New York City
City of New York, New York | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Nickname: | |
 Location in the state of New York | |
| Counties (Boroughs) | Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) |
| Government | |
| • Mayor | Michael Bloomberg (R) |
| Population (2004) | |
• City | 8,104,079 (city proper) |
| • Metro | 21,923,089 |
| Time zone | UTC−5 (EST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC−4 (EDT) |
| Website | City of New York |
New York City, officially the City of New York, is the most populous city in the United States, and the most densely populated major city in North America.
The city is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture, and is one of the world's four major global cities (along with London, Tokyo and Paris) with an unrivaled collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and stock exchanges. The city is also home to the United Nations and many global organizations.
Located in the state of New York, New York City has a population of 8.1 million[1] within an area of 321 square miles (approximately 830 km²)[2]. It is at the heart of the New York Metropolitan Area, which at a population of over 21 million is one of the largest urban conglomerations in the world. The city proper comprises five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each of these boroughs, except for Staten Island, contains over a million people and would each be among the nation's largest cities if considered independently.
New York City attracts large numbers of immigrants from over 180 countries, as well as many people from all over the United States, who come to the city for its culture, energy, cosmopolitanism, and by their own hope of making it big in the "Big Apple." The city is also distinguished for having the lowest crime rate among major American cities[3].
Serving as an enormous engine for the global economy—with an estimated Gross Metropolitan Product of nearly $500 billion within its city limits[4]—New York City is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other place in the United States. If the city were a nation, it would have the 17th highest gross domestic product in the world based on current exchange rates, exceeding that of Switzerland ($377 billion) and nearly equaling that of Russia ($582 billion).
History
At the time of initial European explorations, the area had long been inhabited by the Lenape. The Dutch established New Amsterdam and New Netherland in 1613. In 1640, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed governor and the colony was granted self-government in 1652. In 1664, the British conquered the area and renamed it New York. The Dutch regained it in August 1673, renaming the city "New Orange", then ceded New Netherland permanently to the English in November 1674.
Under British rule the newly renamed City of New York and surrounding areas continued to develop. There was a growing sentiment for greater political independence among some, but the area was decidedly split in its loyalties. The site of modern New York City was the theatre of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War. After that, the city was under British occupation until the end of the war, and was the last port British ships evacuated in 1783.
New York City became the temporary capital of the newly formed United States on September 13, 1788 under the U.S. Constitutional Convention. New York City remained the capital of the U.S. until 1790. The city grew as an economic center with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, and Tammany Hall began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, a trend culminating with the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854.
There was chaos during the American Civil War, with major rioting in the New York Draft Riots. Later years saw the rise of the Gilded Age which saw prosperity for the city's upper classes amid the further growth of a poor immigrant working class, and an increasing consolidation, both economic and municipal, of what would become the five boroughs in 1898.
A series of new transportation links, most notably the New York City Subway, first opened in 1904, helped bind the newly consolidated city together. The height of European immigration brought social upheaval, and the anticapitalist labor union IWW was fiercely repressed. Later, in the 1920s, the city saw the influx of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the American South, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that saw dueling skyscrapers in the skyline. The city suffered during the Great Depression, which saw the election of Republican reformer Fiorello LaGuardia and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance. The city also played a significant part in World War II.
After World War II New York emerged as the unquestioned leading city of the world. However, after peaking in population in 1950, the city slowly declined with changes in industry and commerce, suburban flight outside the city, and rising crime rates reaching something of a crisis period in the 1970s.
The 1980s was a period of modest boom and bust, followed by a major boom in the 1990s. Racial tensions calmed in latter years; a dramatic fall in crime rates, improvements in quality of life and a major reinvigoration of immigration and growth pushed the city’s population past the eight million mark for the first time in its history. In the late 1990s, the city benefited disproportionately from the success of the financial services industry during the dot com boom, one of the factors in a decade of booming residential and commercial real estate values.
The city was the site of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history on September 11, 2001, when almost 3,000 people were killed in the destruction of the World Trade Center. Among those who died were workers in the buildings, passengers and crew on two commercial jetliners, and hundreds of firemen, policemen, and rescue workers who responded to the disaster. The families of some rescue and cleanup workers who died later claim the acrid smoke that rose for months from Ground Zero, the site of the Twin Towers' fiery collapse, was also a cause of death. The city's economy was substantially hurt but has since recovered and the physical cleanup of the disaster site was completed ahead of schedule. The Freedom Tower, intended to be exactly 1,776 feet tall (a number symbolic of the year the Declaration of Independence was written), is to be built on the site and is slated for construction between 2006 and 2010.
Geography and environment
Geography
New York City is located in the middle of the BosWash megalopolis, 218 miles (350 km) driving distance from Boston and 232 miles (373 km) from Washington, D.C.. The total area is 468.9 square miles (1,214.4 km²), of which 35.31% water. The city is situated on the three major islands of Manhattan, Staten Island, and western Long Island. The Bronx is the only borough that is part of the mainland United States.
The Hudson River flows from the Hudson Valley into New York Bay, becoming a tidal estuary that separates the Bronx and Manhattan from New Jersey. The East River, actually a tidal strait, stretches from the Long Island Sound to New York Bay, separating the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson Rivers, separates Manhattan from the Bronx.
New York City's significance as a trading city results from the superb natural harbor formed by Upper New York Bay, which is surrounded by Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the coast of New Jersey. It is sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island in Lower New York Bay.
The city's land has been altered considerably by human intervention, with substantial land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch times. Reclamation is most notable in Lower Manhattan with modern developments like Battery Park City. Much of the natural variations in topography have been evened out, particularly in Manhattan (one possible meaning for Manhattan is "island of hills"; in fact, the island was quite hilly before European settlement).
Climate
New York has a humid continental climate, though being adjacent to water it experiences less temperature fluctuation than inland areas. New York winters are typically cold, but milder than inland Eastern and Midwestern cities at similar latitude such as Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh. Temperatures below 0 °F (-18 °C) occur once per decade on average, but daytime low temperatures in the 10s and 20s °F (-12 to -2 °C) are common at the height of winter. Springs are typically mild, with high temperatures averaging in the 50s °F (10 to 15 °C) in late March to the lower 80s °F (25 to 30 °C) in early June. Summers in New York are hot and humid, with temperatures commonly exceeding 90 °F (32 °C), though high temperatures above 100 °F (38 °C) are somewhat rare. Autumns are comfortable with sunshine and average temperatures in the 50s °F (10 to 15 °C).
Environmental issues
New York is a national environmental leader. Its density and mass transit use makes it one of the most energy efficient cities in the United States. Gas consumption in New York is at the rate the national average was in the 1920s. The City has introduced nationally pioneering policies requiring it to purchase only the most efficient cars, air-conditioners and copy machines. New York has the largest hybrid bus fleet in the country, and some of the first hybrid taxis.
The city is also a leader in energy-efficient green office buildings, like Hearst Tower and 7 World Trade Center, which recycles rainwater and uses it in toilets and for irrigation, and uses computer-controlled heating and lighting.
New York's water supply is fed by a vast watershed in the Catskill Mountains. Because the watershed is in one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States, the natural water filtration process remains intact. As a result, New York is one of the few cities in the country with drinking water pure enough not to require processing by water treatment plants.
Air pollution, while not as severe as in cities like Los Angeles or Beijing, remains a problem. The city's air has high levels of ozone and particulates, and residents in some neighborhoods have very high rates of asthma. Some parts of the city are also at risk if current global warming patterns continue and sea levels rise.
Boroughs and neighborhoods
3: Queens, 4: Bronx, 5: Staten Island
New York City is comprised of The Five Boroughs. Throughout the boroughs there are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods in the city, many with a definable history and character all their own.
- Manhattan (New York County, pop. 1,564,798) is the business center of the city, and the most superlatively urban. It is the most densely populated, and the home of most of the city's skyscrapers.
- The Bronx (Bronx County, pop. 1,363,198) is known as the purported birthplace of hip hop culture, as well as the home of the New York Yankees. Excluding its minor islands, the Bronx is the only borough of the city that is on the mainland of the United States.
- Brooklyn (Kings County, pop. 2,472,523) is the most populous borough, with a strong native identity. It ranges from a modern business district downtown to large historic residential neighborhoods in the central and south-eastern areas. It also has a long beachfront and Coney Island, famous as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.
- Queens (Queens County, pop. 2,225,486) is the most diverse county in the U.S., with more immigrants than anywhere else in the nation. It is geographically the largest borough, and home to Shea Stadium and the New York Mets; two of the region's three major airports; Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of the 1939 and 1964 World Fairs; and Arthur Ashe Stadium, host of the annual U.S. Open.
- Staten Island (Richmond County, pop. 459,737) is quiet and the most suburban in character of the five boroughs, but has gradually become more integrated with the rest of the city since the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in 1964, an event that caused controversy and even an attempt at secession.
Government
Since its consolidation in 1898, New York City has been a metropolitan municipality with a "strong" mayor-council form of government. The mayor and councilors are elected to four-year terms. The New York City Council is a unicameral body consisting of 51 Council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries. Each councilor represents approximately 157,000 people. The mayor and councilors are subject to eight year term limits. The most recent election was held in 2005.
The city has historically elected Democratic mayoral candidates. The current and previous mayor, however, are pro-choice, liberal Republicans considerably to the left of their national counterparts. Councilors are elected under specific issues and are usually well-known. Labor politics are important. Housing and economic development are the most controversial topics, with an ongoing debate over the proposed Brooklyn Nets Arena.
The Working Families Party, affiliated with the labor movement and progressive community activists, is an important force in city politics. The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. Party platforms are centered on affordable housing, education and economic development. The city's political demographics are liberal and Democratic. 87% of registered voters in the city are Democrats. This is in contrast to New York state, which is somewhat less liberal.
The city has a strong imbalance of payments with the national and state governments. New York City receives 83 cents in services for every $1 it sends to Washington in taxes (or annually sends $11.4 billion more to Washington than it receives back). The city also sends an additional $11 billion more each year to the state of New York than it receives back.
Because both New York state and New York City consistently vote Democratic in national elections, many observers argue the city is insignificant in presidential contests. New York City, however, is the most important source of political fundraising in the United States. Four of the top five zip codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top zip code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2000 presidential campaigns of both George Bush and Al Gore.
The current mayor is Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat who switched his party affiliation to Republican for his first mayoral campaign and was re-elected in 2005 with 59% of the vote. He is known for taking control of the city's education system from the state, rezoning and economic development, fiscal management, and banning smoking in bars and restaurants. He is also known for his strong support of strict gun control laws, abortion rights, and aggressive public health policy.
See also
Economy
New York City is a major center for business and commerce and one of the three world cities (along with London and Tokyo) that control world finance. The financial, insurance, and real estate industries form the basis of its economy. The city is the most important center for mass media, journalism and publishing in the United States and is also the preeminent arts center in the country. New York's film industry is the nation’s second largest after Hollywood. Medical research, technology, and fashion are also important sectors.
The city's stock exchanges are among the most important in the United States. The New York Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in the world by dollar volume. Many international corporations are headquartered in the city, including more Fortune 500 companies than anywhere else. New York is unique among American cities for its large number of foreign corporations. One out of every ten private sector jobs in the city is with a foreign company. Often this makes the perspective of New York’s business community internationalist and at odds with Washington’s foreign policy, trade policy, and visa policy.[5]
Specialized manufacturing accounts for a large but declining share of employment. Garments, chemicals, metal products, processed foods, and furniture are some of the principal manufacturers. New York’s fine natural harbor has meant international shipping has always been a major part of the city’s economy, but in recent decades most cargo shipping has moved from the Brooklyn waterfront across the harbor to the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in New Jersey. Some cargo shipping remains. Brooklyn handles the majority of cocoa bean imports to the United States.
“Creative” industries, like design, new media, and architecture account for a growing share of employment. With the increasing commercial role of the city’s many medical laboratories and research centers, science and research is another strong growth sector. Jobs in the sector grew 4.9% in 2004 - 2005. High-tech industries like software development, gaming design, and Internet services are also growing; New York is the leading international internet gateway in the United States, with 430 Gbps of international internet capacity terminates, because of its position at the terminus of the transatlantic fiber optic trunkline. By comparison, the number two U.S. hub, Washington/Baltimore, has 158 Gbps of internet terminates.[6]
New York City's estimated gross metropolitan product of $488.8 billion in 2003 was the largest of any city in the United States and would be the sixth largest if the city were one of the 50 states. If it were a nation, the city would have the 17th highest gross domestic product in the world, exceeding that of Switzerland ($377 billion), and at $59,000 per person would have the second highest per capita GDP in the world, after Luxembourg.
Demographics
| New York City Compared | |||
| 2000 Census Data | NY City | NY State | US |
| Total population | 8,168,388 | 19,254,630 | 288,368,698 |
| Population, percent change, 1990 to 2000 | +9.4% | +5.5% | +13.1% |
| Population density | 26,402.9/mi² | 401.9/mi² | 79.6/mi² |
| Median household income (1999) | $38,293 | $43,393 | $41,994 |
| Per capita income | $22,402 | $23,389 | $21,587 |
| Bachelor's degree or higher | 27% | 27% | 24% |
| Foreign born | 36% | 20% | 11% |
| White | 45% | 68% | 75% |
| Black | 27% | 16% | 12% |
| Hispanic | 27% | 15% | 13% |
| Asian | 10% | 6% | 4% |
As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2004, there are 8,168,388 people (up from 7.3 million in 1990), 3,021,588 households, and 1,852,233 families residing in the city. This amounts to about 40% of New York state's population and a similar percentage of the New York City metropolitan population.
Recently, New York City has had large numbers of foreign immigrants arriving, many long-standing residents leaving, an increase in the gap between the rich and the poor, and a rise in the black middle class. In some areas of the city there is rapid growth fueled by immigrants and their children. Some areas are undergoing racial and ethnic transition; others are gentrifying.
The two most notable demographic features of the city are its density and diversity. By American standards, the city has an extremely high population density of 26,402.9/mi², about 10,000 more people per square mile than the next densest city, San Francisco. Manhattan's population density is 66,940.1/mi². New York is also uniquely diverse. 36% of its population is foreign born, a larger percentage than in any other major city in the United States except Los Angeles. Whereas in that city the vast majority are from a single country, Mexico, in New York no single country of origin dominates. Only the four largest, the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, and Russia represent groups larger than five percent. The city is about 45% white, 27% black, 27% Hispanic, and 10% Asian.
New York City's estimated daytime population is the largest in the United States at more than 8.5 million persons. In absolute terms the increase of more than half a million people over the nighttime population is larger than anywhere else. However, as a percentage of the city's total population, the 7% increase puts New York mid-pack among cities with more than a million residents. This is because a disproportionately high number of people both live and work in the city.
Median family income in New York was $44,131 in 2003. The unemployment rate in March of 2005 was 5.2%, identical to the nationwide rate. The median age is 34, a year younger than the figure nationally. Nearly 30% of New York City households have children under 18.
New Yorkers belong to a diverse range of ethnic groups. 11.5% are African-American, 9.8% Puerto Rican, 8.7% Italian, 5.3% Irish, 5.1% Dominican, 4.5% Chinese, 2.1% Asian Indian, 1.8% Filipino and 1.6% Korean. According to a 2006 genetic survey by Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, about one in 50 New Yorkers of European origin carry a distinctive genetic signature on their Y chromosomes inherited from Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish high king of the fifth century A.D.[6] New York City is also home to the nation's largest community of American Jews, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, with an estimate of 972,000 in 2002, and is the worldwide headquarters of the Hasidic Lubavitch movement and the Bobover and Satmar branches of Hasidism.
Crime
Since 1991, New York City has seen a continuous fifteen-year trend of decreasing crime and is now the safest large city in the United States. While this trend is said to be due in part to the NYPD's innovative strategies implemented in the 1990s, including CompStat, economist Steven Levitt and others have pointed instead to broader socio-economic trends. Along with decreasing crime rates, gentrification has caused many neighborhoods, once rife with crime and drug dealing, to become thriving and safe neighborhoods. Overall, New York City had a rate of 2,800.5 crimes per 100,000 people in 2004, compared with 8,959.7 in Dallas, 7,903.7 in Detroit, and 7,402.3 in Phoenix.
Culture
The people of New York City, New Yorkers, share a unique culture rooted in centuries of immigration and city life. There is considerable diversity in this local culture, varying by ethnic group, social class, and neighborhood.
To some observers, New York, with its large immigrant population, is more a quintessentially cosmopolitan, global city than something specifically "American". But to others, the city's very openness to newcomers makes it an archetypal city in a "nation of immigrants". Among American cities only Los Angeles receives more immigrants, but immigration to New York is far more diverse; the city government maintains translators in 180 languages. The term "melting pot" was first coined to describe Manhattan’s densely populated Lower East Side.
Everyday life for New Yorkers is often compared to that of urban Western Europeans. The “car culture” that dominates most of the United States is displaced by New York’s overwhelming use of public transit. Many New Yorkers live in compact rental apartments, not sprawling suburbs. The city’s food culture, influenced by its immigrants and vast number of demanding dining patrons, is complex. Jewish and Italian immigrants made New York famous for bagels and pizza. More recent arrivals have made falafels and kebabs standbys of contemporary New York street food.
There are many stereotypes about "The City That Never Sleeps." The American idiom "in a New York minute" means "immediately." The "hard-boiled New Yorker" writes off other cities as "not real", is tough, rude, and impatient, and takes pride in the crowds, noise, and hardships of city life. The "sophisticated New Yorker" often defines American notions of urbanity.
Arts
New York City’s density and size, multicultural history, and wealth of arts institutions makes it the cultural capital of the United States and a global crossroads for music, film, theater, dance and visual art. Among the nation’s most important art collections are those held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. The first and largest performing arts complex in the United States is Lincoln Center. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs has a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts.
Tom Wolfe wrote of New York that "Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather." Important cultural movements have long been part of the city’s history. The Harlem Renaissance established the African-American literary cannon in the United States. The New York School of painters, which developed abstract expressionism in the post-World War II period, became the first truly original school of painting in America. African-American jazz greats likes Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne found refuge in mixed communities in Queens in the segregated America of the 1940s. American modern dance developed in New York during that same time. New York was a hub for the counterculture of the 1960s. Its downtown music scene established punk rock in the United States in the 1970s. In the Bronx, meanwhile, hip-hop was emerging and would go on to take the world by storm by the 1990s. While the big-budget mainstream film industry consolidated in Hollywood, New York became the capital of American independent cinema.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a vast assemblage of historic art, while the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim and Whitney Museum of American Art house important collections of 20th century art. There are an additional 2,000 arts and cultural non-profits and 500 art galleries of all sizes.[7] The city’s performing arts venues are equally numerous and varied. These include the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, actually a complex of buildings housing 12 separate companies, among them Jazz at Lincoln Center, the New York City Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the New York City Ballet. Carnegie Hall is a smaller but prestigious venue. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is known for its cutting edge programming. Downtown clubs such as CBGB and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe are the city's destinations for rock, blues, jazz, mixed media and experimental theater.
New York is also the center of American theater. Broadway theatre, referring to performances in one of New York’s 39 large-scale theaters with more than 500 seats, is often considered along with London's West End to be the highest professional form of theater in the English language. Off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions are often more experimental and are staged in the city's many smaller theater houses.
Media
New York is the nation’s number-one media market with 7% of the country’s television-viewing households. Three of the Big Four music recording companies have their headquarters in the city. One-third of all independent films are produced in New York City. More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city. The book publishing industry alone employs 13,000 people. For these reasons, New York is often called "the media capital of the world."
The city is home to four of the ten largest newspapers in the nation. These include The New York Times (circulation 1.1 million), the New York Daily News (circulation 730,000), and the New York Post (circulation 650,000), founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.[8] The Wall Street Journal (circulation 2.1 million) is the city's business paper. El Diario La Prensa (circulation 265,000) is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation. The city also has a large ethnic press with newspapers in over twenty languages.
Radio broadcasting in the city is equally varied. WQHT, also known as Hot 97, claims to be the nation's premier hip-hop station. WNYC is the most listened-to public radio station in the United States. Shock jock Howard Stern and conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh are based in the city. WBAI in Manhattan, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.
The three traditional major television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC are all headquartered in New York. The city is also a national center of entertainment television. Silvercup Studios produced the hit television shows Sex and the City and The Sopranos. MTV broadcasts programming from its sound stage overlooking Times Square, several blocks away from the theater housing The Late Show with David Letterman. BET is headquartered on 57th Street. The Daily Show is produced by Comedy Central in Manhattan. Over a thousand people are involved with producing the various Law & Order television series. The City of New York also has an official television station, run by the NYC Media Group. The oldest public access channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a well-regarded channel with eclectic local programming ranging from a jazz hour to discussion of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming.
Tourism and recreation
Some 39 million foreign and American tourists visit New York each year. According to some estimates, as many as one in four Americans can trace their roots to Brooklyn. Many visitors investigate their genealogy at historic immigration sites such as Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Other tourist destinations include the Empire State Building, for many years the world's tallest building after its construction in 1931, Radio City Music Hall, home of The Rockettes, a variety of Broadway shows, the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, housed on a World War II aircraft carrier, high-end shopping districts around Fifth Avenue, and city landmarks such as Central Park.
28,000 acres (113 km²) of parkland and 14 miles (22 km) of public beaches in the city provide recreational space. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, has a 90 acre (360,000 m²) meadow thought to be the largest meadow in any U.S. park. Flushing Meadows Park in Queens is the city's third largest park and hosted the World's Fair in 1939 and 1964. Historically, some of the most visited waterfront was around the Coney Island boardwalk. The area was an immigrant and working class resort with amusement parks and ocean atmosphere. It went into decline in the 1970s, although the beach has always remained popular in the summer and Russian immigrants have begun revitalizing area businesses. The popular Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team now plays there. Fishing, swimming and rowing are increasingly popular as the water quality of the city's waterways improve. Several canoe and kayak clubs offer nighttime circumnavigations of Manhattan and tours of the East River.
Shopping is popular with many visitors. Fifth Avenue is a famous luxury shopping corridor. Macy's, the nation's largest department store, and the surrounding area of Herald Square is a major destination for more moderately-priced goods. Greenwich Village is home to hundreds of independent music and book stores, while the East Village has many purveyors of rare and hard-to-find items. Union Square is known for its large farmer's market. The "diamond district" around 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue is a major destination for jewelry, and SoHo, formerly the center of the New York art scene, is now known for high-end clothing boutiques. The art galleries are now concentrated in Chelsea. There are also large shopping districts in Downtown Brooklyn and along Queens Boulevard in Queens. Many of the city's ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Flushing, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans up and down the East Coast, who seek out stores such as Aji Ichiban, the sleek Hong Kong chain, sari shops, and indigenous food markets.
Transportation
New York City is home to the most complex and extensive transportation network in the United States, with its more than 12,000 iconic yellow cabs, landmark bridges, 112,000 daily bicyclists, vast subway system, the nation's busiest public ferry and bus station, immense airports, pioneering underwater vehicular tunnels, largest shipping port on the East Coast and even an aerial commuter tramway. While nearly 90 percent of Americans drive to their jobs, about one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in New York and its suburbs.[9] Data from the 2000 U.S. Census reveals that New York City is the only locality in the United States where more than half of all households do not own a car (the figure is even higher in Manhattan, over 75 percent; nationally, the rate is 8 percent[10]). New York's uniquely high rate of public transit use and its pedestrian-friendly character makes it one of the most energy efficient cities in the country. Gas consumption in New York is at the rate the national average was in the 1920s.[11]
Mass transit
New York's public transit system, which moves 2.4 billion people each year, is the largest in North America. The New York City Subway is the largest subway system in the world when measured by track mileage (656 miles of mainline track) and the world's fifth largest when measured by annual ridership (1.4 billion passenger trips in 2004). Life in the city is so dependent on the subway that New York is home to two of only three 24 hour subway systems in the world. New York City's public bus fleet, the largest in North America, supplements the subway. A vast commuter rail network, also the largest in North America with well over 250 stations and 20 rail lines serving more than 150 million commuters annually, connects the suburbs in the tri-state region to the city. The commuter rail system converges at the two busiest rail stations in the United States, Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, both in Manhattan.
Airports
Three major airports serve New York City and its surrounding suburbs: John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and LaGuardia Airport (LGA), both in Queens, and Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) in nearby Newark, New Jersey. About 100 million travelers used these New York-area airports in 2005 as the metropolitan region surpassed Chicago to become the busiest air gateway in the nation. JFK and Newark's outbound international travel accounted for nearly a quarter of all U.S. travelers who went overseas in 2004. JFK is the largest international air freight gateway in the nation by value of shipments. Both JFK and Newark have rail connections to Manhattan.
See also
Education and research
New York is a global center for research and education, particularly in medicine and the life sciences. New York has the most post-graduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, 40,000 licensed physicians and 127 Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions. The city receives the second-highest amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health among all U.S. cities.
Universities
The City University of New York (CUNY), with over 400,000 students the third-largest university system in the United States, has been called "the poor man's Harvard" because of its low tuition and record of graduating the highest number of Nobel Laureates of any public university in the world. Much of its student body, which represent 145 countries, is comprised of new immigrants to New York City. CUNY has campuses in all of the five boroughs.
Columbia University is an Ivy League university in upper Manhattan. It was established in 1754 as King's College and is the fifth oldest chartered institution of higher education in the United States. During these early years, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert Livingston studied at Columbia.
New York University (NYU) is a major research university in lower Manhattan. Founded in 1831 by a group of prominent New Yorkers, NYU has become the largest private, not-for-profit university in the United States with a total enrollment of 39,408. The University comprises 14 schools, colleges, and divisions, which occupy six major centers across Manhattan.
Fordham University, which has campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx, was the first Catholic university in the northeast. Yeshiva University is a competitive university in the Bronx with a strong rabbinical school. The New School, whose graduate faculty was founded by scholars exiled by totalitarian regimes in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, is known for its progressive intellectual tradition.
In addition to many more universities, New York City is home to several of the nation's top schools of art and design, including Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Arts, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and Parsons School of Design.
Schools
The New York City public school system, the New York City Department of Education, is the largest in the United States. More than one million students are taught in 1,200 separate schools. Because of its immense size -- there are more students in the system than residents in eight US states -- the New York City public school system is the most influential in the United States. New experiments in education, text book revisions, and new teaching methods must work in New York to be viable in the rest of the country.
Dedication to the sciences starts early for many New Yorkers, who have the chance to attend such selective specialized high schools as Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School, CUNY-run Hunter College High School (the public school which sends the highest percentage of its graduates to Ivy League schools in the United States), Bronx High School of Science (which boasts the largest number of graduates who are Nobel Laureates of any high school in the world) and Brooklyn Technical High School. The Brooklyn High School of the Arts is the only high school in the United States with a curriculum in Historic Preservation. The controversial Harvey Milk High School, named for a gay San Francisco city supervisor assassinated in 1978, is the only public high school in the United States for gay, lesbian, and transgendered students.
There are about 1,000 additional privately-run secular and religious schools in New York. These include some of the most prestigious private schools in the United States, such as The Dalton School, The Brearley School, and Horace Mann.
The Catholic schools in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx are a part of the Archdiocese of New York, while the Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens are a part of the Diocese of Brooklyn.
Libraries
New York City has three public library systems, the New York Public Library, serving the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island; the Brooklyn Public Library; and the Queens Borough Public Library. The New York Public Library comprises simultaneously a set of scholarly research collections and a network of community libraries and is the busiest public library system in the world. Over 15.5 million patrons checked out books, periodicals, and other materials from the library's 82 branches in the 2004-2005 fiscal year. The Library has four major research centers. The largest is the Library for the Humanities, which ranks in importance with the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It has 39 million items in its collection, among them a Gutenberg Bible, the first five folios of Shakespeare's plays, ancient Torah scrolls, a handwritten copy of George Washington's Farewell Address and Alexander Hamilton's handwritten draft of the United States Constitution. It also has a large map room and a significant art collection.
The Brooklyn Public Library is the fourth-largest library system in the country, serving more than two million people each year. The Central Library is its main reference center, with an additional 58 branches in as many neighborhoods. Foreign language collections in 70 different languages, from Arabic to Creole to Vietnamese, are tailored to the neighborhoods they serve.
The Queens Library serves the city's most diverse borough with a full range of services and programs for adults and children at the central reference library on Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens and at its 62 branches. Collections include books, periodicals, compact discs and videos. All branches have a computerized catalogue of the library's holdings, as well as access to the Internet. Lectures, performances and special events are presented by neighborhood branches.
Medical research
New York is a leader in biotech, pharma, informatics, medical equipment and clinical programs. The city has 15 nationally leading academic medical research institutions and medical centers. These include Rockefeller University, Beth Israel Medical Center, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Weill Cornell, Mount Sinai Medical Center (where Jonas Salk, developer of the vaccine for polio, was an intern), Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and the medical schools of New York University. In the Bronx, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a major academic center. Brooklyn also hosts one of the country's leading urban medical centers, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, an academic medical research institution and the oldest hospital-based medical school in the United States. Professor Raymond Vahan Damadian, a pioneer in magnetic resonance imaging research, was part of the faculty from 1967 to 1977 and built the first MRI machine, the Indomnitable, there. More than 50 bioscience companies and two biotech incubators are located in the city, with as many as 30 companies spun out of local research institutions each year.
Skyline
Full panoramic photo
New York City has the most famous skyline in the world; because of both its high residential density, and the extremely high real estate values found in the city's central business districts, New York has amassed the largest collection of office and residential towers in the world. In fact, New York actually has three separately recognizable skylines: Midtown Manhattan, Downtown Manhattan (also known as Lower Manhattan), and Downtown Brooklyn. The largest of these skylines is in Midtown, which is the largest central business district in the world, and also home to such notable buildings as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center. The Downtown skyline comprises the third largest central business district in the U.S. (after Midtown and Chicago's Loop), and was once characterized by the presence of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Today it is undergoing the rapid reconstruction of Lower Manhattan, and will include the new One World Trade Center Freedom Tower, which will rise to a height of 1776 ft. when completed in 2010. The Downtown skyline will also be getting notable additions soon from such architects as Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry. Also, Goldman Sachs is building a 225 meter(750 feet) tall, 43 floor building across the street from the World Trade Center site.
New York City has a long history of tall buildings. It has been home to 10 buildings that have held the world's tallest fully inhabitable building title at some point in history, although half have since been demolished. The first building to bring the world's tallest title to New York was the New York World Building, in 1890. Later, New York City was home to the world's tallest building for 75 continuous years, starting with the Park Row Building in 1899 and ending with 1 World Trade Center upon completion of the Sears Tower in 1974. One of the world's earliest skyscrapers, still standing in the city, is the Park Row Building, built in 1899.
The Downtown Brooklyn skyline is the smallest of the three New York City skylines, and is centered around a major transportation hub in Northwestern Brooklyn. The borough of Queens has also been developing its own skyline in recent years with a Citigroup office building (which is currently the tallest building in NYC outside Manhattan), and the Queens West development of several residential towers along the East River waterfront.
Sports
New York's most popular sport is baseball. The city has two Major League teams, the New York Yankees and the New York Mets. Rivalry between the two teams is fierce. They have played 1 World Series championship against each other, in 2000. This all-New York matchup is called a Subway Series. Baseball is also a closely followed sport in New York's large Dominican community, where the many Major League players from the Dominican Republic have devoted fans.
Basketball is also popular. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938. The New York Knicks are the city's NBA team. The New York metro region is the only area in the United States with more than one team in each of the four major sports, with nine such franchises. The U.S. Tennis Open is held annually in Queens.
Immigrants have always influenced sports in New York. Stickball, a street version of baseball, first became popular in the city's Italian and Irish neighborhoods. The popularity of cricket and soccer are growing with immigration from British Commonwealth countries. The first children's Junior Cricket League in the United States opened in Brooklyn in 2004, bringing the number of cricket leagues in the city to seven.
Trivia
- With over 8 million residents, New York City has a larger population than 39 U.S. states. It has more than twice the population of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country, and more than 27 times the population of Buffalo, the second largest city in the state of New York.
- If each borough — Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island — were to become an independent city, they would rank as the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 9th, and 42nd largest cities in the U.S., respectively.
- Approximately two out of five New York State residents live in New York City.
- More than a third of the actors in the United States are based in New York.[12]
- The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is so long – 4,260 feet – that the towers are a few inches out of parallel to accommodate the curvature of the earth.
- There are 6,374.6 miles of streets and 578 miles of waterfront in New York City.
- Central Park is nearly twice as big as the world's second-smallest country, Monaco.
- Interstate 278 is the only highway to go through all five boroughs of New York.
- New York City was the U.S. capital from 1789 to 1790.
Sister cities
New York has eleven sister cities. Parentheses indicate the year the relationships were formed.
Tokyo, Japan (1960)
Beijing, China (1980)
Madrid, Spain (1982)
Cairo, Egypt (1982)
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1983)
Rome, Italy (1992)
Budapest, Hungary (1992)
Jerusalem, Israel (1993)
London, United Kingdom (2001)
Sydney, Australia (2000)
Johannesburg, South Africa (2003)
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Although Amsterdam is not a sister city, due to New York's origins as a Dutch colony and original name (New Amsterdam) it can be legitimately considered New York's "mother city."
Toronto, Canada Although Toronto is not a sister city, the city recently twinned with New York City.
References
- ^ As of the 2004 U.S. Census, New York City's population is 8,104,079 [1]
- ^ New York City's total area is 468.9 mi². 159.88 mi² of this is water and 321 mi² is land. [2]
- ^ Crime in New York City dropped 14% from 2001 to 2004, compared to a national decline of 1.5%. This rate made New York the safest of the 25 largest cities in the United States. [3]
- ^ Gross Metro Product was estimated at $489 billion in 2003, up from $470 billion in 2002. [4] This figure includes only activity within the city limits. Including the Long Island and Newark suburbs puts the 2003 GMP at over $710 billion.
Further reading
- The Encyclopedia of New York City, (ed. by) Kenneth T. Jackson, 1995
- Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, 1998
- New York, Anthony Burgess, 1976
- Here is New York, E. B. White, 1949
- The Colossus of New York: A City in 13 Parts, Colson Whitehead, 2003
External links
- NYC.gov - official website for the city
- New York City Wiki
- NYWiki MediaWiki New York City MediaWiki for the city.
- Template:Wikitravel
Virtual Tours
- Virtual NYC Tour - A virtual tour of New York City
- A9.com - New York
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