"naturally surounded by high rises" nothing natural about that. Its callled urban planning and in this case complete control was given to one guy, the one that made prospect park too, i saw a docu on it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't but the bearucracy and corruption with funding usually takes its place. A lot of cities simply weren't planned for that, central park is designed pre-automobile. Many new cities are post-auto, so they dont care about walking spaces like they used to, a lot of cities have decided that the public is dangerous and hard to control, they dont want them to gather or loiter in any space and why should they give something for free when a business can profit from their need? NYC came from a place where they the populace was accustomed to dealing with the public in person on a daily basis.
Its also very expensive to be homeless. There is no legal place to loiter or park your car. Even teh public spaces are strictly enforced with no loitering. Where I live anyways, public space is highly protected. If you dont have a private space you can do go, you are forced to constantly be nomadic going from one place to the next until you tire and cannot run away from the enforcement authorities and are jailed. When you exit jail, there is a halfway house or something you are allowed to go in, but thats only temporary and only if you have addiction problems.
where i live, which is in the south, every 3 cars is one of these, they lift suvs too, so that increases the odds. when cops clock out they also drive one of these, even the gay ones. driving it is no big deal, its how they drive and what they do with it, usually road raging other road users, intimidating them, and trying to run them off the road, in other words bullying and intimidation, which is likely why they own one in the first place. why do they feel a strong desire to bully or intimidate anyone? that's a great question. why do you have to knock out the biggest guy in jail to get any respect? ...................
More reason for universal standardized content access with universal type apps, anyoen can create content and distribute it to millions of people. These networks have always been about convenience, which they have a properietary tech on apparantly.