Sure, the economy's in the dumps, rent's rising everywhere, police need to stop planting drugs on innocent people, the Yankees are out of the playoffs, and there's a giant protest downtown— but the majority of New Yorkers still love living in New York, a new survey finds.
83 percent of Big Apple residents are "very satisfied" or "satisfied" according to the Municipal Art Society’s second-annual Survey on Livability.
The satisfaction, not surprisingly, seems concentrated in richer neighborhoods among city residents who have white skin and make over $75,000 a year.
Cross the bridges into the other boros and New Yorkers still love the concrete jungle, just maybe not as uniformly.
When asked if they were happy living in their neighborhoods, 84 percent of New Yorkers responded that they were satisfied or very satisfied. Broken down by borough and race, however, disparities emerge. Nearly 9 of 10 Manhattanites said they were satisfied, but more than one-quarter of Bronx residents said they were dissatisfied. 21 percent of African‐Americans and 20 percent Latinos reported being dissastisfied, versus just 9 percent of whites.
When pressed on whether they think Gotham's improved as a city since they've lived here, 43 percent of Manhattanites and 40 percent of Brooklynites said things have gotten better versus a measly 13 percent of Staten Islanders. And while an improvement over last year's results by 10 whole percentage points, 22 percent of Bronx residents said the city's gotten worse, versus just percent of Manhattanites.
DNAinfo stopped by a MAS panel discussion on the findings Thursday night.
"It’s almost like the neighborhoods are 'different places',” said Vin Cipolla, president of the MAS of New York, who added that while Manhattanites may be happy, “others places in the city are having a very, very difficult experience.”
And Columbia Professor Thompson Fullilove put it much more succintly: “If you’re a rich, white person living in Manhattan, you’re having a lot of fun,” she said, pointing to recent statistics that show one in five New Yorkers are now living in poverty.
The survey also asked New Yorkers, for example, whether they felt safe walking by themselves in their neighborhood. Overall, 73 percent of New Yorkers said yes, they felt safe, thanks in part likely to the city's declining crime rate. Nearly one in three residents, however, in the Bronx and Brooklyn responded that they did not feel safe walking at night. And a closer look reveals that 27 percent of those earning less than $75,000 a year do not feel safe versus only 9 perecent of people earning more than $75,000.
The survey of more than 1,000 New Yorkers was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and conducted by the Marist Polling Institute and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.
The Municipal Art Society of New York is a nonprofit dedicated to "intelligent urban design, planning and preservation through education, dialogue and advocacy."