Every urban center has its monuments, its history, its skyline, but great cities are more than buildings, great cities
Have a pulse and few mega cities capture the complexity
Chaos and vitality of a living system more vividly than New York, yet for a place
So deeply embedded in American culture
It's fascinating origins often go overlooked
After all no city becomes the Celebrity's playground, this city that never sleeps, the melting pot, the mother of exiles and the American dream overnight
While it is no longer the largest metropolis on Earth. It is still the most influential, but as this fast-paced
Capitalist Mecca Matures its confronting a unique set of challenges
Let's take a bite out of the big Apple, America's Mega City
One of the most remarkable things about this concrete jungle is how quickly it's rotted up
Compared to the other two mega cities
We've profiled so far New York is relatively young, less than 400 years ago the city looked like this
In 1609 the Island of Manhattan was found by an expedition. Its leader Henry Hudson realized immediately that it was a
Geographical gem the ideal location to build a city. A large river ran along its entire
Western Shore and on its Eastern Edge was a narrow estuary connected to a large Bay
Its Southern tip was flanked by two more large bays and dozens of Islands including the much larger
Long Island which shields Manhattan from ocean storms and
And as we saw in our previous explorations of Mexico City and Bangladesh
Containing and distributing clean water to residents is often a keystone challenge for dense urban centers on
this front however New York City reaps the benefits of Nature
direct contact with water ensures reliable access while elevated terrain spares it from excessive flooding
but back to the 17th century, after word reached Europe that Hudson had discovered what he called
"As pleasant to land as one can tread upon" the mercantilist minded Dutch sent 30 families to build a settlement called New Amsterdam in
Exchange for some metal kettles, axes and cloth the Native Americans who hunted throughout the area gave the Dutch the Island
slaves were immediately brought in to begin building the town
the Town's population reached 700 in
1664, but it still wasn't receiving very much support from the crown back in Holland, so English King Charles II
swooped in and with four warships
Captured the town without resistance. He then gave the colony to his brother the Duke of York
And you can guess what they called it. By the end of the 18th century, New York had become an important
Port City, then came the Revolution that changed everything
In 1776, New York joined the other American Colonies and declared independence from the English
After getting kicked out of Boston the British responded by sending an entire fleet of redcoats to seize and occupy
New York which they held for seven years until George, Washington
Led his victorious Rebel Army back into the city
After the war, New York briefly served as the capital of the newly formed United States until the federal government moved to the more centrally
Located district of Columbia. It's fascinating how that came about
The Decision was ultimately up to President Washington
But he left it up to his two right-hand men to figure out. In a backroom deal brokered by James Madison over dinner
Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton of New York agreed to allow the nation's capital to move south to Northern Virginia the home state of
secretary of state Thomas Jefferson. In Exchange Jefferson agreed to support
Hamilton's financial plan which included the creation of a powerful Central bank
Soon after, the New York Stock Exchange was established laying the groundwork for lower Manhattan to become the financial capital of the world
Today its home to the two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization
A couple more events in the early 1800s helped accelerate the City's growth. A grid pattern of streets was laid out
Providing an organized plan of expansion to the North and the opening of the Erie canal in 1825
This increased New York's importance as an export center of goods
Agricultural products and raw materials that could now be easily transported from the resource-rich Great lakes region
Around this time the city became the Gateway to America as large numbers of German and Irish immigrants arrived
Between 1820 and 1850 New York's population quadrupled
Many of these newcomers had to settle in tenement houses without proper sanitation or clean water
Diseases like Cholera, Typhoid and Smallpox became rampant. The construction of the Croton aqueduct
One of the world's first great modern water distribution systems helped to solve this problem
and hygiene began to immediately improve
In order to preserve the fast-growing city's connection to the environment a
600 acre area of swampland and squatter shacks was set aside for preservation and eventually transformed into Central Park
Today, it's the most visited Urban park in the country
Heading into the 1860s slavery was deeply dividing the Northern and Southern States
New York was the epicenter of the abolition movement
when the Civil War began in
1861, After Abraham Lincoln was elected president a riot broke out as angry white mobs attacked blacks
Who they blamed for low wages and the war
Hundreds were killed
Despite the unrest the city's economic engine roared as it became the vital source of
financing and supplies for the two million soldiers strong Union war effort
After the northern victory brought peace to the country New York's industrialists were free to focus on building
In 1883 the Brooklyn Bridge was completed linking New York to the third largest city in the country
The 1880s also brought electricity to the city and by 1893 there were
1,500 arc lamps illuminating New York streets. In 1898 the state legislature incorporated
Manhattan and the surrounding four boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island into the city of New York
instantly doubling its population and
quadrupling its land area
After leading the earlier fight to abolish slavery, New York was now the leader of the women's suffrage and workers rights movements
This culture of inclusivity also welcomed African-Americans fleeing the destruction and segregation of the south
They largely settled in an area on the upper west side that became known as Harlem the cultural capital of Black America
Electricity made the city at the center of nightlife in the roaring 20s
By the end of the decade the New York Metropolitan area's population had grown to 8 million
passing London to become the planets largest urban area
In 1931 the City Also had the world's tallest building as the Empire State building rose to dominate the skyline in an almost ridiculous way
World war II brought another wave of immigrants fleeing the chaos and destruction in Europe
When it was over, New York status as the unofficial capital of the world was cemented
with the construction of the gleaming United Nations complex along the east river
throughout its history
New York has also been a core force behind major social movements that have focused the country's vision while
Unifying New Yorkers as a community with a common identity
The city played an important role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s as leaders like Dr.Martin Luther King
Rallied support through the New York-based news media the Gay Rights Movement counts Greenwich Village as its epicenter
This neighborhood was also the site of a crucial battle between the powerful developer Robert Moses and residents
Led by activist and author Jane Jacobs, their grassroots movement ultimately blocked Moses from carrying out a project
That would have bulldozed the village and the area now known as Soho in order to cut through the heart of Manhattan with a giant
expressway
Paul Goldberger: "The lower Manhattan Expressway was
To have connected a Holland Tunnel with the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges
It would have destroyed most of Soho we would have lost
One of the greatest inventories of 19th Century buildings not just in New York, but in the world"
Jane Jacobs: "The highways of course destroyed the neighborhoods that they went through. Where was this going to end?
The whole place was going to be laced with highways
What would we have left of Manhattan?"
By making it work for the automobile and as it became clear
That urban highways were in fact
profoundly destructive
It really became a battle between opposing forces"
In the 1970s and 80s economic problems and the crack cocaine epidemic
Created a spike in crime, but modernized police strategies and the rebirth of Wall Street helped solve these challenges
Today there are less than 400 murders a year in the city, down from a high of over 2000 in 1990
Of course New York still lives with the traumatic memory of its worst day
September 11th 2001, when more than 2,500 civilians and first responders died in the tragic attack on the World Trade Center
In the 16 years since One World Trade Center has risen from the ashes to become the tallest building in the western hemisphere
Today the New York Metropolitan area has over 20 million residents
Just to be clear, the city of New York has about 8 and a half million people
But for the purposes of this mega city series, I'm using entire Metropolitan
Populations because that's a city's labor market, its economic zone if you will.
Anyway, New York no longer is the largest city or metropolitan area in the world
But it's still massive population presents tremendous challenges. For one, its subway is one of the busiest transportation
systems on Earth. Its ridership nearly doubled from 1 billion annual riders in 1990s to
1.8 billion today, but the amount of track and Subway cars has stayed the same
This crowding has bogged things down
The system-wide average on time rate has dropped from 90%
Over the last decade to just 65 percent, the silver lining is that a 17 billion dollar Second Avenue Subway line
Is coming online. The first phase opened this year
But the remaining three phases could take more than two decades to complete. Another issue is exorbitantly
expensive housing. Costs in some high-end areas have been driven up by foreign Investors like wealthy Russians and Chinese
Who like to park their fortunes in the Ultra-Secure, New York Real Estate market
But the root cause of high prices is simple supply and demand
Whenever new housing development is built with affordable units it gets ten times as many applicants as there are units available to rent
The mega Developments, Essex Crossing Hunters point South and Pacific park that are going up throughout the city are seeing this firsthand
In the near term, the high-end housing shortage will be eased, slightly
By the 28 acre Hudson yards mega development, at an estimated total price tag of over 20 billion dollars
This new neighborhood is the most expensive real estate project in American history
Another future mega project getting people's attention, for different reasons, is Cornell Tech on Roosevelt island in the East river
The school joins the more than 120 colleges and universities in the city and
will feature the world's first High-rise residential building that meets
Passive house energy-efficient principles
Projects like these make it clear, New York City is cultivating the human capital needed to tackle the world's biggest problems
Thanks to climate change New York will have its fair share, as we saw firsthand after Hurricane Sandy
Flooded large parts of the region, there is no bigger threat to New York City than rising Seas
That storm caused nearly twenty billion dollars in damages
with New York's coastline expected to be between one and two feet higher by 2050
Now is the time to start planning for the future, whether that's designing flood and seawall solutions that blend with existing infrastructure
Or embracing a policy known as managed retreat where areas are simply abandoned in favor of higher ground
With so much at stake there's little doubt New York City will meet these challenges
In many ways it represents the best of our modern world
its dynamic, creative and socially tolerant, its embrace of sustainability proves that capitalism and
Environmentalism are not incompatible, and it's people which speak 400 different languages and are
37% foreign-born prove that, even in one of the most densely populated urban centers on the planet, if conditions are good
there's plenty of room for everyone to get along
Thanks for watching. I want to give a shout out to the museum of New York whose video on the city's history really helped me out
I'm curious to know what you think it is about New York that most makes it what it is today
And what you think will be its biggest challenge in the future, if you like this video subscribe and check back soon
We're headed to Cairo Egypt next
For TDC I'm Brice Plank