New York

New York defies description. You can say anything you like about it and always be right; if you listen to different people talking about it they could each be describing a different town. For some, it’s a center for art, music and theatre; for others, a city of finance and politics. For writers it’s the publishing capital of the world, for manufacturers, a bottomless market, for safe-crackers it’s Ali Baba’s cave, for everyone it’s a city of opportunity.

In 1875 the population of New York was one million; twenty-five years later it was over three and a half million. New inventions were developed to deal with the population expansion. At break-neck speed, New York covered itself with trains, suspension bridges, elevated railways, steam boats and then skyscrapers. The first skyscraper was put up in 1888. It had only thirteen stories, but the next had twenty-two, the Empire State Building- 102, and now the World Trade Center has reached 110. Manhattan solved the space problem by building up. But although the population of New York has stabilized, the city continues to construct and destruct itself. The average lifespan of a Manhattan building is twenty years - some skyscrapers are pulled down after only ten years, while others spring up in only a few weeks. New York is never finished.

If you stop a passing New Yorker and ask where he or she comes from, the chances are that they’ll answer “I’m Irish” - or German. In New York, five people out of every eight are effectively foreigners, or children of foreigners. New York has more Jews than Israel, more Italians than the rest of the world - Italy excepted - and more ethnic minorities than anywhere else. Everyday sixty-seven foreign-language newspapers are published here.

Statistics are impressive. New York City has five boroughs and shelters roughly eight million people - sixteen million if you include the suburbs. But each day the city fills up with another four million who work here but live somewhere else. The subway uses 7,000 cars to transport five million people each day. New Yorkers produce 3 kg of garbage per day - that represents 200,000 tonnes to collect every day from 9,000 km of street and avenues. The police force employs 25,000 officers - the equivalent of the population of Monaco. It’s not surprising that being mayor of New York is supposed to be the most difficult job in the world.