While just last week we reported that Manhattan's Chinatown was losing its Chinese edge to Chinatowns in Flushing and Sunset Park, it turns out that we were forgetting one other nouveau Chinese hotspot...Harlem. more ›

Manhattan's Chinatown might want to think of a new name, because it's not actually home to the most Chinese people anymore, according to new city data. If you want to get in with the Chinese crowd these days, Sunset Park and Flushing are where it's at. more ›

As Hunter College High School, the elite public school on the Upper East Side, proudly basks in the knowledge that 1977 graduate Elena Kagan has been confirmed to the Supreme Court, its administration and faculty are dealing with fallout over a principal's resignation. According to the NY Times, principal Eileen Coppola "cited several reasons for her decision, including tensions over a lack of diversity at the school, which had been the subject of a controversial graduation address the day before by one of the school’s few African-American students." more ›

In a major demographic shift for a neighborhood that has long been "synonymous with black urban America," the majority of Harlem residents are no longer black, according to the Times. In a decade when Harlem's population grew more than it has since the 1940s, the number of black residents has fallen to its lowest point since the 1920s. more ›

The NY Times looks at recent census data that suggests an interesting trend in Chinese, Korean and Indian families in America: "If the first child was a girl, it was more likely that a second child would be a boy... If the first two children were girls, it was even more likely that a third child would be male. Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion." CUNY's Joyce Moy says even younger immigrants have held onto the idea that "Families depend on the male child for support," while Dr. Norbert Gleicher, director of a "fertility and sex-selection clinic in New York and Chicago, said that from his experience, people were more inclined to want female children, except for Asians and Middle Easterners." more ›

High five, bro: White people are making a big comeback in New York! Census figures show that the number of whites has increased in recent years, reversing a half century of white flight to the suburbs. Also, the Census Bureau found the number of Hispanic immigrants dipped last year for the first time in decades, and that's partly because they're the ones fleeing to the suburbs, in search of cheaper housing and better schools. According to the survey, Hispanic New Yorkers now account for 27% of the population, while the proportion of blacks declined to 23.5% in 2007. Asians make up 12% of New Yorkers and they were the fastest-growing group in the city until last year, when non-Hispanic whites grew faster, to over 35%. But white might not be the new black for long: As one Queens College professor points out to the Times, “a lot of the non-Hispanic whites are plainly associated with the financial community.” more ›

The NY Times has a feature on the changing face of the city electorate, finding that "New immigrants accounted for at least one-third of the increase in the number of New York City voters since 2004, while the number of Irish, Italian and Jewish voters, who together represent the traditional core of the city’s political establishment, decreased slightly." Which suggests that strategies used to win certain City Council districts or other elected offices may not succeed during the 2009 election year. more ›

There are plenty of Starbucks in Manhattan (over 170), but if you head over to Brooklyn -- you'll see the streets are mostly void of discarded Venti cups and hardly anyone has heard Josh Groban's new Christmas album. But things are about to change, chain-haters beware.A recent Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable meeting revealed that retail giants such as Starbucks, Duane Reade pharmacies and Chase Bank are planning to double and in some cases triple their... more ›

When residents of 17-17 Troutman St. woke Thursday morning, most were not aware that they would be homeless by the end of the day. The day before, notices were posted that city inspectors would be arriving to look the building over for violations at 9:30 a.m. It didn't take long Thursday for the Dept. of Buildings to designate the building as imminently perilous to residents and demand an almost-immediate evacuation. Residents had until 8 p.m. that same day to gather what belongings they could and find someplace else to live. more ›

Gotham Gazette has an excellent look at the effects of "a housing bust" by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge. This map shows how much income goes towards mortgages; Beveridge notes:

The median income of those paying less than 30 percent of their income on housing is $120,900. For those paying between 30 and 50 percent of their income, though, the median is $74,390, and for those paying over 50 percent the median income is $39,900. more ›

Ladies, it's time to throw your hat in the air a la Mary Tyler Moore: It turns out that young women are earning more than young men in cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles. more ›

Students at all NYC schools have a day off today in what is officially noted on the Dept. of Education's calendar as a Chancellor's Conference Day for Staff Development. That dry description actually masks the fact that today's day off from school is a tradition that dates back to 1829 and used to be one of the most widely celebrated holidays in Brooklyn and Queens. Dating back 178 years, Anniversary Day was a school holiday to celebrate and commemorate the founding of the first Sunday School (a de facto Protestant institution at the time) on Long Island. [See our post on Anniversary Day 2006] more ›

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Earlier this week, Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health released a study that shows New Yorkers who "reside in densely populated, pedestrian-friendly areas have significantly lower body mass index levels compared to other New Yorkers." In other words, those people who rely on their feet, rather than other New Yorkers who live in the more spacious parts of the outer boroughs, tend to be thinner. more ›

That's the headline in both the Post and the News today. In a long-expected announcement yesterday the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York issued their final list of parishes that they are closing. A total of twenty-one parishes in the Archdiocese, which covers the Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and several upstate counties, will be closed. Ten parishes will be shut down completely while eleven others will be merged with neighboring parishes. more ›

The Health (and Mental Hygiene) Department released some interesting reports that detail New Yorkers' health by neighborhood. You can check out a profile for where you live, which turns out to be a 16-page PDF listing various stats, like alcoholism, smoking, death rates, and other health issues, as well as giving other interesting demographics (population with age breaks or ethnicity, compared with NYC as a whole). more ›

-- The Times has a scary investigative piece about local courts upstate. Many are run by "judges" (without college degrees) who enjoy dispensing their own brand of "justice": "Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then." more ›

The last new Project Runway was practically two weeks ago, but thanks to Bravo rerunning it, we could relive it many times. It was full of twists: Two previously kicked-off winners got to reappear and fight for a place in the final four (well, besides Keith) and the outfit would have to be black-and-white and all the material had to be used - even scraps! It's debatable which spooked people more - Angela's "sad eyes," Vincent's "crazy eyes," or using all the fabric. Some of our thoughts: more ›

One of the many things I love about this town is that there are a thousand places where you might find yourself saying, “It doesn’t even feel like I’m in New York City anymore.” I started driving a yellow cab, in large part, to try to find as many of those places as I could. more ›

Matt is 26. He lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a transportation engineer. He is originally from Ashland, VA. Matt's father grew up in Brooklyn, and he still has some family there. more ›

The Census Bureau is releasing data that will show an increase in Asians and Hispanics and a decrease in whites and blacks. Almost 500,000 New York immigrants came after 2000, and NYU's Immigration Studies professor Marcelo Suarez-Orozco explains to the Daily News, "If you dig a little deeper into the numbers, it shows women of Mexican, Dominican and Chinese origin are having babies at a rate much higher than other ethnicities." Other fun fact: NYC is still the biggest city in the country (LA has about half as many people). The Daily News also reports that the city will challenge the Census Bureau's estimate that the city has 8.168 million - the city says our population is closer to 8.2 million and high numbers means more federal funding. more ›

Drunks of all sorts, club kids, and winos. Late night workers, busboys, getting off their shifts. Only a handful of people per car. 6:1 male/female ratio. more ›

Did you know that May is Asian heritage month? Well, you do now. To celebrate, take a look at this great set of demographics collected by the Gotham Gazette. Some facts: Chinese, Indians, and Koreans are the leading Asian groups in the Tri-State area. Filipinos, Taiwanese, and Sri Lankens make the highest wages. Filipinos, Indians, Pakistanis, and Sri Lankens speak the best English (some credit for that should probably be given to oppressive policies of British colonialism.) [Via NYC Metblogs.] more ›

Via Kottke: AssembleMe put together a nice set of NYC population graphs for the NYC Demographics page on Wikipedia. What impressed us what how dominant Brooklyn has been in population for the last 90 years-- although it looks like Queens is closing in, having passed Manhattan in the late 1960s. Even Staten Island is closing in on Manhattan-- maybe it's the rent prices! more ›

- Guess what? With more police officers in the subways, crime goes down. At least crime like smoking, drinking alcohol, and turnstile jumping is done, as some new NYPD stats say that the number of summons issued was down 18% versus 2004 - even in spite of the new rules of conduct (but the MTA did collect more in fines). more ›

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. more ›

We've talked about population demographics in the city before, but here's a very cool set of minimilist maps by Dorothy Gambrell. Damn-- the Upper East Side is so white it actually vanishes off the map-- crazy! And shouldn't Central Park really be green-- it's doubtful that the trees identify with any race, given that they love all humans and give selflessly of their shade and oxygen generating facilities. [Related: Gotham Gazette on 5 good demographic sites, NYU Library article on looking up demographic info.] more ›

or maybe even in 2005, when the Times decided to get around to digging them up from the archives).

Titled "Our Changing City," a 20-part series of articles in The New York Times painted a largely optimistic panorama of the century's second half. It envisioned a sprawling cultural center and Fordham campus on the squalid West Side, a civic plaza in Downtown Brooklyn that Robert Moses promised would rival the Piazza San Marco in Venice, a grand development over the Sunnyside railroad yards in Queens, and a Palace of Progress devoted to world trade atop a reconstructed Pennsylvania Station. more ›

Clicking through the Times online this morning, we spotted this great Flash piece all about Brooklyn demographics. We sort of remember seeing it back in June, but this time we spent some real time looking through it, and learned some interesting facts about our home borough: more ›