Making cents of high finance: New York a giant still on the rise

New York is in its prime in spring. Central Park is a blaze of colour. The daffodils, tulips, azaleas and wisterias are in full bloom and the trees are covered in cherry blossoms and magnolia flowers.

After a particularly brutal winter - so severe it almost ground the local economy to a halt - New Yorkers in their millions are emerging from hibernation, lazing in Sheep Meadow, walking their parlour-groomed dogs and snaking their way around the running track.

The only issue is that it is still pretty cold and until the temperature settles above 16C, no matter how many shades of pastel coats the landscape, I can't break out in melody. Nonetheless, the nippy weather hasn't put off the swarms of tourists. They're gathered on every corner of the Manhattan grid, heads down, checking their Google maps. They rent bicycles, queue at the Guggenheim, colonise the Apple store and book out Broadway.

More than 50million people, mainly from other states, visit New York every year, spending close to $40-billion (R423-billion). Each month, 8million passengers fly in and out of the city's airports, 130million commuters ride on the subways, trains and buses and a million theatre-goers attend Broadway shows. Of the 10million foreign tourists most originate from the UK, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Australia, Italy, China, Spain, Mexico and Japan.

What's astonishing is that unlike other global tourist traps, New York has no pompous palaces, ancient ruins or notable historic sites. Yet it is a metropolis with magnetic appeal. It is more than just a shrine to capitalism; it is a tribute to the millions of people who, over the past 150 years, have arrived from all parts of the world - usually fleeing political and economic hardship and toiling industriously in a system that rewards hard work and enterprise - and built the US into the world's most powerful nation.

You never feel like an outsider in New York; it's a city that effortlessly absorbs you into its culture. More and more people want to live in the city and the civic authorities are making sure they are developing the opportunities to attract job-creating businesses and improve the public services to cater for the expected population expansion.

Generally, major world cities are finding their heartbeats again, to an extent powered by the demands of those self-absorbed, annoying 20-somethings with the headphones in their ears and the comatose expressions on their faces. The ideal of existing on a Montana farm with its crisp, clean mountain air and pristine setting was the dominion of their hippy-generation parents. Instead they want to flourish in a city with a Starbucks on every second corner and work for tech savvy operations that offer evening yoga classes and free muffins with morning coffee. They are talented, dress fashionably, enjoy rock concerts, and like to hang out on the weekends with like-minded friends.

But big cities such as New York, London and Sydney are also attracting the world's super-rich, who aspire to live in the ultimate of luxury, eat in a selection of top-rated restaurants and shop unconstrained in stylish boulevards. To cater for the needs of this growing class of resident, for whom money is no object, up to seven new, pencil-thin, multi-billion-dollar skyscrapers, some taller than the Empire State Building, will shortly alter the skyline in Midtown Manhattan.

None of this could have happened without the intervention of New York's two previous mayors, Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Today Harlem has been gentrified, Times Square is traffic-free and appropriate for children, important thoroughfares have been converted into bike- and pedestrian-friendly zones, graffiti doesn't exist and the streets are safe to walk in at any time of the day or night.

Yes, it's a city that requires major infrastructural development. Its airports are 30 years out of date; its roads need resurfacing and its underground a good paint job. Regardless, New York works well. The quality of its public schools is high, its hospitals are efficient and its parks spotlessly clean. And believe it or not, despite its arctic snowstorms, the city traffic lights remain perfectly synchronised and in faultless operating order.