Manhattan
Bedrock geology created two skyscraper clusters. Dutch wall became Wall Street. $600B GDP from 23 square miles. Post-pandemic: ~20% office vacancy tests whether density still beats digital.
Bedrock explains Manhattan better than any economist. The island's schist formations—exposed at the surface in Lower Manhattan and Midtown, but buried deep under Greenwich Village—created the two skyscraper clusters visible from any distance. Where bedrock sits close to the surface, you can anchor a tower. Where it dives hundreds of feet down, you build brownstones. Geology wrote the skyline.
The Lenape called it Mannahatta, "island of many hills." Henry Hudson sailed past in 1609; the Dutch bought it in 1626 for goods worth roughly 60 guilders—not the legendary $24, which is a 19th-century misquotation. New Amsterdam became New York in 1664, and the island's position at the mouth of the Hudson River made the rest inevitable. The Erie Canal (1825) connected Manhattan to the Great Lakes, turning its harbor into America's gateway. Wall Street evolved from a literal wall—a Dutch defensive barrier against the English—into the financial center that still commands global capital flows.
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 imposed a grid on everything above Houston Street, creating the most legible real estate market in history. Every block is interchangeable, every address predictable, every parcel tradeable. This grid enabled Manhattan's extraordinary density: over 70,000 people per square mile, producing a GDP exceeding $600 billion—roughly the output of Sweden packed into 23 square miles.
Post-pandemic Manhattan confronts an identity question. Office vacancy rates hover near 20%, the highest since the 1990s. Remote work emptied the towers that defined the island's economy. Yet residential demand remains fierce—apartments in Manhattan cost a median of over $1 million—because the network effects of density are irreplaceable. The restaurants, theaters, dealmakers, and accidents of proximity that generate Manhattan's output cannot be replicated on Zoom.
Manhattan bets that physical density still beats digital connectivity—that the random collision of talent in a confined space produces more value than any algorithm.