🇺🇸 United States
New York
New York City (NYC — the most iconic city in the Western world: 8.3 million residents in the five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island), 20 million in Greater New York, and the most photographed skyline in the world. New York is simultaneously the world's financial capital (Wall Street, the NYSE, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — the largest gold repository in the world), the world's capital of contemporary art (MoMA, the Met, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the New Museum, Gagosian Gallery), the world's capital of musical theatre (42nd Street, the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall), and the greatest city for food in the Western hemisphere: from the $1 pizza slice (the most perfect fast food in the world) to the $300 tasting menu at Per Se. The Manhattan grid (the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 — the numbered streets running east-west from 1st Street to 220th Street, the numbered avenues running north-south) is the clearest urban planning decision in history, and the result is a city uniquely legible: everything is north, south, east or west, everything is blocks. The Brooklyn Bridge (1883), Central Park (1858), the Empire State Building (1931) and the Statue of Liberty (1886) are among the most recognized structures in human history.