Among these urban spaces of multiculturality are subway stations across New York City and subway trains, where all New Yorkers converge for daily transportation and commuting. More and more, New Yorkers (both native and non-native) have been pushed by increasing rent prices towards the peripheries of the city.ĭespite these transformations in the City over the last 20 years, there are still certain places where this multiculturality continues to reign where classes are apparently leveled, or at least where individuals still recognize each other as members of an imagined community of “New Yorkers” (Anderson 1983).

Many urban spaces that previously hosted vibrant communities (in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens) were torn apart with increase of rent prices and gentrification (Delaney 1999). However, for the last 20 years, Rudy Giulliani’s policies to make the city “cleaner” in the mid-1990s (which involved the rise of land value in Manhattan, the transformation of Times Square into an American capitalist fantasy of nation-wide chainstores, the restructuring of police security throughout the city) and Michael Bloomberg’s subsequent policies towards policing, property value and influx of high-income taxes have created a problem of inequality in the City. Unlike Hollywood’s portrayal of New York City’s glitzy life, the city has historically been home to people of all classes and socioeconomic backgrounds. Not only native New Yorkers, New York City is also home to immigrants from all over the world, foreign students, workers from all over the world of all races, creeds and even economic standing.

New York City, with a population of over 8 million people, is a city of diversity.

New york subway system