How is New York City growing if it’s constantly losing people?

From Stat Chat @the University of Virginia

Year after year, some of the nation’s most dynamic cities are also the nation’s biggest losers when it comes to migrants. Yet rather than waste away, they continue to boom. This widely misunderstood paradox leads to some interesting articles every time the Census Bureau releases a new round of county population and migration estimates, as it did several weeks ago.

New York City is the prime example, as it is for most urban phenomena in the U.S. Four of New York’s five boroughs – all but Staten Island – were among the eight counties with the biggest losses in net domestic migration last year...

The conclusion suggested by domestic migration numbers is that New York is dying as its residents abandon ship, dragging down statewide migration numbers with it. New Yorkers would be right to question such pronouncements in the face of their skyrocketing rents, though. The city is as crowded and economically powerful as ever. Its population continues to climb despite an astronomical cost of living that suggests even more people would live there if they could. From 2010 to 2015, the Census Bureau estimates that New York City’s population increased by over 375,000. This is despite the fact that it had a net loss of over 400,000 migrants to other parts of the country.

The new New York City Census FactFinder

The NYC Planning Department's American Community Survey (ACS) update to the NYC Census Factfinder (NYC CFF) application has just been released. It is now possible to get 2009-2013 ACS profiles for Neighborhood Tabulation Areas and user defined census tract aggregations, in addition to demographic profiles from the 2000 and 2010 censuses. The ACS profiles include basic count estimates, but also percentages, means, and median estimates for custom geographies. Another key benefit of this update is that detailed statistical reliability information, including Margins of Error and Coefficients of Variation, are available for user-defined geographies. Additionally, data with poor statistical reliability are shown in gray as an alert to users.

Please see the full press release.

The Newest New Yorkers

The Newest New Yorkers report demonstrates that New York’s immigrants have played an integral role in maintaining the City’s record population growth and significantly boosting the City’s economic vitality. The City’s immigrant population has reached a new peak at more than 3 million; a number which would form the third largest city in the United States, bested only by New York City and Los Angeles.

The strength of immigrants is most evident in Queens, where the largest percentage of the newest New Yorkers has settled; nearly one-half of the borough’s residents are foreign-born. The largest numeric growth in immigration took place in the Bronx, while Staten Island saw the largest percentage increase.

The report is the product of expert demographic analysis of data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, as well as other federal and city administrative data. Complementing its new report, City Planning also launched an easy-to-use, interactive online map showing the largest immigrant groups in each of the City’s neighborhoods as well as where the City’s top ten largest immigrant populations live.

Here's The Most Common Ancestry In Each NYC Neighborhood

From Business Insider:

We recently looked at the dominant languages in each of NYC's neighborhoods. Now, we're taking a look at New Yorkers' ancestral backgrounds.

The American Community Survey is a massive annual effort by the Census Bureau to understand the citizens of the United States. Over three million people per year are asked questions about housing, demographics, and economics.

In one of the many questions on the ACS, respondents are asked to identify their ancestry. This is a very open-ended question, and the Census Bureau provides numerous options. Here are the most common ancestries in each NYC neighborhood.

How New Yorkers (the City) Really Feel About Each Other

A Business Insider-SurveyMonkey Audience poll asked New Yorkers to pick which neighborhoods have the best food, the best bars, and the most attractive people, among many other things.

A few months ago, we ran a poll that asked Americans what they thought of other states — which were the drunkest, hottest, and had the silliest accents.

Since New Yorkers came up as rudest last time we asked, we figured they would be blunt with us, so we tried the whole thing over again, asking about New York City neighborhoods.

We asked 414 New Yorkers — someone who lives and/or works in New York City — to answer 24 questions about the neighborhoods. Below we've mapped the percentage of people who named each area for different questions.

ZIP Code Definitions of New York City Neighborhoods

Knowing well that ZIP Codes are NOT geographic markers, nevertheless, here's a list of NYC neighborhoods by ZIP Code, from the NYS Department of Health.

Welcome to NYC Open Data

This catalog supplies hundreds of sets of public data produced by New York City agencies and other City organizations. The data sets are now available as APIs and in a variety of machine-readable formats, making it easier than ever to consume City data and better serve New York City’s residents, visitors, developer community and all!

Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011

From HERE:

UJA-Federation of New York presents the findings from the Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011, a comprehensive study of the world’s largest and most diverse Jewish community outside Israel. With 5,993 interviews — more than any other local or national Jewish community study — the findings and implications are vast. Users can download the whole report or select chapters.

The New York Jewish community in 2011 is large, growing, and incredibly diverse. Children, boomers, and seniors. Poor and affluent Jews. Lifelong New Yorkers, and immigrants from such diverse national origins as Russia and Israel. LGBT Jews. Hispanic and biracial households. Chasidic, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, and Yeshivish Jews. Jews who are nondenominational, have no religion or another religion, or who consider themselves partially Jewish. All these and more are strong threads in the fabric of the New York Jewish community.

[The report covers the five NYC counties, the two Long Island counties, and Westchester County.]

See also:
Study: Orthodox community boosts New York City's Jewish population

Leading Demographer Questioning N.Y. Population Survey; Orthodox overreported, non-Orthodox underreported, according to Brandeis’ Len Saxe.

1940s New York City - a seriously cool website

Back in 1997, a copy of a 250-page document was purchased from a local bookstore. It was "NYC Market Analysis", published by four newspapers in 1943, "with photos, maps, data about each [city] neighborhood....it offers a unique window into New York [City] from another era.

"The Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center is making the 1943 profiles available to provide context for the 1940 Census records and to offer a research aid to historians and anyone else interested in learning more about New York from the 1940s..."

The Welcome to 1940s New York website displays a map of New York divided into the 116 neighborhoods that are covered in the 1943 Market Analysis.

Monday's New York Times highlights the project along with some neat then-and-now photos and Census stats.

The Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center website has more background, and Steven Romalewski, Director, CUNY Mapping Service, has blogged about the project.

I thank Steve for previewing this site at the State Data Center affiliates meeting last week.

NYPL Eases the Way For Searching 1940 Census

The National Archives releases census records once a decade, and on April 2 it is making available the information from the 1940 census. But the records won't immediately be searchable by name.

For those whose relatives lived in New York City, the New York Public Library is aiming to make it simpler to search this holy grail of information about what life was like during periods such as the Great Depression and the lead-up to World War II.

The library is launching an online tool to allow users to type in names and, potentially, locate census forms listing a host of details on every person living in the family household at the time of the census.

More HERE.

How to call NYC's 311 when you're not in NYC

311 is New York City's main source of government information and non-emergency services. Whether you're a resident, business owner, or visitor, help is just a click, text, or call away.

Call 212) NEW-YORK (212-639-9675) from outside New York City.

There are also text, Skype, TTY, Twitter, and iPhone app options.

More HERE.

Zoomable block-level Census change maps for the NYC metro area

The CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research has launched a set of interactive maps showing detailed race/ethnicity change at the local level throughout the New York City metro region, along with an analysis of the changes in New York City.

The maps use the “before and after” technique that the NY Times and others have used effectively for images of natural disasters. But they’ve integrated the slider technique with two overlapping sets of interactive maps via OpenLayers (an open source online mapping framework), so you can slide between the two (showing 2000 and 2010 block-level maps of predominant race/ethnicity patterns) while also zooming in and out and clicking on individual Census blocks for detailed population data.

The color-shaded maps are overlain on a Microsoft basemap – you can set the transparency of the map dynamically so place names and streets become more or less visible, and also switch between the Bing street map and aerial imagery.

Here’s a direct link to the maps. They also have an analysis of the data for New York City, plus static 2000-to-2010 maps with the slider for New York’s 5 boroughs.

NYC Council Pork is Latest Addition to SeeThroughNY

The New York City Council's pork-barrel member-item spending for fiscal 2011 has been posted on www.SeeThroughNY.net, the transparency website sponsored by the Empire Center for New York State Policy. The $54.4 million in discretionary member items represent projects City Council members sponsored for the 2010-11 fiscal year.

For the full text of the Press Release, click here.
To go right to the database, click here.

World's top destinations for 2011

(CNN) -- Where on Earth will you find yourself in 2011?

Here's wishing it's somewhere unforgettable -- and the time to plan your journey is now, as the New Year brings the customary yearning for a fresh start and the promise of new people and places.

To set your itinerary in motion, we sought out recommendations from three travel experts: Robert Reid, U.S. travel editor for Lonely Planet; Pauline Frommer, creator of Pauline Frommer's guidebooks; and Martin Rapp, senior vice president of leisure sales at Altour.

Here are nine of their top destinations for 2011:

1. New York

A huge tourist destination in any year, the city will be especially unforgettable as it marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks next year.

Visitors who have been flocking to ground zero are finally expected to get a chance to pay their respects to the victims at the National September 11 Memorial, which is scheduled to open in time for the anniversary.

"It's going to be a massive moment for New York," Reid said. "It feels like the healing begins."

Visitors also shouldn't miss the High Line, once an abandoned elevated railway track that's been turned into a popular park. It expands in the spring, to the delight of New Yorkers.

"It was like a secret garden in the middle of New York," Frommer said. "It's become a park that other urban centers are studying because it's brought new life, a new vitality into the area below it."

No wonder the Big Apple tops Lonely Planet's list of top 10 cities for 2011....

More at link above.

Mapping the Neighborhoods of Los Angeles

The L.A. Times has deigned to map the 87 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Naturally, there are...differences of opinion, with over 1200 comments to date. BTW, New York City's 59 neighborhoods were delineated governmentally in 1975.

New York City Payroll Posted on the Internet

The names, titles and base salaries of 427,759 New York City government employees are now posted on the web at www.SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center for New York State Policy announced today.

For the full text of this press release, click here.

New York City gets bigger

From yesterday's New York Times on-line. As Lenny said, "Congratulations to Joe and Warren for their success."

Manhattan: Population Milestone
By SAM ROBERTS
Published: November 21, 2007

New York City’s population has passed another milestone, officially topping 8.25 million. The Census Bureau originally reported that from mid-2005 to mid-2006, the population grew by a statistically insignificant 587 people, with gains in Manhattan and Staten Island. But the Department of City Planning challenged the census count, drawing on construction permits and other documents. Yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that the bureau had concurred that the city’s official count was 8,250,567, up more than 36,000 since the adjusted 2005 total. The mayor said the revisions would mean an additional $77 million in federal aid to the state by the end of the decade.