Overview of New York City

New York City has over eight million residents, making it the most populous city in the United States. NYC consists of five different boroughs: The Bronx; Brooklyn; Manhattan; Queens; and Staten Island. Politically, New York is home to The United Nations Headquarters, making it a very important city when it comes to international affairs. For those of you thinking about moving to New York, it is a vibrant, 24-hour city that never stops; with a strong global influence in finance, fashion, media, politics, art, culture and the entertainment industry.

Starting with finance, Wall Street, in lower Manhattan, is home to the New York Stock Exchange, the largest stock exchange in the world based on listed companies along with their market capitalization. Wall Street makes New York the financial capital in the world. Started in 1792 with just 24 stock brokers, the New York Stock Exchange now consists of an average daily trading value of approximately $153 billion.

Fashion has also become a cornerstone of the New York scene and anyone living in New York understands fashion is a daily lifestyle. New York Fashion Week is one of the four major fashion events held in New York City each year. The event is by invitation only and offers the opportunity to catch a glimpse from the works of top fashion designers along the lines of Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan.

When it comes to media, New York City has some of the most internationally influential newspapers, publishing houses and television studios. Headquartered in New York is The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Village Voice which is the nation's largest alternative paper. Four major television networks all reside in New York: ABC; CBS; NBC: and FOX. MTV, HBO and Comedy Central are also located in NYC. Book publishing giants along the lines of Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Scholastic are all based in New York. These media companies employ many people living in New York.

New York politics are unique in its own rights and tend to be more liberal with a large base for Democrats in the city, close to 60% as of the last registration period. The current mayor of the city is Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat who was elected into term as a republican. He has since left the Republican Party and was elected as a Political Independent to has latest term as mayor. When it comes to crime in New York, each of the boroughs has a separate district attorney to prosecute alleged criminals. In addition to the mayor and the various district attorneys, legislative issues are handled by the 51 members of the New York City Council. The current speaker of the council, Christine Quinn, is the first woman and openly gay person to hold the council chair.

Anyone moving to New York who loves art, will not disappoint in this department. Manhattan alone has some of the most influential art museums in the world. Starting with MoMA which is the Museum of Modern Art to the Guggenheim, home to some of the most important works in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The Guggenheim building itself is one of the top architectural designs in the world, a brainchild of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The modern art scene is represented best in neighborhoods in Manhattan from SoHo (the area south of Houston Street) to Tribeca, where small art galleries house the art of some of the most up and coming artists in the art world. In the past, hip, young artists, from Andy Warhol to Jean Michel Basquiat, found their fame along the streets of Manhattan.

Culturally, New York City has been in the forefront of many major movements. The city was the epicenter of the Jazz Movement in the 1940s and the Beat Generation in the 1950s, where writers from Jack Kerouac to Allen Ginsberg to William S. Burroughs would convene to talk about their writing. Of course the pulse of the New York cultural scene lies in Broadway. Playwrights from Arthur Miller to Elia Kazan started their careers in New York's Broadway and modern musicals that play throughout the world today, from Cats to Phantom of the Opera, began their run on Broadway.

Although Broadway is the center of New York's cultural scene, it is also a part of the city's widespread entertainment industry. Morning television from the Today Show to Good Morning America and The View are all shot in New York. With a relatively new tax credit offered to television and film productions that shoot in New York City itself, NYC has seen a reemergence of tv series and feature film shoots come back to the city. In its final two seasons, Ugly Betty, a New York based story that was actually shooting in Los Angeles, moved locations to New York. The staple television series in New York has been the various Law & Order franchises, filming in the city for the last 20 years. Along with shows like FX's Rescue Me and the many cooking series filmed at The Food Networks headquarters in Manhattan, New York has made a solid comeback as an alternative home to the entertainment industry versus Los Angeles.

For anyone considering moving to New York, it is a city that offers much along the lines of culture, entertainment and employment; with a city government that has made a grand effort to clean up the city from crime. New York City is politically charged and constantly at the heart of current events in the media.

Overview of New York City

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