rate | 5.40% | 6.30% | Recent Job Growth | 1.84% | 1.18% | Future Job Growth | 36.30% | 36.10% | Sales Taxes | 8.88% | 6.00% | Income Taxes | 10.04% | 4.72% | Income per Cap. | $101,078 | $28,051 | Household Income | $110,091 | $53,046 | Family Median Income | $179,330 | $64,585 |
Despite being an area with much higher per capita income than the general of New York , and the much lower rate of unemployment, in the following graphic it can be observed that is not one of the neighborhoods with more household income. The graphics above show how the household income changes, depending on the subway stop:
Figure 8: household income graphics, depending on the subway stop
Both the first graph (subway line C) and the second graph (line 1 ), we can observe that 10024 zip code area has a relatively high household income , but not the highest . The highest are when going down to mid town or down town, just below Central Park. One of the reasons is because there is a higher density of metro stops, as well as better connections to the rest of the city.
For the last graph, it happens more or less de same, but the first stops of this line are in Brooklyn. That is why the household increases in the middle of the graph (first Manhattan stops).
It can be also interrelated the income per capita and the demography. The table below shows a breakdown of 10024 area demography.
List of figures * Figure 1: townhouses on the street, between Columbus Av and Amsterdam Av………4 * Figure 2: subways in 10024 zip code area……………………………………………………………….5 * Figure 3: Natural History Museum, W 81st street……………………………………………………. 5 * Figure 4: Riverside park………………………………………………………………………………………….6 * Figure 5: land use for the neighborhood………………………………………………………………….7 * Figure 6: tall buildings in the large avenues of the area…………………………………………..8 * Figure 7: five-stores building example…………………………………………………………………….8 * Figure 8: comparative graphics between household rental and subway stops………..9
List of tables * Table 1: Economy in the zip code area, and economy in New York……………………………..9 * Table 2: Demography in the area…………………………………………………………………………… 11
References * ‘Trends in New York City rental appreciation’. (PDF file). www.furmancenter.org * New York City Planning. Department of city planning, City of New York. www.nyc.gov * Brownstoner Real state study appreciation. * ‘Inequality and New York Subway’. New Yorker. By Larry Buchanan | Sources: NYC OpenData, U.S. Census Bureau, www.projects.newyorker.com * Spirling Best Places. www.bestplaces.net * ‘Who is killing the Upper West Side?’ Author: Jeffrey Goldberg * ‘The history of the Upper West Side’ by Sarah Waxman. http://www.ny.com/articles/upperwest.html
