New Yorkers who stay in town during summer and holiday weekends know the empty-streets, Potemkin-village look that parts of the city take on, but some Manhattan neighborhoods are assuming that vacant feeling the year round, because the people who own or rent apartments there actually live somewhere else most of the time, according to an article by Sam Roberts in today's edition of The New York Times.

"This explains why, in a city of bright lights, so many windows dotting the imposing facades of Fifth, Madison and Park Avenue apartment buildings are pitch dark every evening. Wealthy out-of-towners have always had pieds-¿-terre and unused investment properties in the city. What is new is how many," the article said.

"In a large swath of the East Side bounded by Fifth and Park Avenues and East 49th and 70th Streets, about 30 percent of the more than 5,000 apartments are routinely vacant more than 10 months a year because their owners or renters have permanent homes elsewhere, according to the Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey," the article noted.

"Since 2000," the article continued, "the number of Manhattan apartments occupied by absentee owners and renters swelled by more than 70 percent, to nearly 34,000, from 19,000. They proliferated in virtually every census tract south of 110th Street, with the most pronounced surges in the East Village, SoHo, Greenwich Village, Gramercy Park, Midtown East and the Upper East Side."

"Some other cities are concerned that too many out-of-towners buying up desirable homes will deaden neighborhoods and deplete any street life: Charleston, S.C., has subjected second homes to higher property taxes than primary residences," the article said, adding that "New York City does not, taxing second and permanent homes at the same rate, but a state tribunal this year suggested that city apartments owned by commuters could be included in the definition of a permanent abode, subjecting them to New York taxes even on income earned out of state."

"Still," the article continued, "fears of creating dead zones have been muted in Manhattan, where congestion routinely trumps desolation as an urban crisis and where, as a result, some residents actually prefer the sense of solitude."

"Among all of the 845,000 apartments and houses in Manhattan, 102,000 were identified as vacant in the 2005-9 American Community Survey. Of those, about 33,000 - or about 1 in every 25 Manhattan homes - had an owner or renter who lived there less than two months of the year," the article said.