Manhattan will eat itself to death

Nationally the housing market is crap, but in Manhattan it's still rising. Since Manhattan is a market of rich people, this is probably just a manifestation of the middle class getting poorer and the rich richer. But when will Manhattan's exclusivity backfire? This article suggests that it won't! Come on. Everything backfires. Let's guess how this will.

There are two reasons to live in Manhattan: convenience and fun. There are a lot of offices on the island and there are a lot of restaurants. If only rich people live there, it will stop being fun and then it will stop being convenient.

To see why it will stop being fun, contrast Manhattan with other playgrounds for the rich like Martha's Vineyard, Versailles, and tropical islands I haven't heard of because I'm not rich. These places have two things Manhattan doesn't.

First: natural resources. With their beaches and castles, these places are inherently luxurious. Manhattan isn't. The best recreational activity it provides is pedalboating. The wonders of Manhattan are man-made. Manhattan is other people. So won't Manhattan be even better when there's no riff-raff?

No. Rich people need riff-raff in order to serve them. Note the second thing that other playgrounds for the rich have: maids' quarters. Or trashy neighborhoods nearby.

Manhattan soon won't have a single trashy neighborhood nearby it (maids' quarters wouldn't help because the point of Manhattan is going out to restaurants). Unlike other playgrounds, Manhattan employs a ton of office workers, a middle class that clogs up all the decent commuter neighborhoods. Service workers have to live an extra 10 stops out. This is okay for now. But gentrification is spreading, kicking low-income people further and further down the line. Soon they'll be really far away from the kitchens of Midtown. They'll also be far away from each other, so they won't have to compete in the same market. It'll make sense for them to find work closer to their new neighborhoods than in Manhattan.

Workers will have more leverage. The fanciest establishments will survive this but the cooler ones won't, especially since they'll be losing clientele. Manhattan will be a city with superb restaurants, Legally Blonde: The Musical--and nothing else.

The first rich people to lose interest will be the ones with bohemian pretensions. Movie stars like Heath Ledger and Maggie Gyllenhaal and major writers like Paul Auster and Jonathan Safran Foer have already moved to Brooklyn. It'll only continue, until the only people left in Manhattan are the ones with no claim whatsoever to culture-- bankers and Paris Hilton. Manhattan might be fun for them, but it won't be cool.

So it will stop attracting irrational recent college grads who take crappy jobs in New York because it's cool. Companies will have a harder time staffing its lower levels. Finally, even people at the top will notice that Manhattan has become a gigantic office building with excellent tasting food. They might even mind. In the past it was convenient for companies (and factories, and guilds) to set up in population centers. But with easy communications and travel, the only advantage cities have over the exurbs is culture. Once that's dried up, companies might as well move.

Sell!