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General Information
New York City - General Information New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the largest city in the United States and the world's most important center for global finance and communications. The city is also home to hundreds of world-class museums, galleries, and performance venues, making it the unrivaled cultural and entertainment capital of the Western Hemisphere. With a population of over 8 million people contained within 321 square miles (831 km²), and large populations of immigrants from over 180 different countries, the city is often affectionately referred to as "the Big Apple." In addition to these new arrivals from overseas, the city has also become home to people from other parts of the U.S. who wish to experience a more cosmopolitan lifestyle than found in the rest of the country. New York's cultural diversity is also highlighted by its large number of different religious groups. Click here for a listing of the various places of worship in NYC. New York City lies at the heart of the New York Metropolitan Area, which, with over 22 million people, is one of the largest urban conglomerations in the world. The city comprises five boroughs: Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island, each of which could be a major city in its own right. This area itself is the epicenter of the Tri-State area and the BosWash megalopolis. New York City serves as an enormous engine for the global economy, with an estimated gross metropolitan product of US$952.6 billion in 2005, the largest of any city in the United States and the second largest if compared to any U.S. state. If it were a nation, the city would have the 17th highest gross domestic product in the world after Luxembourg. Though this value has been almost as high as 10 percent of the United States' GDP, in the last ten years it has been around 4.5 percent, fluctuating only recently. Along with London, Paris, and Tokyo, New York City is considered one of the four primary global cities of the world. The United Nations has also had its headquarters in the city since 1951, a few years after its founding.
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