Could NYC Become a Ghost Town?

Huge, looming apartment buildings conquer the skyline ... and almost nobody lives in them ...

Retail and store space occupy some of the most famous streets in the world, highly valuable locations ... and much of it is empty ...

That is the reality of NYC today -- it's rapidly becoming a ghost town.

The reason is obvious: the city has become so expensive that many people can't afford to live here and many businesses can't afford to set up shop here. The result is that some of the most desirable real estate in the world is actually empty. You walk by these buildings and storefronts and you're looking at extremely expensive shells that house and cater to no one. 

And it's not just in Manhattan. Go to parts of Brooklyn and Queens and you'll see the same thing: huge swaths of commercial and residential real estate that everyone wants and no one wants to buy (because they can't afford to).

Of course, NYC is not a really ghost town -- more people live here than ever before. But in one of the many paradoxes of this paradoxical times, the vast majority cannot live and cannot shop in many of the locations where they would like to and where geographic logic would dictate that they should. Neighborhoods that are desirable are canniblizing themselves, making them, ironically, less interesting. 

Increasingly, neighborhoods aren't really neighborhoods -- they're strip malls of chain stores and, when a business closes and/or a landlord jacks up the rent, storefronts remain vacant in order to attract another chain store or business that'll pay exorbitant rents. But if they don't ... the spaces remain empty, further degrading the neighborhoods that more and more people can't afford. 

It's a vicious cycle of economics, a death rattle for a once great city. It can't go on like this -- or the kind of NYC that we love will be lost forever.