Manhattan's East Side, 1979

Kramer vs. Kramer oozes Manhattan. Central Park alone is home to some of the biggest events in Billy's life; it's there that he learns to ride a bike, there that he sees his mom again for the first time in 18 months, and there that his dad breaks the news that Billy has to go back to live with her.

For Ted and Joanna Kramer, Manhattan just makes sense. As The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby writes in his review:

Kramer vs. Kramer is a Manhattan movie, yet it seems to speak for an entire generation of middle-class Americans who came to maturity in the late 60's and early 70's, sophisticated in superficial ways but still expecting the fulfillment of promises made in the more pious Eisenhower era. (Source)

In other words, we might call them yuppies, which were kind of the late '70s and early '80s equivalent of 21st-century hipsters.

Ted and Joanna are young, college-educated, upwardly mobile, and they want to have it all. They want to live comfortably in the cosmopolitan, yet tough-as-nails city where all the museums, good food, and eight feet tall piles of sidewalk garbage are—you know, culture. They want to make a lot of money and spend a lot of money in a crazy-expensive borough. They want to have vibrant, active, personally fulfilling lives where they can pursue their passions.

Oh, and they want to raise a well-adjusted kid, too.

Ultimately, New York is a city as stressful and complicated as the Kramers' relationship is, making it the perfect backdrop for their family drama and fight against the problematic, culturally-prescribed gender roles of 1979. It's crowded with passion, chaos, and dreams deferred.

And Pizza Rat. Don't forget him. He lives there, too.