One of the biggest “cons” to living in NYC is that it hosts a very transient population. I remember reading an article commemorating the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and one of the things it pointed out was the astonishing portion of the city’s population (maybe 40% or more) that had moved there since 9/11.
From the flood of immigrants in the 1840, 1880s, through the early 20th ce3ntury onwards, that's been the case. Now...it's a LOT of the the damned ILLEGAL ALIEN INVADERS!
Unlike other Major cites in the USA, NYC is composed of 5 different boroughs, all of which have their own peculiarities/flavors...both good and bad and ever changing!
A brief history of Manhattan neighborhoods from the late 1800s onwards.....
Harlem was settled by whites. At one time, it was all/mostly white and upper middle to upper classes living there. That changed around 1920 or so. Harry Houdini lived there, when it was almost all white, BTW.
The upper west side, was mostly farm land and then The Dakota was built and the upper class moved there and over the decades, also to Riverside Drive and the surrounding areas.
The upper East side was once mostly Irish, in parts, lower class and gansters; though a bit lower down was mostly German, Hungarian, Austrian upper middle to upper class. then it became WASPY as well as just out of college "hip" in the mid 1060s and has changed once again.
The upper West side had Rockefellers and that bunch, but they then went off to Fifth Avenue, apartments or vast mansions.
It has ALWAYS been an ever changing part of NYC.
The East Village ( Greenwich Village ) was a SLUM until the and of the last century/the beginning of this one and the West Village was both "artsy"/sometime radical, but also attracted the well to do.
Then there is THE BOWERY, which was once farm land, then a slum/dive for crooks, thieves, gangsters, and bums. That's beginning to change yet again.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg in ONLY one of the boroughs. Blanket statements just do NOT fit/hold true for NYC!