New York The people of New York City, New Yorkers, share a unique culture rooted in centuries of immigration and city life. There is considerable diversity in this local culture, varying by ethnic group, social class, and neighborhood. To some observers, New York, with its large immigrant population, is more a quintessentially cosmopolitan, global city than something specifically "American", but to others, the city's very openness to newcomers makes it an archetypal city in a "nation of immigrants". The city government maintains translators in 180 languages; the term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side.