My south facing co-op gets so much sunlight that I had to put up custom made plantation shutters to block the sun.
Sunlight is overrated
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If one wants to see a stunning example of balancing natural light in a NYC building than check out The Guggenheim. Granted that it is located on Central Park. Wright understood light and mans relationship to it.
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54 Pine Street is listed as the NYC building with the least amount of sunlight. The pine paneling makes it seem even darker - at least to me. The room with the pine paneling would be like living in a cave or deep in a dark forest. Definitely not for me.
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I enjoy my bright sunny Brooklyn apartment in a 65-year-old building with a view of lower Manhattan. However, with the proliferation of glass towers in Manhattan and the Brooklyn waterfront, there are sunsets when the reflective glare is so intense, it is blinding and shades are required. I foresee a time when coop buildings will be suing each other for causing blindness and melanoma.
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My upper Manhattan apartment faces due west with lots of windows and little to block the sunlight I've never put anything resembling a curtain on the windows (except in the bedroom) because I love the light - particularly the late afternoon light which I call "Edward Hopper light" - so much. I know wherever I next live, I will never have as much light as I do now - I consider myself unbelievably fortunate.
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How much does sunlight cost at the Public hotel?
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Wow, Chicago needs this too!
This article makes me embarrassed to be a New Yorker (granted, one that lives on a park, in a west-facing apartment that gets sun all afternoon). People need light!
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I work out of a sun drenched apartment facing south and east overlooking the East River, which reflects in even more sunlight. Numerous times, I come home when it is cold, shadowy, miserable - and my mood immediately goes upbeat with the light. Eight years after moving here, I am still surprised at this.
A sunny environment leads to a sunnier disposition - a win/win for me and for New Yorkers with whom I come into contact. I also wonder if anyone has done a study correlating lack of sunlight with depression and crime; a correlation would not surprise me. Either way, preserving good light in both public and private spaces needs to be made a priority for our city. It can only benefit us.
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@Joseph Hanania Studies have been done on SAD: Seasonal Affective Disorder. It's real. In some people there's a direct correlation b/w lack of sun and depression.
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I was once shown an apartment in Bushwick that had no windows, but it did have a skylight! Needless to say, the broker, a genuine tribute to his profession, neglected to mention it before we drove over. Maybe he thought I wouldn't notice - or care. I suppose the only time it received sunlight was at high noon on the Summer solstice, a selling point he apparently overlooked.
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There is only so much sunlight a given space (such as a city) can get: if more people are living in this city, then there is less sunlight per person. The priority in terms of how the city is built is to allow everyone to have enough space to live, if it means that we have tall buildings shading each other, then so be it: as explained in the article, most employed people don’t have much occasion to see the light from their place during the week anyway (for sure in the winter, and in the summer the sun is actually an issue because of the heat). On weekends, you have the whole world outside of your place, even when you don’t have a house in the Hamptons…
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@Bob Robert------light and air are health concerns in addition to preferences
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England has a Law of Ancient Lights, a common-law doctrine that guarantees a homeowner the right to light if he or she has had access to it for 20 years.
“If a residential window has had access to sky for a number of years,” Mr. Wilson said, “and someone is doing a development that blocks the sky, they actually have to pay for the right to block that sky. There is no rate; the developer just has to negotiate.”
While this may sound extreme on this side of the Atlantic, research on the ancient light law suggests that this was actually part of American law until 1838, when it was overruled by an American desire for economic growth and a deference to private ownership.
Mapping the Shadows of New York City: Every Building, Every Block
The Struggle for Light and Air in America’s Largest City
BY QUOCTRUNG BUI and JEREMY WHITE
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@HapinOregon You can count on the UK to block any sort of change, and indulge on the demands of the grumpy even at the expense of future generations. London is obviously the prime example of that, where developments always face terrible opposition from the local NIMBYs, with usually the support from the guys in charge. The Prince himself famously pressured a development to REDUCE the number of housing it planned to build, and has been lobbying for an urban development with lower buildings (and hence lower housing built by development).
Weirdly enough this is also the case in the countryside, where you would expect that more abundant land allows prices to go low. But you also have tremendous limits on development there too. If the village has always looked like that, why build anything new?
But in a country where the rulers directly descend from the owning class maybe it is not that surprising that the defense of property values is so strong.
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@Bob Robert
"But in a country where the rulers directly descend from the owning class maybe it is not that surprising that the defense of property values is so strong." As opposed to countries whose leaders are "developers"?
BTW: When last I looked, a good case could be made that in many ways UK government is far more representative and democratic than the US'.
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@HapinOregon "Last time I look, a good case could be made". That is a very weak point, with no argument to support it, doing whataboutism. Not sure I'll change my mind then.
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I can understand why New York City might need apartments so close together that they are allowed to block the sun - and moon and stars. After all, it's New York.
However, I cannot understand why local officials in Tacoma, WA allowed developers to push through "density" guidelines that allow them to build so close together that it blocks the sun in new buildings in the city. It only helps developers, diminishes property values and it totally unnecessary. There is NO shortage of land in the area. It's just cheaper to manipulate the system and build where the infrastructure is already there. BIG profit.
Local lawmakers must take steps to stop this insane density development. They are allowing future ghettos to be built and giving developers BIG benefits to build them.
It's as uncivilized as it gets.
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@njglea building densely is the best thing you can do to avoid climate change. there have been countless studies on this topic. from the fact that it encourages walking and mass transportation to the fact that apartments are more energy efficient, high-rises are much better for the environment than houses.
also, as you suggest yourself, density makes possible full use of infrastructure. it doesn't make sense to build a subway (or even introduce a new bus line) if there aren't enough city dwellers who are served by it.
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@Bogdan I second Bogdan: dense housing is so much more energy-efficient, and dense urban landscapes bring so many of the benefits urban planners are trying to integrate in cities (including working infrastructure). Dense architecture should have been built in the first place, because once the city is already built at low densities it is very difficult to backtrack, and you end up with urban sprawl.
@njglea , developers only make money if people buy (or rent) what they build: if it sells, then it means people are happy to live there. If it’s expensive (as it usually is), it means by definition that people are actually ready to pay a lot of money for it, so how would it be a ghetto? Urban planning is about priorities, so sure you can force people to live further away or in smaller places so others can have more light (and higher property values), but is it really a sound plan? I think people’s housing needs should take priority, which it rarely had in the past. And that’s why we have a housing crisis (which other people call “my property value has increased”, but it is still a crisis).
@njgleaThat is exactly what is going to happen. My family owned a 2-family house in a neighborhood of apartment buildings. Renters don't care as much about their neighborhood as owners of homes or condos. Apartment buildings all deteriorate over time as they are constantly flipped from disinterested owner to disinterested owner. Today's shiny new apartment buildings will meet the same fate. Apartment buildings with 'affordable' units will be the first to become a problem as the market rate tenants won't stay around for long.
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I side with artists and museums who favor north light. Sunlight fades books, furniture and fabrics, and causes skin cancer. All the co-op buildings where I live are free standing and most apartments have two exposures for cross ventilation. My building is exactly aligned to the compass and I have east and south views. I do admit that it is fun to watch the sun rise over the distant horizon and I can use certain buildings reckon the seasons. However, the southern exposure has blinds and shutters that are rarely opened.
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@David, you might find it interesting that aside from New Zealand and Australia, the countries where skin cancer is most prevalent are not sunny ones. I think saying the sun “causes” skin cancer is a strong statement
Yes, direct and indirect sunlight is a blessing -- but in the San Antonio summer afternoons, a very hot and usually sweaty curse relieved and diminished only by heavy drapes, window sun screen and potent air conditioning -- and electric bills.
Wintertime, we open the blinds and ward off the SAD with all the natural light we can muster. And lightly colored walls, some with mirrors, lamps and ceiling lighting fixtures that warm our psyches. The higher than usual ceilings certainly assist.
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Every address in New York? Not by my experience. I put in my Manhattan address and it gave me information on a neighborhood miles from where I live. And the information it gave was very generic. "This is a wealthy neighborhood." "There is a lot of construction." And then a bunch of stuff on schools. Then I put in a friend's address; a building and neighborhood I know very well. Again, generic and kind of wrong stuff.
It's a good idea but obviously still needs a lot of work.
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@W. Freen I plugged in the address of my 1-family home and it was very accurate, even noting that one side of my house is shaded buy the 2-story house next door. But the other info was kind of generic as you'd expect.
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Reflected light can bring in a wondrous amount of sunlight.
Sunlight reflected off the windows across the street from us brings a few hours of brightness to our place. Additionally, sunlight reflecting off a white-painted brick wall (result of lots of negotiating with a developer who built on a parking lot next door-we are on the second floor) brings a great deal of midday light into the rooms. Furthermore, we placed daylight fixtures on timers in all the windows we lost to that development. They give an extraordinary sense of sunlight.
There are way to bring light in!
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Those newer apartments with the large glass windows let in glorious light, but in the summer, let in lots of heat as well. So it's a mixed blessing.
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@msd these glass-clad buildings are total wastes of energy
Light was everything to me when we were apartment hunting in Manhattan. The previous apartment I lived in was a bat cave and it affected my mood in a bad way. Happy to say that what we ended up buying is drenched with sunlight all day. Just be aware that if your view is of a little 5-story fire escape walkup (and lots of sky above it) those can be torn down at any time. In other words, you may see the sun today but not tomorrow. Thankfully a lot of the new condos being built to replace them are mostly glass which reflects light.
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I'm a southern Californian who just got back from spending a month in Paris, where my husband and I rented two apartments - the first one quite dark, the second with a lot more sun. My cousin in Paris had arranged the apartments for us and specifically had us move from the first to the second because of the additional light in the 2d (and the balcony that it also had). We did enjoy the second one more - but not as much because of the light as because it had a 2nd bedroom we could throw our luggage in. We have a fairly large house in the mountains northeast of LA which gets a fair amount of light (depending on the room/time of day), and that "airy" feeling is important to me. But the month in an apartment reminded me of the advantages of suburban living - the big garden in the back, and the quiet. To say nothing of the wildlife. Although we don't have the "walk out the front door and go to a cafe" advantage that you city dwellers have. I think that's the bottom line. If I were in an apt., I'd be spending a lot more time someplace else than I do now.
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