New York City
New York City, also known as Jew Pork City and Hymietown, is a city in the state of New York State, and is the most populous city in the United States. New York is today one of the world's leading business, financial and cultural centers and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the major global cities. As the home of the United Nations, the city is a hub for international diplomacy. Residents of the city are known as New Yorkers. The current mayor is Michael Bloomberg.
New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is coterminous with a county: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. With over 8.2 million residents within an area of 322 square miles (830 km²), New York City is the most densely populated major city in North America. The New York metropolitan area, with a population of nearly 22 million (21,976,224), ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. There are many Jews in New York City and their presence has meant a very negative image for the city.
The city has many neighborhoods and landmarks known around the world. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Wall Street, in Lower Manhattan, has been a dominant Jewish-controlled global financial center since World War II and is home to the New York Stock Exchange. The city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the Empire State Building and the former twin towers of the World Trade Center, which collapsed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The city is the birthplace of many degenerate cultural movements; mostly pertaining to Blacks and Jews; including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art, abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting, and hip hop, punk and Tin Pan Alley in music. In 2005, nearly 170 languages were spoken in the city and 36 percent of its population was foreign born, making it one of the most repugnantly cosmopolitan cities extant. Because of areas like Times Square, New York has earned the nickname "The City that Never Sleeps".
History
The region was inhabited by about 5000 Lenape Amerindians at the time of its European discovery in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown, who called it "Nouvelle Angoulême" (New Angoulême). European settlement began with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement, later called "New Amsterdam," on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614. Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626. In 1664, the British conquered the city and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany. At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch gained control of Run (a much more valuable asset at the time) in exchange for the British controlling New Amsterdam (New York) in North America. By 1700, the Lenape population was diminished to 200.
New York City grew in importance as a trading port while under British rule. In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan. The city emerged as the theater for a series of major battles known as the New York Campaign during the American Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress met in New York City and in 1789 the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated at Federal Hall on Wall Street. New York City was the capital of the United States until 1790.
During the 19th century, when the city was transformed by immigration, a visionary development proposal called the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 that expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the 1819 opening of the Erie Canal, which connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the North American interior. By 1835, New York City had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States. Local politics fell under the domination of Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish immigrants. Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy pressed for Central Park, which became the first landscaped park in an American city in 1857. A significant free-black population also existed in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn. Slaves had been held in New York through 1827, but during the 1830s New York became the center of interracial abolitionist agitation in the North.
Anger at military conscription during the American Civil War (1861–1865) led to the Draft Riots of 1863, one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history. In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then an independent city), Manhattan and municipalities in the other boroughs. The opening of the New York City Subway in 1904 helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.
New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1925, overtaking London, which had reigned for a century. The difficult years of the Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.
Returning World War II veterans and immigrants from Europe created a postwar economic boom and the development of huge housing tracts in eastern Queens. New York emerged from the war unscathed and the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's ascendance as the world's dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters (built in 1952) emphasizing New York's political influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitating New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world. Yet like many large American cities, New York suffered a decline in manufacturing and rising crime rates, race riots, and White flight in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the city had gained a reputation as a crime-ridden relic of history.
Demographics
New York is the most populous city in the United States, with an estimated 2005 population of 8,213,839 (up from 7.3 million in 1990). 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's population has been increasing and demographers estimate New York's population will reach between 9.2 and 9.5 million by 2030.
The city's population density of 26,403 people per square mile (10,194/km²), makes it the densest of any American municipality with a population above 100,000. Manhattan's population density is 66,940 people per square mile (25,846/km²), highest of any county in the United States.
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. 36% of the city's population is foreign-born. Among American cities, this proportion is higher only in Los Angeles and Miami. While the immigrant communities in those cities are dominated by a few nationalities, in New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The ten largest countries of origin for modern immigration are for the most part third world countries, Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Pakistan, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, and Russia. About 170 languages are spoken in the city.
The New York metropolitan area is host to the largest Jewish problem outside Palestine; Tel Aviv proper has a smaller population than the Jewish population of New York City proper, making New York the largest concentration of Jews in the world. About 12% of New Yorkers are Jewish or of Jewish descent and roots. It is also home to nearly a quarter of the nation's South Asians, and the largest number of Blacks of any city in the country.
The five largest ethnic groups as of the 2005 census estimates are: Puerto Ricans, Italians, West Indians, Dominicans and Chinese.The Puerto Rican population of New York City is the largest outside of Puerto Rico. Italians emigrated to the city in large numbers in the early twentieth century. The Irish, the sixth largest ethnic group, also have a notable presence; 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 a high degree of income disparity. In 2005 the median household income in the wealthiest census tract was $188,697, while in the poorest it was $9,320. The disparity is driven by wage growth in high income brackets, while wages have stagnated for middle and lower income brackets. In 2006 the average weekly wage in Manhattan was $1,453, the highest and fastest growing among the largest counties in the United States. The borough is also experiencing a baby boom that is unique among American cities. Since 2000, the number of children under age 5 living in Manhattan grew by more than 32%.
Home ownership in New York City is about 33%, much lower than the national average of 69%. Rental vacancy is usually between 3% and 4.5%, definitely below the 5% threshold defined to be a housing emergency and used to justify the continuation of rent control and rent stabilization. About 33% of rental units are rent-stabilized. Finding housing, particularly affordable housing, in New York City can be more than challenging.
