Little big city

[Johnny Velvet]

Quite a few Manhattan neighbourhoods are quite small, and the larger ones (like the Upper West Side) will have smaller sub-divisions recognised by locals

Excepting the size of the buildings, I was mildly surprised by the compactness of Wall Street/the Financial District in Manhattan when I was there a few weeks ago. We only walked through it - didn't make any stops - on the way to Central Park so it's possible I didn't see all of it. The IFSC feels like it covers a larger area, though I'm almost certainly wrong about that.

[Mitch]

Has Harlem expanded a fair bit south since Bobby Womack wrote his song then? Or is "East Harlem" just a newer term made up by the NY estate agents.

[Lang Spoon]

I dont think East Harlem is a real estate selling point, its prob the most sketchy part.

[Duncan Gardner]

Green Park, Bond Street, Marble Arch, arguably Oxford Circus and Hyde Park Corner?

And Picadilly Circus

[Johnny Velvet]

I don't know what I was expecting of Times Square, but it was a bit "is that it?"

Same here, though apparently we missed out on its more "exciting" incarnation of years gone by.

[ursus arctos]

Harlem has always extended south to the northern edge of Central Park since the latter was built.

East Harlem has alsobeen a distinct area since it was developed, being at first predominantly Italian (thus Rao's, the iconic mob hangout and red sauce restaurant), then Puerto Rican (thus "Spanish Harlem"). It is still predominantly Latino, and as Spoony notes, can be dodgier than the area to the west.

[ursus arctos]

The Rioni of Rome, which even stump natives.

[ursus arctos]

Excepting the size of the buildings, I was mildly surprised by the compactness of Wall Street/the Financial District in Manhattan when I was there a few weeks ago. We only walked through it - didn't make any stops - on the way to Central Park so it's possible I didn't see all of it. The IFSC feels like it covers a larger area, though I'm almost certainly wrong about that.

Two things on this.

First of all, the area was devloped as a financial centre in the late 19th and early 20th century, a time when transactions were very much still settled physically, face to face and trading was done in pits. The site of "runners" wheeling massive cases of negotiable securities from one firm to another was common in my youth and still could be seen episodically into the early 90s.

This (along with the geography of the harbour and rivers) provided a "natural" limit to the area's expansion, which is why, when the need for a second "central business district" arose, it took root in Midtown.

Also worth noting that Battery Park City and everything else west of West Street was built on fill, primarily in the 80s. When I worked at the Customs House next to a tower of the World Trade Center in the late 70s, the building backed onto the Hudson.

[treibeis]

Ystad has fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. There were probably more a couple of decades ago, but Henning Mankell had them all murdered.

[anton pulisov]

One take on San Francisco (pretty much everyone has their own version of this)

The Castro not it's own neighbourhood then. I realise it's named after the street, but still.

[ursus arctos]

As I said, everyone has their own take

It is also of course true that many of the people who made the Castro the Castro are no longer with us

[diggedy derek]

Indeed. RIP

Fitzrovia is small, with global cultural significance.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Belgravia too?

[Nocturnal Submission]

I'd have said that Soho & Bloomsbury have greater cultural significance than Fitzrovia , Mayfair or Belgravia.

[diggedy derek]

I think you're right. It's the Bloomsbury Group isn't it, not the Fitzrovia group? Gah. It was the former area I was looking at on the map, honest.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Have we got this far without mentioning London's Chinatown?

[Guy Profumo]

You can't build hotels on a station.

As a kid in Devon I always resented poxy little Fenchurch St getting Monopoly recognition while "our" Paddington missed out. Despite the bear.

Because Paddington was GWR and only LNER stations featured on the board

[Gangster Octopus]

Fenchurch Street was LNER?

[ursus arctos]

After 1921 it was

[San Bernardhinault]

Woah. This is proper AITIDKUT. I used to wonder why major Euston or Waterloo or London Bridge were missed while poxy Fenchurch St and not particularly serious Marylebone got the fame. This finally explains it.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Woah. This is proper AITIDKUT. I used to wonder why major Euston or Waterloo or London Bridge were missed while poxy Fenchurch St and not particularly serious Marylebone got the fame. This finally explains it.

It might be expected that the railway stations in Monopoly would have been chosen to allow travel in the four compass directions—for example: Euston, St Pancras or King's Cross (north); Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street (east); London Bridge or Victoria (south); Paddington (west). However all four stations had been owned by the same company, LNER, prior to nationalisation as British Rail(ways). It has been suggested that Waddingtons chose LNER stations because this was the company that served Leeds where they were based.