New York, the Boundless Global City, Forever Expanding

“Because New York is inexhaustible, the only way to understand it is to enter it, to dive deep into its inner workings in search of meaning.” These are the opening words of the volume devoted to the global city in the Cities collection published by ACS Group. Entitled BUILDING MODERN NEW YORK and subtitled People, Works and Meanings, the book was produced under the supervision of engineer and economist Miguel Aguiló, the driving force behind the collection.

“When we delve into New York in search of meaning, what we find is people: not only ordinary citizens, who are always present, but also the many powerful New Yorkers with both the influence and the determination to shape the city,” Aguiló writes. “Mayors, state governors, presidents of the United States, members of Congress, senators, banking families and active philanthropists.” The volume devotes individual chapters to fourteen of these “powerful New Yorkers”. They range from engineer John B. Jervis (1795–1885), who built the 41-mile Croton Aqueduct that supplied water to the city, to urban planner Amanda M. Burden (born 1944), who served as director of the city’s Department of City Planning during the early years of the twenty-first century.

The history of New York is one of relentless expansion, propelled by the city’s own vitality. It has expanded vertically, through ever-taller skyscrapers, and horizontally, reaching beyond the island of Manhattan through a vast network of tunnels and bridges. Across this immense territory, “there are no empty spaces: every parcel of land has a use defined by and for the city, whether residential, industrial, a transport corridor or a park. These activities may be kept apart, but they may also coexist, intermingle or stand side by side.” Covering some 830 square kilometres, this territory is home to approximately 25 million people, 30% of whom were born outside the United States. More than seven hundred different languages and dialects are spoken there.

Around 5,000 members of the Lenape people were living in the original settlement area in southern Manhattan when the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano arrived in 1524. Sailing on behalf of the French Crown, he named the place Nouvelle Angoulême. In 1626, the Dutch renamed it Nieuw Amsterdam. In 1664, the English gave it the name New York in honour of the Duke of York, who would later become King James II of England and VII of Scotland.

At the heart of modern New York lies an urban plan that is now more than two centuries old: the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811. Aguiló writes that the plan “is not so much a description of a city or a place as the establishment of an ordered system for growth. The urban fabric is organised around avenues running northwards at an angle of 29 degrees, intersected by perpendicular streets. Taking the existing city as its southern boundary, it proposes a methodical numbering system extending northwards from 1st Street to 155th Street.” The width of the avenues and streets, the dimensions of the blocks, the major intersections placed at ten-street intervals: almost all the essential rules were already laid down in this pioneering plan for a grid-based city, although one whose geometry was neither entirely uniform nor without nuance.

The harbour, major buildings and iconic monuments, complex supply systems and much more are all explored in the volume.

Through its companies in the United States, ACS Group has delivered some of the defining projects of this “modern New York”. These include the United Nations Headquarters, Lincoln Center, the expansion of Grand Central Terminal, the construction of Yankee Stadium and the expansion of Terminal 5i at John F. Kennedy International Airport.