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 Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:35 pm Post subject: NEW YORK CITY PROFILE - New York City Overview |
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NEW YORK CITY PROFILE - NEW YORK CITY OVERVIEW
NEW YORK CITY
New York City is the largest city in the United States and one of the world's major global cities. Located in the state of New York, the city has a population of over 8.1 million within an area of 321 square miles (830 km²), making it the most densely populated city in North America. Its metropolitan area has a population of 18.7 million and is one of the largest urban areas in the world.
New York City is an international center for business, finance, fashion, medicine, entertainment, media and culture, with an extraordinary collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and financial markets. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations and to some of the world's most famous skyscrapers.
Popularly known as the "Big Apple" or the "Capital of the World," the city attracts large numbers of immigrants—over one-third of its population is foreign-born—as well as people from all over the United States who come for its culture, diversity, fast-paced lifestyle, cosmopolitanism, and economic opportunity. The city is also distinguished for having the lowest crime rate among the 25 largest American cities.
History
The region was inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans at the time of its discovery by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano. Although Verrazzano sailed into New York Harbor, his voyage did not continue upstream and instead he sailed back into the Atlantic. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped. He discovered Manhattan on September 11, 1609, and continued up the river that bears his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site where New York State's capital city, Albany, now stands. The Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1613, which was granted self-government in 1652 under Peter Stuyvesant. The British took the city in September 1664, and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany. The Dutch briefly regained it in August 1673, renaming the city "New Orange," but ceded it permanently in November 1674.
Under British rule the City of New York continued to develop, and while there was growing sentiment in the city for greater political independence, the area was decidedly split in its loyalties during the New York Campaign, a series of major early battles during the American Revolutionary War. 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 was the capital of the newly-formed United States from 1788 to 1790. In the 19th century, the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 enabled New York to overtake Boston and Philadelphia in economic importance, and local politics became dominated by a Democratic Party political machine known as Tammany Hall that drew on the support of Irish immigrants. In later years, known as the Gilded Age, the city's upper classes enjoyed great prosperity amid the further growth of a poor immigrant working class. It was also an era associated with economic and municipal integration, culminating in the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898.
A series of new transportation links, most notably the opening of the New York City Subway in 1904, bound together the newly-enlarged city. 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. The Harlem Renaissance blossomed during this period, part of a larger boom in the Prohibition era that saw the city's skyline transformed by construction the skyscrapers that have come to define New York. New York overtook London as the most populous city in the world in 1925, ending that city's century-old claim to the title.
New York City suffered during the Great Depression, which saw the end of Tammany Hall's eighty years of political dominance with the 1934 election of reformist mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. The city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under LaGuardia and his controversial parks commisioner Robert Moses.
New York City played a major role in World War II as a port and a center of finance and industry. The emerged from the war as the unquestioned leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's emergence as the world's dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters (built in 1952) emphasizing its political influence, and the rise of Abstract Expressionism displacing Paris as center of the art world.
However, the growth of post-war suburbs saw a slow decline in the city's population. A decline in manufacturing, rising crime rates and white flight pushed New York into a social and economic crisis in the 1970s. These problems plagued the city until the dot com boom of the 1990s. Racial tensions calmed in these years; a dramatic fall in crime rates, improvements in quality of life, economic growth and new immigration renewed the city.
Lower Manhattan's skyline with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (1973 – 2001)The city was the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the destruction of the city's tallest buildings, the World Trade Center. 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 completion by 2010.
Geography
New York City is located at the center of the BosWash megalopolis, 218 miles (350 km) driving distance from Boston and 220 miles (353 km) from Washington, D.C. The city's total area is 468.9 square miles (1,214.4 km²), of which 35.31% is 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.
New York City's significance as a trading city results from the 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 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.
The city's land has been altered considerably by human intervention, with substantial land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial 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
Cityscape
New York City, officially the "City of New York", is comprised of the Five Boroughs. Throughout the boroughs there are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods, many with a definable history and character all their own. If the boroughs were independent cities, each would be among the 50 most populous cities in the United States.
Manhattan (New York County, pop. 1,593,200) is the business center of the city, and the most superlatively urban of the boroughs. It is the most densely populated, and the home of most of the city's skyscrapers. It is loosely divided into downtown, midtown, and uptown regions.
The Bronx (Bronx County, pop. 1,357,589) is known as the birthplace of hip hop culture, as well as the home of the New York Yankees and the largest cooperatively owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City. 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. 2,486,235[), the most populous borough, was until 1898 an independent city and has 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 features a long beachfront and Coney Island, famous as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.
Queens (Queens County, pop. 2,241,600) is geographically the largest borough and, according to the US census, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States. Prior to consolidation with New York City it was composed of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch. It is home to the New York Mets, two of the region's three major airports, and Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs.
Staten Island (Richmond County, pop. 464,573) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs, but has gradually 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. Until 2001, Staten Island was the home of the infamous Fresh Kills Landfill, formerly the largest landfill in the world, and now being reconstructed as one of the largest urban parks in the United States.
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 councillors 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. The mayor and councilors are limited to two terms four year terms.
The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. 66% of registered voters in the city are Democrats. Party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Labor politics are important in the city. Because the state of New York consistently votes Democratic in national elections, many observers argue that New York City is insignificant in national presidential contests. The 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 2004 presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and John Kerry.
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 the federal government in taxes (or annually sends $11.4 billion more 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.
The mayor is Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat elected as a Republican in 2001 and 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, sound fiscal management, and aggressive public health policy. In his second term he has made school reform and strict gun control central priorities of his administration.
As the host of the United Nations, New York City is also home to the world's largest international consular corps, comprising 105 consulates, consulates general and honorary consulates.
Economy
New York City is a major center for international business and commerce and is one of three "command centers" for the global economy (along with Tokyo and London).The city is the major center for finance, insurance, real estate, media and the arts in the United States. Other important sectors include the city's television and film industry, second largest in the country after Hollywood; medical research and technology; non-profit institutions and universities; and fashion.
The New York metropolitan area had an estimated gross metropolitan product of $901.3 billion in 2004, larger than the GDP of India and slightly less than that of Canada. The city's economy accounts for the majority of the economic activity in the states of New Jersey and New York.
The city's stock exchanges are among the most important in the world. The New York Stock Exchange is the world's largest stock exchange by dollar volume, while the NASDAQ is the world's largest by number of listings. Many major corporations have headquarters in New York, including more Fortune 500 companies than any other city. 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. The internationalist perspective of New York's business community is often at odds with the foreign, trade and visa policies of the federal government.
Creative industries, like new media, advertising, design and architecture account for a growing share of employment. High-tech industries like software development, game design, and Internet services are also growing; because of its position at the terminus of the transatlantic fiber optic trunk line New York City is the leading Internet gateway in the United States.
Manufacturing accounts for a large but declining share of employment. Garments, chemicals, metal products, processed foods, and furniture are some of the principal products. International shipping has always been a major part of the city's economy due to New York's natural harbor, but with the advent of containerization 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; for example, Brooklyn still handles the majority of cocoa bean imports to the United States.
Demographics
According to 2005 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there are 8,143,197 people (up from 7.3 million in 1990), 2,984,544 households, and 1,802,009 families residing in the city. This amounts to about 40% of New York State's population and a similar percentage of the metropolitan regional population. Over the last decade the city has been growing rapidly. Demographers estimate New York's population will reach 9.4 million by 2025.
The two key demographic features of the city are its density and diversity. The city has an extremely high population density of 26,402.9/mi² (10,194.2/km²), about 10,000 more people per square mile than the next densest American city, San Francisco. Manhattan's population density is 66,940.1/mi² (25,845.7/km²).
New York City is exceptionally diverse. Throughout its history the city has been a major point of entry for immigrants; the term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side, and according to some estimates as many as one in four Americans can trace their roots to Brooklyn. In 2000, 36% of the city's population was foreign-born. Among American cities this proportion was higher only in Los Angeles and Miami. While the immigrant communities in those cities are dominated by a few nationalities, such as Mexicans or Cubans, in New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The four largest countries of origin are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, and Russia.
The Unisphere, in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens. Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the nation. The city and its metropolitan area is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel. It is also home to nearly a quarter of the nation's Indian-Americans, and the largest African American community of any city in the country. The Irish also have a notable presence; 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. New York City has long had a large gay community. Population experts estimate the number of gay people living in the city to be between 360,000 and 500,000.
Since 1991, New York City has seen a continuous fifteen-year trend of decreasing crime; it is now the safest major city (i.e., a city with a population of 500,000+) in the United States. Overall, New York City had a rate of 2,800 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. While many credit the continuous drop in crime to innovations implemented by the NYPD in the 1990s, such as CompStat, economist Steven Levitt and others have pointed instead to broader social and economic trends.
Culture
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs has a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts. Writer Tom Wolfe said of the city that "Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather." The city's size, multicultural history and variety of arts institutions makes it the cultural capital of the United States.
Many major American cultural movements originated in the city. The Harlem Renaissance established the African-American literary canon in the United States. The city was the epicenter of jazz in the 1940s and beyond. Jazz greats likes Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald found refuge from the segregation in the mixed communities of Queens, while a younger generation — Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, and others — were developing bebop in the clubs of Harlem. 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. American modern dance developed in New York during that same time. In the 1970s, punk rock developed in the downtown music scene, including New York Dolls and Ramones, while hip hop was emerging in the Bronx and New York stars like Kurtis Blow, Run-D.M.C., and LL Cool J defined East Coast hip hop by the 1990s.
Transportation
The skyline of New York is one of the most recognizable in the world. New York actually has three separately recognizable skylines: Midtown Manhattan, Lower Manhattan, and Downtown Brooklyn. New York City has architecturally important buildings in a variety of styles, including French Second Empire (The Kings County Savings Bank Building), gothic revival (the Woolworth Building), Art Deco (the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building), international style (the New School, Seagram Building and Lever House), and post-modern (the AT&T Building). The Condé Nast Building is an important example of green design in American skyscrapers.
Architecture
The residential parts of the city have a distinctive character from the skyscrapers of the commercial cores that is defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and apartment buildings which were built during the city's rapid expansion from 1870–1930. Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835. Unlike Paris, which for centuries was built from its own limestone bedrock, New York has always drawn its building stone from a far-flung network of quarries and its stone buildings have a variety of textures and hues
Transportation
New York City is home to the most complex and extensive transportation network in the United States, with more than 12,000 iconic yellow cabs,120,000 daily bicyclists, subway, bus and railroad systems, immense airports, landmark bridges and tunnels, ferry service and even an aerial commuter tramway. While nearly 90% of Americans drive to their jobs, only about 30% of New Yorkers do; 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. Data from the 2000 U.S. Census reveals that New York City is the only major city 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%; nationally, the rate is 8%). New York's high rate of public transit use and its pedestrian-friendly character makes it one of the most energy-efficient cities in the country. A study by the environmental organization SustainLane found New York to be the city in the United States best able to endure an oil crisis with an extended gasoline price shock in the range of US$3 to US$8 per gallon.
Grand Central Terminal, one of the two busiest train stations in the countryThe New York City Subway is the largest subway system in the world when measured by track mileage (656 miles or 1,056 km of mainline track) and the world's fifth largest when measured by annual ridership (1.4 billion passenger trips in 2004). New York City's public bus fleet and vast commuter rail network are the largest in North America. The rail network, which connects the suburbs in the tri-state region to the city, has more than 250 stations and 20 rail lines. The commuter rail system converges at the two busiest rail stations in the United States, Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, both in Manhattan. Long-haul buses depart from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the nation's busiest bus station.
Three major airports serve New York City and its surrounding suburbs: John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and LaGuardia Airport, both in Queens, and Newark Liberty International Airport 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.
Source : Wikipedia
Last edited by admin on Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:46 am; edited 1 time in total |
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