Downtown Brooklyn is actually a good example of a place that can at best function as a secondary downtown. It has good transit connections to Manhattan and the rest of Brooklyn, and could have good transit connections to Queens and Staten Island. However, it doesn’t connect well to the Bronx, to say nothing of New Jersey. The one transit line it does get from Queens, the G, is perenially underused.

In contrast, look at Midtown, which began as a secondary downtown to Lower Manhattan and became the primary downtown. At the time it developed, the most populous bedroom communities were in Uptown Manhattan, from which Midtown was very accessible by subway or el. The boomburbs in Queens and the Bronx were likewise closer to Midtown. Even Brooklyn, the source of the second highest number of commuters, was reasonably close by subway. New Jersey is situated in such a way that it made sense to send the Hudson Tubes both downtown and uptown.

These several downtowns would still be dense enough to have public transit make sense. Although, building a few more subway lines wouldn’t hurt either. But some changes would be easy to make. Here on Staten Island, for example, some people are clamoring for an express bus to downtown Brooklyn. It’s an area with quite a few office buildings but as much or less public transit as the typical Manhattan residential neighborhood.

For shame!

To see how this works, suppose that a new downtown gets developed around Jamaica Station. If you live in Queens, Long Island, or the parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn that are reasonably close to Penn Station or Flatbush Terminal, you can get there with trains. Otherwise, you have to use a car or else the trip will take more than an hour and a half.

People can’t just decide to live close to where they work. They change jobs too often. They sometimes live with people who work elsewhere. I work at Columbia; my girlfriend works at Cornell Medical Center. The only parts of the city from which you can get to both on the subway in under half an hour are Midtown and the Village, neither of which is affordable.

Also, I agree with Mr. Gioia in spirit- it’s a good idea to decentralize the city by creating local downtowns/commercial areas. That way, more people can live close to work (or deal with the potentially nightmarish scenario of using public transit to get to work when it’s not located in Manhattan. But that’s a different story). Also, it would help Manhattan’s overinflated real estate prices come down, reduce overcrowding in Manhattan’s transit choke points, and revitalize neighborhoods.

But Mr. Gioia is way off on selling property to make up a budget shortfall. That just doesn’t make sense.

Then this only solves my financial problems for what? A year or 2?

I think this Queens politician needs to speak to a financial advisor. You don’t sell your property and become a renter and expect things to get better. And where in Queens would they move? lol

As I wrote already, you move to a rental and rent out your space of your property and set the rent at a price that pays for the property and at least part of the rent of where you have moved to. Now you are in a new spot, still own the old spot and you are not paying very much for the rent of the new spot.

I think my idea can actually work. At least its better than his.