City in City

        New York City is known as city that never sleeps. Sometime New York is controlled by its residents or sometimes it controls its residents. There are so many factors which play an essential role to develop any city like economy, immigrants, basic transportation and communication facilities, population, geography and weather. This essay mainly focuses impact of immigrants on City. Its approximate population in 2009 is 8.363 million and most of them were immigrants, who came to New York in search of better life and future. All these people belong to different communities and New York is the best example to show how communities play an important role in a development of any major city. If we observe closely, New York City explains itself that how these immigrants are creating place for their comfort and what they are resulting into:

        New York City is most populous in the United States and is knows as financial hub of the world. This financial hub is acting as giant magnet attracting people from all around the world and thus New York became a gateway for immigration to United States. For the past decade roughly 100,000 immigrants have been arriving and making New

immigrants by states

York city as their home, one million have came since 1990. This has meant an almost incredible jump in the percentage of foreign-born New Yorkers, from 28 to 40 percent, in less than ten years. During those decades the newcomers arrived mainly from southern and eastern Europe, joining previous waves from Germany, Ireland and England. Today the immigrants come from literally every corner of the globe. The number of New Yorkers born in the Dominican Republic, for has jumped from 230,000 in 1990 to 387,000 in 1999. During the same period city residents born by Soviet Union nearly tripled from 81,000 to 229,000: South Asians from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh increased their numbers from 67,000 to 146,000; and the Mexican population near quadrupled from 35,000 and 133,000. These are only a few of the more domestic statistics. Chinese immigrants have also arrived in huge numbers, along with Koreans and an increasing number of Africans, both from the Arab north and from sub Saharan Africa. There is barley a country in the world that doesn’t have significant presence in the largest city of United States. There are three “Chinatowns” today, with Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park in Brooklyn joining the original Chinese neighborhood in lower Manhattan. In Manhattan, the Dominican enclave centered in the northern section of the borough around Washington heights, while the Chinese were concentrated in Chinatown to the south; Mexican had a large presence in East Harlem. These immigrants effect on New York’s economy, lows, population, housing and character of city and they are trying creating and expanding their own neighborhood and society where they can have their culture in New York City.

        My essay and research mainly addresses the issue how immigrants can make a place so characteristic that initially  becomes  a “District” and then it transformed into a “polis”. District is relatively a large city area which the observer can mentally go inside of, and which  have a some common character. They can be recognized internally, and occasionally can be used as external reference as a person goes by or toward them.  The physical characteristics that determine districts are thematic continuities which may consist of an endless variety of components: texture, space, form, detail, symbol, building type, use, activity, inhabitants, degree of maintenance, topography. And “polis” is a self sufficient city-state which has its own character and social affairs. Process of converting place into district and then into a polis is very well explained by Chinatown and Little Italy which was witnessed by New Yorkers very well.

characteristic of Chinatown

        Chinatown and Little Italy are the perfect examples of this kind of neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are growing day by day in population having their own identity, characteristics and culture which creates different districts. When you enter in this community with its own character you can easily differentiate it with other communities.  Manhattan’s Chinatown is one of the largest Chinese communities outside of Asia and was  started developing in 1870 covering four streets with the population of 200 and now in 2009 it is having population of 100,000 covering area of around 30 streets. This same thing is also happening with New York’s other neighborhoods including Little Italy.

characteristic of Little Italy

        Growth of these communities is making them “self sufficient”. Chinatown and Little Italy has its own residential and commercial area, they are developed such a way that people from those communities can get everything available in their country. They have their own food, festivals, clothing, recreation, banking, culture and mainly businesses. They don’t require going out of their community for any reason. They have their own privacy and they want to maintain it so they welcome people from other communities only for recreation not to stay over there. The social make up of Chinatown says, “We belong to this special area, and we are Chinese, this is our place, our culture, others are welcome but they come to us as our guest.” It is same like visiting other country as foreigner. This self sufficiency and privacy is leading neighborhoods towards becoming “Polis”.          

        At present the population of immigrants is increasing very fast and it seem that it will increase more in future. The new immigration has altered the landscape of the city at very high level– New York now boasts three Chinatowns, a little Odessa, Caribbean Brooklyn, Dominican colony in Washington Heights and South Asian Community in Efforts Blvd, Jackson Heights and Flushing. If all these developing Districts follow the same path as china town then district will become self sufficient “Polis” and New York City might lose its essentials.

References:

Book- City Reader

Web-

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/nyregion/24immigrant.html?_r=1

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/nny_overview.shtml

http://books.google.com/books?id=MR4iVnvulMQC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=impact+of+immigrants+in+nyc&source=bl&ots=dxfjSDkMOl&sig=90QPnWwUPauaH8Bs2t-93HQcwM8&hl=en&ei=ivPpSvriIcO7lAe93IGABQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCMQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=&f=true

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