The more that cities like New York strive to make themselves nicer places in which to live, the less interesting they become

IT IS one of those intractable problems. Cities strive to become nicer places in which to live. Yet the more they succeed the less interesting they become. This thought struck Gulliver on a recent trip to New York. Twenty years ago Manhattan felt full of adventure. A place in which, for someone who was unfamiliar with it, a wrong turning—into Alphabet City, say, or a block too far north—could mean trouble. As a stranger, whose view of New York was coloured by movies such as “The Warriors”, even riding the subway felt like an exhilarating experience, in which one knew better than to catch the wrong eye. Today, the streets feel safe and the once dysfunctional underground system seems to work as well as any metro in any big city. Both above and below ground the city has become, not to put too fine a point on it, pleasant. This is progress, surely. Yet for the visitor raised on the romance of New York, just a little disappointing. An acquaintance, an architect who moved from London to the Meat Packing District ten years ago in search of thrills, bemoaned New York's gentrification. With no visible sense of irony, in a fancy bar packed with people just like him, he wistfully recalled his first weeks in the city: the constant danger of physical violence, the transvestite prostitute touting for Johns outside the entrance to his block. “The city I knew has changed,” he mused.

So is New York a better place than it was? The answer depends on whether you are a resident or a tourist. To understand the dilemma, I think of London, my own home town. Here too, the Tube is now far safer and more reliable than it ever was. Walking through the streets of Soho at midnight one isn't constantly looking over one’s shoulder, worrying about who is following; or being propositioned by a prostitute on every corner. Going for a night out in Brixton or Shoreditch, once a daring pursuit, is no longer the edgy experience it once was.

All of which means that day-to-day business in London, like in New York, is now a much nicer experience. But, here's the thing: where is the fun in nice?

In a previous life, Gulliver was tasked with devising a way to measure the “liveability” of various cities. The ensuing report was aimed at firms who sent expatriate managers to far-flung places, to determine whether they needed to pay a hardship allowance. The trouble was, measuring things such as crime levels, transport efficiency and housing stock, meant that the most anodyne cities inevitably rose to the top. Vienna, Vancouver and Geneva always seemed to do well. Pleasant cities, yes, but mind-numbingly boring. What right-minded person would rank Vienna a better city than Rio, or Vancouver preferable to Paris?

A decade ago, Jeremy Clarkson, giving my liveability ranking a shoeing in his Daily Telegraph column, put it rather well. Bemoaning the fact that his beloved Detroit was nowhere to be seen at the top of the list, he wrote:

The thing is, though, I like Detroit because it’s dangerous. As Gertrude Stein would have said: “There’s a there, there.” It’s often argued that you never feel more alive than at the point of death and that is what makes Motor City so vibrant and zesty. When you know for sure there’s a mugger round the next bend, you make the most of walking around it.

New York and London have not become Geneva or Vancouver. There are still theres, there. And ask me whether I'd like to return to live in the 1980s versions of those cities and the answer would be no. Ask me if I prefer the idea of those dismal places—with all of their grime, danger and excitement—and the answer is yes. It is an intractable problem indeed.