Thursday, April 03, 2008
New York City, still a good place to live in
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
In case you have missed the news, New York City, a nice place to visit (40M tourists a year), is still a popular place to live in, despite that deprecating adage often quoted by provincial visitors. It has experienced a population growth of 23,960 souls in 2007, up 0.6 % over 2006, running counter to an ongoing gradual decline of population in the Northeastern cities.
There are lots of things we can be proud of, amenities such as our tasty and safe water (we are one of five cities that require no water treatment plants.) Also, there are our parks. NYC has over 28,000 acres of parklands (112 sq km), not including the thousands of acres in the Gateway National Recreational area, in which the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preservation Area constitutes 8,000 acres. Pricey Manhattan has Central Park (30M visitors a year), and our own area can boast of Union Square, Stuyvesant Square and Madison Square parks, as well as the private Gramercy Park and Stuyvesant Town grassy lawns. The justly deprecated New York atmosphere – there is too much evidence of year-round bronchitis to give credibility to the environmental authorities’ claims of clean air – is showing signs of recovering; we now have the nation’s largest and most energy-efficient public bus system utilizing diesel/ hybrid and compressed gas engines, and hybrid taxis are coming, and green commercial building s are on the rise.
Paradoxically, the crowded high-riser rich Manhattan neighborhoods are among the most efficient energy-saving green municipal subdivisions in the nation. We have. the lowest per capita heat costs and gasoline use, our people walk to schools, restaurants, supermarkets and beauty shops, and take public transportation to and from work. Rich Georgetown in DC, opted not to have a metro stop, and the wealthy there are doomed to traffic jams and wasting gasoline. In energy efficiency, NYC, with its 2.7% of the US population, accounts for only 1% of the nation’s greenhouse emissions , and uses one –half as much electricity as San Francisco and one –quarter that of Houston.
We New Yorkers also have the most valuable real estate in the world. which was not always the case. Manhattan island was first explored by Giovanni di Verrazano, a sailor acting for the French government in 1524, and named Nouveau Angoulieme. The first serious settlers were the Dutch, and Governor-General Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from the Leni Lenape Indians (of doubtful title) for 60 guilders, naming it New Amsterdam. When the British occupied it in 1664, naming it New York, they firmed up their title through the Treaty of Breda, in 1667, after the 2nd Dutch-British war, trading it in from the East India Company in exchange for the much smaller spice island of Run in Indonesia, which the Dutch traders considered to be more valuable (what did they know of location, location. location!).
Back to numbers, New York City’s land mass is 322 square miles, amplified by 162 square miles of water, which provides our fellow citizens with a richness of beaches, blessed with a long swimming season. The population density is 26,403 per square mile, as compared to the nation’s 80 and NY State’s 402, which no doubt accounts for the rich concentration of RiteWay, CVS and other chain drugstores on our shores. Total population is 8 274,527, up by 265,873 since the 2000 census. By borough, Manhattan has 1.620,867 souls Broo0klyn – 2,528,050, Queens – 2,270,338, The Bronx - 1,373,659, Staten Island - 481, 613, all up by fractions of one percent in the past year.
As to our rich ethnic diversity, NYC is 37% non-Hispanic white, 28% Black. 27% Hispanic and 10% Asian, as compared to the corresponding US-wide breakdown of 67, 11, 12, and 4%. Note that NYC contributed some $850B to the national GDP of some $13.8T. Alas, there is also the rich income diversity, from Manhattan’s average $70K cascading to below-national-average numbers in parts of the boroughs. We also have rich language diversity – 170 tongues - and if you are interested, our phone codes have cascaded to five: 212, 718, 917, 646 and 347.
The Census people also have identified the 50 hot metropolitan areas Americans are moving to, and none of them are in the Northeast. The West has 20 of them, the South has 27, and three are in the Midwest. Of the 10 top population-growth cities, Texas has four. Dallas-Ft. Worth gained 162,000, followed by Atlanta, Phoenix, Riverside CA, Charlotte NC, Las Vegas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. Growth of jobs and cheap real estate were the main reasons for the moves. Percentage- wise, new city Palm Coast FL, then St. George, UT, Gainesville, GA and Raleigh, NC were the top population gainers. The main losers of population were Detroit (by a large margin), then Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown PA, Columbus GA, and Buffalo. However, New Orleans, losing population as the result of Hurricane Katrina, regained 40,00 people during the past year, a positive ending to a somewhat bleak economics-driven picture
In case you have missed the news, New York City, a nice place to visit (40M tourists a year), is still a popular place to live in, despite that deprecating adage often quoted by provincial visitors. It has experienced a population growth of 23,960 souls in 2007, up 0.6 % over 2006, running counter to an ongoing gradual decline of population in the Northeastern cities.
There are lots of things we can be proud of, amenities such as our tasty and safe water (we are one of five cities that require no water treatment plants.) Also, there are our parks. NYC has over 28,000 acres of parklands (112 sq km), not including the thousands of acres in the Gateway National Recreational area, in which the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preservation Area constitutes 8,000 acres. Pricey Manhattan has Central Park (30M visitors a year), and our own area can boast of Union Square, Stuyvesant Square and Madison Square parks, as well as the private Gramercy Park and Stuyvesant Town grassy lawns. The justly deprecated New York atmosphere – there is too much evidence of year-round bronchitis to give credibility to the environmental authorities’ claims of clean air – is showing signs of recovering; we now have the nation’s largest and most energy-efficient public bus system utilizing diesel/ hybrid and compressed gas engines, and hybrid taxis are coming, and green commercial building s are on the rise.
Paradoxically, the crowded high-riser rich Manhattan neighborhoods are among the most efficient energy-saving green municipal subdivisions in the nation. We have. the lowest per capita heat costs and gasoline use, our people walk to schools, restaurants, supermarkets and beauty shops, and take public transportation to and from work. Rich Georgetown in DC, opted not to have a metro stop, and the wealthy there are doomed to traffic jams and wasting gasoline. In energy efficiency, NYC, with its 2.7% of the US population, accounts for only 1% of the nation’s greenhouse emissions , and uses one –half as much electricity as San Francisco and one –quarter that of Houston.
We New Yorkers also have the most valuable real estate in the world. which was not always the case. Manhattan island was first explored by Giovanni di Verrazano, a sailor acting for the French government in 1524, and named Nouveau Angoulieme. The first serious settlers were the Dutch, and Governor-General Peter Minuit bought Manhattan from the Leni Lenape Indians (of doubtful title) for 60 guilders, naming it New Amsterdam. When the British occupied it in 1664, naming it New York, they firmed up their title through the Treaty of Breda, in 1667, after the 2nd Dutch-British war, trading it in from the East India Company in exchange for the much smaller spice island of Run in Indonesia, which the Dutch traders considered to be more valuable (what did they know of location, location. location!).
Back to numbers, New York City’s land mass is 322 square miles, amplified by 162 square miles of water, which provides our fellow citizens with a richness of beaches, blessed with a long swimming season. The population density is 26,403 per square mile, as compared to the nation’s 80 and NY State’s 402, which no doubt accounts for the rich concentration of RiteWay, CVS and other chain drugstores on our shores. Total population is 8 274,527, up by 265,873 since the 2000 census. By borough, Manhattan has 1.620,867 souls Broo0klyn – 2,528,050, Queens – 2,270,338, The Bronx - 1,373,659, Staten Island - 481, 613, all up by fractions of one percent in the past year.
As to our rich ethnic diversity, NYC is 37% non-Hispanic white, 28% Black. 27% Hispanic and 10% Asian, as compared to the corresponding US-wide breakdown of 67, 11, 12, and 4%. Note that NYC contributed some $850B to the national GDP of some $13.8T. Alas, there is also the rich income diversity, from Manhattan’s average $70K cascading to below-national-average numbers in parts of the boroughs. We also have rich language diversity – 170 tongues - and if you are interested, our phone codes have cascaded to five: 212, 718, 917, 646 and 347.
The Census people also have identified the 50 hot metropolitan areas Americans are moving to, and none of them are in the Northeast. The West has 20 of them, the South has 27, and three are in the Midwest. Of the 10 top population-growth cities, Texas has four. Dallas-Ft. Worth gained 162,000, followed by Atlanta, Phoenix, Riverside CA, Charlotte NC, Las Vegas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. Growth of jobs and cheap real estate were the main reasons for the moves. Percentage- wise, new city Palm Coast FL, then St. George, UT, Gainesville, GA and Raleigh, NC were the top population gainers. The main losers of population were Detroit (by a large margin), then Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown PA, Columbus GA, and Buffalo. However, New Orleans, losing population as the result of Hurricane Katrina, regained 40,00 people during the past year, a positive ending to a somewhat bleak economics-driven picture
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:11 AM 
