As the booming, magnificent cities of Asia keep up their bright ascendancy, it seems right that we take a moment to honour what is still one of the greatest business cities on Earth. New York. We still love it. The glitter of the East is dazzling, but our hearts flutter too at the familiar golden glow of the West.
With a record 50 million visitors last year, it’s obvious the world is still completely smitten with New York. It’s not the capital of America or even of New York State itself, but to many minds it is the unofficial capital of the world. Only London, with a slightly smaller population but a more ethnically diverse one, can rival New York for an informal Centre-of-the-World status.
In fashion, media, finance and art, New York exerts a staggering amount of global influence. But it isn’t just its power and dynamism that makes us love this city. We love its sheer romance. Physically beautiful, it’s also riddled with potent symbols of hope, of aspiration and self-renewal. New York is a canvas of dreams.
Who wouldn’t sigh to behold Manhattan’s peerless skyline rising above the water? Each skyscraper is a hymn to ambition, a symbol of what can be achieved here. The torch-bearing Statue of Liberty, the first sight of America for millions of immigrants arriving by sea, is an intensely potent icon of a new and better life. Meanwhile the new One World Trade Centre and the 9/11 Memorial eloquently speak of a city that can’t be beaten, a city that overcomes disaster and moves forward with dignity and fresh strength.
Romance seems built into the very fabric of this city. It’s there in the dreamy Art Deco fantasies of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings as they throw their lyricism into the twilit sky. It’s there in the vast Gothic span of the Brooklyn Bridge, that mighty umbilical carrying people into and out of Manhattan. It’s there in Grand Central Station, in the cathedral-like beams of light that rake across hurrying travellers. And it’s in Central Park too, in the landscaped woods, ponds and lamp-lit paths that make up America’s single most- visited urban park. Certainly there’s romance and colour in New York’s markedly extreme seasons, giving us a city with sultry summers (July average: 25oC), glittering winters (average annual snowfall: two feet), and vivid-hued, New-England-style autumns.
With its super-glamorous looks, with its » mean streets and its glossy avenues, New York is a natural-born movie star. It is very probably the most filmed city on Earth, with countless movies and TV shows set here, and about 40,000 location shoots taking place each year. So when we arrive, even for the first time, New York is already intimately familiar to us. We know its flavour and its drama, and we can feel like an actor on an enormous stage set as we tread its hallowed streets.
Music has told us what to expect when we get here too. It’s hard to resist a city that comes already eulogised for us in a thousand songs. New York is “so good they named it twice” and “if you can make it there you’ll make it anywhere”. In 2009 when Alicia Keys belted out “These streets will make you feel brand new, big lights will inspire you; there’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in New York”, her hit record joined a long tradition of popular love songs to the city. Every decade seems to spawn at least one new offering.
Movies and music aside, European travellers have other reasons to find New York familiar.
This is one of the most European-seeming cities in America. The food and coffee are great, the people dress stylishly and have a liberal outlook, and, quite amazingly for Americans, they actually walk to places. While cities like LA are an ocean of automobiles, New York teems with pedestrians. It’s currently the only US city in which a majority of households (52 percent) do not own a car. Plus it sees America’s greatest use of public transport. This, together with an increasing number of eco-fuel buses and taxis on the streets, makes New York one of America’s most energy-efficient cities.
Energy. It’s something in which New York never seems to be in short supply. The buzz of this city-that-never-sleeps can be quite overwhelming. Fast-talking New Yorkers have twice as much to say as everyone else and half the time to say it in. And we love them for it.
Dynamic, forward-looking New York just won’t shut up or stay still. Neighbourhoods, faces, waves of immigration: everything changes and brings fresh colour. All that really stays unchanged is the glory of the place.
