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From Bagels to Buildings: What NYC is Telling Us About Tomorrow

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • Aug 21
  • 7 min read
Futuristic cityscape with flying cars and drones amid skyscrapers at sunset. Elevated roads, modern skyline, and urban atmosphere.
Source: AI Generated Image

In the final installment of her summer signal-searching series, Sue returns to familiar ground—New York City—with fresh eyes and a future-focused lens. From the overwhelming holiday crowds at Rockefeller Center to the evolving fast-food landscape and the city's ever-growing skyline, she explores what these signals might mean for the future of urban life, tourism, and sustainability. This episode blends surprise, curiosity, and cautious optimism as Sue questions whether our post-pandemic behaviors reflect any lessons learned—and how innovation is showing up in the most unexpected places. Whether you're a seasoned New Yorker or a wide-eyed visitor, this episode invites you to pause and consider what our cities are signaling about the world to come.




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Episode Transcript:

Sue (00:00)

Hi everyone, welcome to Signal Shift. It's Sue again. And if you've been following along the past couple of weeks, and I have been exploring different signals in our everyday lives and what we see and what we read. doing a little lighthearted series on signals searching during our travels. So I covered some travels in Seoul, South Korea.


in Bologna, Italy, and now today I'm finishing up with a very short trip to New York City. And so, you know, again, another place I've been to and lived in for many, many years over the last few decades and just, you know, going in with eyes wide open, trying to observe new things that I hadn't seen before. So, you know, I've known New York as a hub of innovation. I was really excited to see what I could find just being on the streets on my day to day. So here we go. Again, a couple signals that were just eye-opening, surprising, and then two that were more hopeful in what I could imagine. So let's just start with the first one. And that starts with Rockefeller Center and just the sheer number of crowds that were there. So to be honest, I'm really conflicted about this. I was there during the holidays with my family.


And I wasn't sure if this was a signal or not, but I found it surprising enough, I thought I would share. And that is just like the sheer number of people in New York City during the holidays, especially around some of the more traditional tourist centers, including Rockefeller Center. There were so many people that it became kind of...


Yeah, that we were just a little bit alarmed for our safety and especially for my elderly mother. So we kind of encircled her to make sure that we could get her through the traffic and to the destination we were actually going to, which bypassed Rockefeller Center. You know, it was shoulder to shoulder. We wanted to make sure that she wasn't getting pushed around. And I guess it was just surprising because


During and after the pandemic, people said, know, New York City is over. People aren't coming there anymore. And this just showed it's not true at all. And in fact, after getting back, I saw an article that said in 2024, New York City had the second highest number of visitors ever, according to the mayor's office. So I'm not sure what this portends about the future, to be honest. You know, some of this is making me think about like, what have we learned from the pandemic?


Are there any protocols in place that we'll practice in the future? Or is it just like, while we're able to, we should go out and enjoy what we can? You know, it also is just a nod to New York City's staying power, which I think is true. You know, the draw is just too strong for too many people. There are so many things to see and just so many interesting things to do in New York City. Like, why wait to go do it? But, you know, there is this idea of an emptier Rockefeller


 Center where you can get your romantic, you know, event, your date in front of the tree with no one else around. It's just not true anymore. I mean, we could  barely seen the tree. Just thank goodness it was so large. You know, is that a place where something like a climate card that we talked about in Seoul, where that comes into play, where they're just like


Climate card consumer hours, climate card member hours. I don't know, something like that for tourists. So very interesting to see. But I guess, you know, for New York, maybe it's good that the tourism numbers are back. I haven't heard and haven't seen anything in terms of protests the way you've seen in places like Barcelona. But if the crowds are like this into the summer, I, yeah, I just wonder what that means for New Yorkers. So that was one that was pretty surprising to me.


The other one that I found that was really surprising was innovation at fast food chains in New York City. So we walked by a variety of fast food chains in New York City, one notable being Shake Shack. They had an innovation kitchen where you can taste the newest thing that they're developing, comment on it, provide some input. There's also a Taco Bell Cantina that we saw that was introducing new items. And I guess, you know, I get it the fast food chain industry has to continue to innovate to stay competitive.


But overall, the cynic in me was like, great. These developments aren't really about how to be more sustainable in the future. It's how to make things tastier to people, possibly more so to me, this is like the antithesis of signals I was hoping to see that instead of looking to be more plant-based, more sustainable and promoting things like that, it was more in direct contrast with those things. So that was a bit worrying to me in the future. Fast food is definitely, seems like it's definitely here to stay, figuring out ways to continue to draw crowds and consumers. You know, on the other hand, what was uplifting is that there were just as many places offering sustainable ingredients and sustainable food and also seeing how palates have changed. I was excited to see the number of places you could go if you had to be gluten free, for example and not just in one particular cuisine.


Like there were so many different places that were serving and catering to different allergens, which I really appreciated. There was one place, a bagel and pastry shop that was all gluten-free. So I expected it to be completely empty and it wasn't all the seats were taken. It was delicious. It was really uplifting to see that places... with more consideration around that just had as many people in it. So I thought that was interesting. New York City is a place to normalize a lot of these behaviors. This isn't a trend of the future. It's already here in terms of the concentration of places. And there is a piece recently that talked about just respecting the history and the evolution of things like veganism in New York City from like a dingy hole in the wall and now you have an 11 Madison Park is a three Michelin star restaurant that is completely plant-based. And so, yeah, it was really cool to see the evolution of just different kinds of food tastes coming to the forefront and thinking about sustainability and catering to the way people need to eat in the future.


So, you know, I don't see New York City as a place you're ever gonna get to more plant-based places than none, but this is certainly an encouraging sign to see. And hopefully, you know, that'll bleed over so that hopefully some of the innovation kitchens you're seeing in fast food restaurants will also be focusing on plant-based and sustainable ingredients.


Yeah, and then I think just in terms of the last kind of just interesting thing to imagine was something I thought I was crazy to think about, which was the New York City skyline and how much taller it's getting. So I was able to go to the Edge New York City at Hudson Yards and it's a rooftop where you have 360 degree view of the entire city. It's so beautiful. But there I was, I was looking at the Chrysler building and it was so tiny compared to a lot of the other buildings. know, iconic ones like Chrysler, the Empire State Building, they're just, you know.


They're just dwarfed by a lot of the other more modern buildings that have since been built. And it's true that New York City is getting taller. There's coverage from Architectural Digest on some of New York City's tallest and most iconic buildings, and a lot of them have been built very recently. There was also a post on Reddit, so take it with a grain of salt. but there was a timeline that was posted until the early aughts.


Most of the tallest buildings, the top five tallest buildings, had been built in the 1930s to the 1960s. But after the early aughts that changed and slowly the top five buildings were all built in the 2000s and beyond. And so if you think about that timeline, you know, in the next 20 to 50 years, will all these ones be dwarfed by the next set of tall skyscrapers. Like what will that look like? And then with the inclusion of things like air taxis, delivery drones and whatnot, you know, I'm getting an image of the city from Star Wars, like episode three, where there's just like tall skyscrapers, there's traffic at every elevation in different directions. It's just like a whole multi-dimensional city.


Again, kind of a crazy idea, but not so crazy in the end when you think of like all these future signals that we're seeing and what they all look like when they're combined together. So yeah, so those are a couple more interesting things that I saw in the city. New York City obviously is a place where you can find so much more. If I'd had more time, I would have loved to uncover a lot more. But hopefully when I come back, when I visit next time, there'll be a lot more to look at. So yeah, so that's a roundup of all the signals that we found in New York City that kind of wraps up this summer series of more lighthearted signals searching. And I hope if you're on your travels still, you know, what are you finding that's really, really new? What does it make you imagine for the future? What are some other possibilities that you're finding? So I'd be really curious to hear. And yeah, thank you so much for listening. Hope you're having a great summer and we will see you next time.

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