New York State
According to Citypopulationreview, New York is a federated state of the USA (127,190 km 2 with 19,490,297 inhabitants in 2008; 153.2 inhabitants per km 2); capital Albany. After California, it is the most populated state. It is between the Erie and Lakes Ontario, the river valley S. Lorenzo to the northwest and the Atlantic coast (overlooked by the innermost part of Long Island Sound) to S. It is crossed in the longitudinal direction by the Hudson River (920 km), into which the Mohawk (220 km) which has a latitudinal direction. They open their way between a region of highlands that to the south of the Mohawk form the northern portion of the Appalachian plateau, one of the most important areas for farming, and to the north the southernmost section of the Laurentian range (Adirondack, 1630 m). Few flat areas (in which the major centers agglomerate) are along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and near the Hudson River. Agriculture (cereals, fruit, potatoes) takes a back seat to industry. The breeding, especially of dairy cattle, is remarkable. The position of the state, intermediate between mineral producing states, and the presence of easy communications by natural and artificial waterways (8400 km of canals) have favored a strong impulse of industry (chemical,
It had the first settlers in 1609, under Dutch protectorate from 1624 with the name of New Holland (Nieuw Nederland). Passed under the English protectorate in 1664, it allied itself with the Iroquois, against the English fiscal policy and was one of the 13 colonies that gave rise to the Confederation in 1776. In 1788 it accepted the Federal Constitution. Since then, with its demographic weight, it has played an increasingly decisive part in the political destiny of the USA.
NEW YORK CITY
Population. – Its population, within the municipal limits (765.4 sq km), has reached 7,454,995 residents in 1940 and 7,835,392 in 1947 (estimated); including the metropolitan area, the population now exceeds 11 million. The Rockefeller Center was completed (1940) and, especially in the Manhattan Borough – in anticipation of the 1939 International Exposition, a vast renovation and modernization project was carried out, both by building new roads and opening parks with the gutting of old neighborhoods, and with the elimination of itinerant markets and elevated railways, which have been replaced by numerous and more rational covered markets and new tunnels of the underground network respectively. Among the new roads there are two long ring roads, which have the function of decongesting traffic in the two boroughs Brooklyn and Queens, along Jamaica Bay and along the East River. Another newly built street, starting from the plaza adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge, it crosses this borough eastwards to a new bridge over the Newton stream, and then joins the Queens avenues, in the homonymous borough. Communications between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn were further facilitated by building two more tunnels under the East River, one completed in 1940 and the other after the war. For the exposition, see in this second App., I, p. 877.
Before the war, new hospitals had also sprung up and the network of aqueducts had been strengthened. In 1938 water was collected from the Deleware River and in 1940 a dam was begun across the Roundout River running down the southern slope of the Katskill Mountains. The reservoir covering an area of approximately 16 sq km. and collects an average of 190 million cubic meters. of water, is a good supplement to the old Kroton and Ashokan reservoirs which, overall, have a reserve of 870 million cubic meters. The water is transported to New York by crossing the Shawabgunk Mountains and the Hudson River in two tunnels. Among the public works completed before the war (in 1939) there is also a grandiose airport (235 ha. Of surface), which soon became insufficient, so that a program for the construction of new airports was entrusted to the
The public works, and the new buildings for residential use, in particular, had a complete interruption during the war, and received new impetus only after 1945. In 1947 the extension of the subway stations began. In the two years 1946-47, buildings with about 25,000 apartments were built.
Architecture and urban planning. – The population, almost stable since the postwar period, is approaching eight million with an increasing trend in Queens, Richmond and Bronx, and a slight decrease in the originally more populated sectors of Brooklyn and Manhattan (1970 census: New York City 7,895,563, Bronx 1.471.701, Brooklyn 2.602.012, Manhaitan 1.539.233, Queens 1.987.174, Richmond 295.443). In recent years, emigration from NY City to the suburbs has been in decline, while there has been a global decline in the population, with an increase in senility and in the percentage of black inhabitants (1974 estimate: about 43%). Corresponding to this demographic situation is an aggravation of housing problems for the poorest classes, due to the building and hygienic degradation that has occurred above all in the ghetto areas of Harlem, East Side, southern Bronx: Urban Renewal) proved to be inefficient when it comes to relocating the evicted from the demolished areas. Furthermore, the progressive “tertiary” transformation of a large part of Manhattan has made the traffic problems produced by the colossal phenomenon of commuting more and more complex.
Until the 1950s, the trend of the most prestigious office buildings was to settle in Middletown (that is, far from the original area of skyscrapers around Wall street) in keeping with the directional shift operated in the 1930s with the Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building. The new skyscrapers are architecturally oriented towards the “international style” codified by L. Mies Van der Rohe: crystal prisms in the curtain wall (but the first major realization of a glass facade is of the UN building, built on the East River in 1951 based on an idea by Le Corbusier from 1947).
Towards the end of the 1950s, a turnaround took place, which Rockefeller once again promoted by setting up his Chase Manhattan Bank in Down Town, near Wall Street. The two gigantic twin towers of the World Trade Center, built on the Battery, will follow, between the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, which, upsetting the balance of this area, heavily affect the skyline.. This is an anticipation of the major intervention on the Hudson River designed by the New York Plan Commission as early as 1966, which also includes residential areas for 15,000 inhabitants. The heavy municipal crisis that the city has been going through for some years has hindered the residential intervention policy recently launched on the water edges of Manhattan (Waterside, Manhattan Landing, Welfare Island).
