The New City runs along a single main artery, Cumhuriyet Caddesi, which starts at Taksim Square and heads north through Elmadağ and Şişli before becoming Büyükdere Caddesi and continuing all the way to Sarıyer on the Bosphorus. Metro line M2 follows the same route underground, making the district unusually easy to navigate by the standards of a city built on seven hills with streets that seem to have been laid by goats. The Metrobüs — a dedicated bus rapid transit lane that spans the city from the western suburbs to the Asian side — passes through Mecidiyeköy and Zincirlikuyu. Dolmuşes shuttle between Beşiktaş and the shopping streets of Nişantaşı. Getting around is less the adventure it is in the older quarters; this part of Istanbul was planned.

The New City is really two districts wearing the same name. In the south — around Harbiye, Elmadağ, Osmanbey, Nişantaşı, and Şişli — the streets are lined with neoclassical and Art Nouveau buildings from the turn of the twentieth century. Ornate facades, wrought-iron balconies, tiled entrances: this is the Istanbul that emerged when the Ottoman Empire was trying to look European and succeeding rather well. Farther north, toward Levent and Maslak, a completely different city has risen. As of 2022, the tallest building in this cluster, Skyland Istanbul, reaches 284 meters. Several others rank among the tallest anywhere between Moscow and Dubai. The most appreciable views of this skyline come from a distance — ideally from across the Bosphorus, where the towers catch the late afternoon light in a way that makes them look almost handsome.

Nişantaşı is a name Istanbullus say with a particular inflection — somewhere between pride and irony. It is the city's highest-end shopping neighborhood, a compact grid of streets downhill from Osmanbey metro station where Gucci sits next to Prada sits next to Armani, and the café terraces fill by mid-morning with people who have nowhere particular to be. The Art Nouveau buildings here are well-maintained; the streets are leafy. City's Nişantaşı shopping center is about ten minutes from Osmanbey on foot. The neighborhood was once where Istanbul's non-Muslim upper-middle class — Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Levantine — built their fashionable apartment buildings in the early twentieth century. The buildings remain; the demographics have shifted, but the taste for elegance persists.

After dark, the New City has options across a wide spectrum. Reassürans Pasajı, a small passage in Nişantaşı, houses a cluster of bars and cafés that make it a natural anchor for a Saturday evening. The passage has the slightly worn, unpretentious character that is sometimes found in the fancier neighborhoods of Istanbul — the expensive streets always seem to have one alley where everything gets cheaper and more interesting. Farther north, the clubs around Büyükdere Caddesi and Maslak Sanayi serve a different crowd: Jungle 8, Klein Phönix, 42 Venue. These are the kind of clubs with strict door policies and sound systems you feel in your chest. Budget for food is straightforward: börek, çiğ köfte, and döner are available on any main street at prices that seem improbably low given the neighborhood's general tone.

What the New City offers that no other part of Istanbul does is a sense of what this city is becoming. The historic peninsula, Sultanahmet, the Grand Bazaar, the Egyptian Spice Market — those places are incomparable, but they are also heavily managed for visitors. The New City is mostly for residents: the professionals commuting to the tower offices in Levent, the families shopping in Nişantaşı on a weekend afternoon, the university students making the most of the passage bars. It is not a district where you come to feel the weight of history. You come to see how Istanbul has decided to face the future — loudly, expensively, with considerable ambition and a fondness for altitude.