Design
The Economics Lessons in a Single New York City Block
How Greene Street went from a red-light district to hosting some of the highest property values in the world.
On Greene Street, between Prince and Houston in the heart of Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, personal shoppers clip-clop down cobblestones. Deftly they slip from the cast-iron facades of luxury boutiques into the backseats of Escalades, owned by employers of unfathomable wealth and reach. Tourists mill, perhaps a little shell-shocked by this dense arrangement of wealth.
Taking in the entirety of this single block, I wonder, with an itch of dread, whether it constitutes the future that developers hope for elsewhere. With some of the highest real estate values in New York, and therefore the world, Greene Street is among the loftiest points on the smooth arc of Manhattan’s economic success. It’s hard to imagine it any other way.