ABSTRACT
New York qualifi es as a capital city under two categories: a Former Capital (a one-time United States’s political capital that retains an important urban role) and a Super Capital (being the headquarters of the United Nations (UN), the international governmental organization).1 New York is a Super Capital for reasons that are distinct from those of many of the other cities in this book. New York was a national capital for only one year (1789-1790) and, today, the city is neither its country’s, nor even its state’s, political capital. It became a kind of world capital after winning the competition to host the United Nations in 1947.
