> I’m not sure affluent yuppies live in desolate walk ups I’m Chinatown.

Of course they do. Chinatown tenements are crazy expensive. At least as expensive as nice outer borough neighborhoods. People live there because of the proximity to downtown art and fashion scenes.

The old Chinatown population of actual Chinese families living in rent stabilized or owned buildings is still there but it’s not the whole demographic of the neighborhood.

I think it's common in a lot of public and quasi-public institutions (museums, universities, NGOs, etc.). When the organization has ballooned up to hundreds of staff members and ossified administrative procedures, leadership will launch new initiatives that are usually just existing departments with fewer hoops to jump through, the attention of the executives, and more money allocated via grants for "exciting new work." Consultants and short-term staff (~5 yr tenure) are brought on and paid large sums of money to do work that could have already been done with a re-structuring of existing protocols.

My hunch is that this allows leadership to not actually have to dig down into the institutions they're a part of. They can remain at the highest levels, interacting only with 6-figure salary people (usually hired by the current leadership), without having to actually see how the sausage is made at the place they're in charge of.

There’s no reason to go to the other outer boroughs than the one you live in.

I’m from Queens and I’ve lived in Manhattan, the Bronx, and I work in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn has a distinct culture compared to all the other boroughs. Much more homey and like it’s own small city. This makes sense given Brooklyn’s history.

New York is Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx, SI, and parts of North Jersey. These are places that are only as populated as they are because of New York City expansion. Brooklyn would have been developed as its own city without New York, and it has the character of a distinct town. All of the other surrounding areas needed NYC to develop their culture and so they all share a similar New York vibe.