People live and work here. For example, my mother grew up in Queens (north of Brooklyn) but went to high school in Upper Manhattan (on the VERY Upper West Side). How else was she going to get there? Public schools here don't run school buses. Kids take the subway or public buses. What about the person who lives in Queens and works in Lower Manhattan? How else do you propose they get to work? Or the person from the Bronx who wants to take in a Staten Island Yankees game on Staten Island? Or me, the Manhattanite, who wants to see the Mets in Queens or the Cyclones (Mets single-A team) in Brooklyn? How else would I get there?
The overwhelming majority of us don't have cars. How else do you propose that we get around?
I'm an old-time Detroiter, and I can tell you that Detroit is viewed by most as the seventh circle of hell...mostly by people who have never been to Detroit.
I have called it an "armpit" in the past, but I still have a soft-spot for the city.
It's a nice place to be...just be in the right place.