New York City is expensive, and our lousy political leaders are trying to destroy the vacant lots and floating plastic bags that once made it great. Despite that, more people are moving here than are leaving, and have been doing so the past three years. Which, going by the rule of threes, means that this is officially a trend and it gets its own piece in the Times. But yeah, if you thought your subway platform has been getting more crowded by the year, that’s because it is, with a population increase of 61,000 people between 2012 and 2013.
The population increase puts New York City’s population at a staggering 8.4 million people. Put another way, if everyone in New York was stood on top of each other’s shoulders they would be a terrifying crime against nature and would probably reach to the moon. According to the Times, every borough gained in population, with Manhattan and the Bronx doing it with births as opposed to immigration.
The population growth was driven by both nebulous, unnamed “foreigners,” the city not losing population to the Sun Belt and also, yes, kids from the suburbs who realized that the suburbs are trash and good god why would you live there. Before you get angry at them, maybe realize that they probably read that Ed Koch quote (“Have you ever lived in the suburbs? … It’s sterile. It’s nothing. It’s wasting your life“) and thought, “Hey, that mouthy bald guy is right.” So blame Ed Koch is what we’re saying.