I grew up taking the A train to 175th Street in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Manhattan. Later on, it was the 1 train to 231st Street in the Bronx. Things like trudging up 3 or 4 flights of stairs to my grandma's apartment and the smell of Dominican cooking that permeated it, eating way too much food at seemingly every hour of the day, and falling asleep to the click-clack of the elevated train a block away on Broadway were some core memories of my childhood and form the vast majority of my experience with the city of New York (outside of the more touristic things).
This wasn't my daily life, however. I lived about 18 miles away in the village of Valley Stream, NY, an inner-ring suburb situated right on the Nassau County-Queens border. Of course, mostly everyone who lives in the metropolitan area is involved with the city to varying degrees and everyone has a different gaze depending on their specific set of circumstances. For me, the city has been a place so familiar yet so unfamiliar at the same time – I live a mile from its border and could give you world wall of information about several neighborhoods and various aspects of its transportation system, recommendations on where to go and what to see, and opinions on the latest news on anything from housing to city politics. Yet, I’ve probably only stepped foot in a small fraction of the area of this vast city.
My experience with New York City is somewhere between deeply familiar and touristic. I know the subway like the back of my hand, but I’m constantly on “discovery mode” when I’m in the city. Going to the city is somewhat of a special occasion for me: I enjoy visiting places like Central Park and Governors Island, eating at the various eateries that I’ve sought out from reviews or that have been recommended to me, and seeing all of the different types of architecture. I think that being on the outside looking in sparked my interest in the urban environment more so than if I actually lived within the city – it made me put into context just how unique New York’s culture and urban form are. However, it also means that my view of the city is limited and I have a lot of work to do if I want to build a deeper understanding – when an individual only sees the popular sights of a city (or anywhere, really), they are shielded from a lot of the issues faced by day to day citizens.
