After having lost more than half a million residents between 1950 and 1980 New York’s borough of Brooklyn has regained more than two-thirds of its population loss. The renaissance of Brooklyn is rightfully cited as an urban success story. It initially attracted Millennials and others seeking an urban lifestyle at a lower cost than Manhattan, but now it has also become increasingly more expensive, evidenced by many new high rise luxury condominium buildings.
Downtown Brooklyn’s location of Exchange Place illustrated in the foreground of Photo 1. Lower Manhattan is across the East River, connected to Brooklyn by the Brooklyn Bridge (to the left) and the Manhattan Bridge (right).
Exchange Place, the subject of a recent walk, is across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan, with downtown Newark beyond.
Downtown Brooklyn is normally a fairly quick subway trip from Midtown Manhattan on the express trains of the Lexington Avenue line. The subway station at Borough Hall is the starting place of the tour (Photo 2). Downtown Brooklyn relies on transit. The latest data indicates that 63% of its work trip journeys are by transit. Only Manhattan’s CBD has a higher rate (78%), with downtown Brooklyn showing a comfortable advantage over downtown San Francisco’s 56% (publication pending).
Photo 3 is another view of Borough Hall, from the corner of Fulton Street and Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard (to the right), which leads to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Photo 4 provides a closer up view.The area around Borough Hall boasts a number of pre-World War II buildings, which that would be the envy virtually of many large US city central business districts (Photos 5 to 10).
The downtown Brooklyn Macy’s store is nearby (Photo 11).
The new construction in the area is largely luxury condominiums buildings. Unlike the building densities in Manhattan, the new luxury building in Brooklyn are widely spaced, with many blocks of much lower rise buildings in between (Photos 12 to 19). The current downtown skyline of Brooklyn skyline will be dwarfed by the under-construction 9 DeKalb Avenue (view photo here), which will be 1,066 feet tall (325 meters) and 73 floors.
The new condominium buildings are perhaps the best evidence of the “new” Brooklyn. The development is superimposed on an historic business district that has declined, like many others around the nation, with empty store fronts.
Livingston Street is an interesting walk from Borough Hall to fabled Flatbush Avenue (Photos 20 to 25), which runs from the Manhattan Bridge to It, like other downtown Brooklyn streets, includes a mix of new and heritage buildings, as well as buildings that are well beyond their prime.
Following a right turn onto Flatbush Avenue is the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, perhaps the most iconic of Brooklyn’s skyscrapers (Photo 26 and the top photo). It was Brooklyn’s tallest building for 81 years, at 37 floors and 512 feet tall (156 meters). The building has been converted into condominiums and is now called One Hanson Place.
Brooklyn seems likely to enjoy a future considerably better than its last four 20th century decades. But there are limits to its growth. Brooklyn’s population reached its 2000s peak in 2015 and has lost nearly 30,000 residents over the following three years. During the 2010s, net domestic out-migration has exceeded 250,000, according to the US Census Bureau. High housing prices, a symbol of the area’s renaissance, may now be expelling residents.
Moreover, there may not be enough population growth in the New York metropolitan area to support a much larger Brooklyn. The city of New York has also lost population each of the last three years. Net domestic out-migration since 2010 has been more than 750,000, more than the net 500,000-plus outflow from the suburbs.
Still, Manhattan’s luxury condominium towers continue to sprawl across the East River into Brooklyn (as well as to Long Island City, Queens). But it is not clear how many can be added to the skyline given the already weakening Manhattan market.
Photo: Former Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, now One Hanson Place (by author).
Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. Speaker of the House of Representatives appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.
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