With more than 1.6 million resident New Yorkers crammed into its 59km2, and a further 1.3 million commuters joining the caffeinated fray on workdays, the island of Manhattan ranks as one of the densest population hives on the planet. Hard to believe then that after two decades of urban regeneration which has seen one neighbourhood after another evolve from mean streets to gentrified avenues – Alphabet City, The Bowery, East Harlem, NoLIta, Loisaida and the Meatpacking District, to name just some – that there any patches of vacant Manhattan left for commercial makeover.

And yet just a few blocks west of Times Square the first signs of the city’s grandest redevelopment project since the landfill creation of Battery Park City and its World Financial Center in the 1970s and 80s are visible. Hugging the Hudson River along the rugged westside avenues from 34th Street to 57th, this is the fastest-growing section of Manhattan, one whose nickname of Hell’s Kitchen still sticks despite real-estate agents’ persistent efforts to sanitise the area as Clinton or Midtown West.

The most radical transformation will occur at the southern reaches, in a re-zoned area that only two years ago was an unsightly collection of abandoned warehouses, parking lots and a conduit for trucks accessing the Lincoln Tunnel to and from New Jersey. Over the next five years some of the world’s biggest developers, including Related Companies and the World Trade Center’s Larry Silverstein, are turning to the now-obligatory ‘starchitects’ to build at least 8,000 skyscraper apartments here.

These recession-defying high-rises will anchor Hudson Yards, a proposed $15bn (€11.5bn) mini-city built atop 10ha of railyards. The current plans bear little resemblance to the original floated by city mayor Michael Bloomberg as his signature project in 2002; back then, an entire American football stadium was envisaged – one that would have also served as the $2bn Olympic centrepiece had the Big Apple not lost out to London for the 2012 sporting extravaganza. Instead, Bloomberg’s administration now hopes to galvanise a vibrant new commercial and residential neighbourhood complete with cultural amenities, hotels, small businesses, a public school, 4ha of open space and its own metro station once the Number 7 subway line is extended westwards. Related Companies, Hudson Yards’ principal developer is currently courting a global corporation to use one of its buildings as its new headquarters once the first phase is finished in 2015 – built, astonishingly enough, on a 1m-deep steel platform over those rail lines.

There is already much activity on both sides of Hudson Yards. Home to designers and actors in search of cheaper rents and close proximity to Broadway and the Fashion Institute, the area’s artistic credentials have been enhanced by the opening of the High Line, a wild-growing elevated park that snakes through the area from neighbouring Chelsea, built on top of a 1930s’ railway line that hovers 10m above street-level. A second Whitney Museum of American Art has been earmarked for the downtown entrance of the High Line, joining an array of local galleries.

Hell’s Kitchen’s currently attracts its fair share of tourist overspill courtesy of all the post-theatre culinary delights along Restaurant Row. Add into the mix New York City’s premiere convention complex, the soon-to-expand Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, and it was only a matter of time before upscale hotels moved in too. Among the first is Ink48, the latest addition to the pioneering San Francisco-based Kimpton chain that takes full advantage of the dramatic views offered by this former printing plant.

Also on the books, and another sure sign of economic regeneration, is the city’s first gay boutique hotel, a 123-room complex that will come complete with spa and dance club. The fact that this is situated on westernmost frontier of 42nd Street, once associated with seedy XXX joints, only adds to the cachet.

Part of Kimpton’s reason for choosing Hell’s Kitchen, a former slum so notorious for low-lifes and ethnic warfare that it inspired Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, was not to miss out on another golden opportunity. Kimpton did that five years ago with the Meatpacking District and came to regret its decision as clothing stores moved in, Soho House opened its Manhattan private members’ club and the Gansevoort became the it-hotel for models and sports stars. “We were worried we’d make the same mistake twice,” Troy Furbay, Kimpton’s senior vice president admits. “We didn’t want to overlook an area where it wasn’t immediately obvious why there was no hotel there.”