The thing that always strikes me about downtown Manhattan (the only part I've really been to) is the way it's very open and crowded at the same time. The streets really are not narrow, for the most part, but the tall buildings flanking them can make them seem that way. But at the same time, the height of the buildings says "big, open space." The other thing is that the rows of buildings tend to funnel the winds, so that they whip along the streets in a stronger, more concentrated way than you'd get in a suburb or country place. There are a few spots where the ground is a little higher than in other places, and from these you can look down the arrow-straight streets until the furthest buildings disappear into the haze of air pollution. Then there are the mobs of people and vehicles.
The buildings are all stone and glass and metal - some modern, some going back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (modern = smooth, clean lines; older = ornamented and decorative). I've also always been fascinated by how the narrow alleys between some buildings - I'm talking 8 to 10 feet wide here - often have small, narrow shops built into them.
Basically you get hotels and office and apartment buildings, usually with shops or restaurants of any and every kind on the ground floor, facing the street. The variety of shops and restaurants is frankly bewildering, but I'm not much of a shopper so I've never retained much information about their contents.
Actually, I *have* glimpsed other neighborhoods, now that I think of it. The city is mostly apartment buildings, some of them only four or five stories high, and rows of townhouses (two to three stories high). Most of these, I think, are older buildings, though I'm sure there are some newer ones scattered around.
That's all I can think of, off-hand. Good luck with the novel!
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Let me think ...
The thing that always strikes me about downtown Manhattan (the only part I've really been to) is the way it's very open and crowded at the same time. The streets really are not narrow, for the most part, but the tall buildings flanking them can make them seem that way. But at the same time, the height of the buildings says "big, open space." The other thing is that the rows of buildings tend to funnel the winds, so that they whip along the streets in a stronger, more concentrated way than you'd get in a suburb or country place. There are a few spots where the ground is a little higher than in other places, and from these you can look down the arrow-straight streets until the furthest buildings disappear into the haze of air pollution. Then there are the mobs of people and vehicles.
The buildings are all stone and glass and metal - some modern, some going back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (modern = smooth, clean lines; older = ornamented and decorative). I've also always been fascinated by how the narrow alleys between some buildings - I'm talking 8 to 10 feet wide here - often have small, narrow shops built into them.
Basically you get hotels and office and apartment buildings, usually with shops or restaurants of any and every kind on the ground floor, facing the street. The variety of shops and restaurants is frankly bewildering, but I'm not much of a shopper so I've never retained much information about their contents.
Actually, I *have* glimpsed other neighborhoods, now that I think of it. The city is mostly apartment buildings, some of them only four or five stories high, and rows of townhouses (two to three stories high). Most of these, I think, are older buildings, though I'm sure there are some newer ones scattered around.
That's all I can think of, off-hand. Good luck with the novel!