Downtown, It’s A Mixed Bag Amid Manhattan Pop. Boom
A new report shows Manhattan is alive and well, post-pandemic — with the area around City Hall attracting more residents while a few pockets downtown still haven’t fully recovered
| 16 Jan 2023 | 02:09
Image via Placer.ai
The neighborhood surrounding City Hall has become a sought-after local, according to a population report released by Placer.ai at the start of the new year.
The area (zip code 10038) was listed as one of six “top destination neighborhoods,” with an over 25% “domestic net migration” increase from November 2019 to October 2022. In other pockets, the changes were less drastic; SoHo (zip code 10013) experienced a decline of 4% and on the Lower East Side (zip code 10002), “domestic net migration” was up by only .5%. Uptown, by comparison, one Upper West Side neighborhood experienced the biggest boom in the city and numbers deflated on the Upper East Side. Chelsea and the Meatpacking District also made the list of top neighborhoods.
In a matter of months at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020, 8.1% of Manhattan’s population fled the borough, according to the report. “But over the summer of 2020, the tide began to turn — and by October 2022, Manhattan had more than recovered its pandemic losses,” Bracha Arnold wrote. The borough’s population increased around 4% from January 2018 to October 2022.