New York EXPLAINED
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All of New York, by borough.

Your New York and the four others. Pick a borough to follow it across every morning we have covered it, from a Coney Island boardwalk fight to a Bronx housing lottery to a Queens rezoning. Each one fills in as the city moves.

Brooklyn 330 Kings County: brownstones and towers, the waterfront, the biggest borough by a mile. Latest Work began on the $40 million Box Street Park on Newtown Creek, a 2.5-acre park promised i… See the borough → Queens 234 The world’s borough: the most diverse county in America, airports to Rockaway. Latest Jyrell Thomas, 25, was charged with murder in the rush-hour stabbing of Mesias Lojano, a C… See the borough → Manhattan 392 The island: City Hall, Wall Street, Harlem to the Battery, and the rent that comes with it. Latest Clarkson Street between Varick and Hudson became the city's first permanent School Street,… See the borough → The Bronx 222 The only borough on the mainland: the Grand Concourse, the Yankees, the birthplace of hip-hop. Latest Nathaly Ramirez, 23, was killed and her 8-month-old daughter critically hurt after police … See the borough → Staten Island 42 The forgotten borough: the ferry, the expressway, the one that always feels left out (we don’t). Latest Legionella turned up in the water system at 185 Saint Mark's Place after two residents got… See the borough →

The five boroughs by the numbers

Queens is the largest borough by land (108.72 square miles), Brooklyn has the most people (2,653,963 as of the Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate), and Manhattan is the densest (73,471 people per square mile) and the smallest by land (22.66 square miles). Staten Island is the least populous and least dense.

Official Census figures — checked August 2026
Borough Land area (sq mi) People (July 2025 est.) 2020 Census People per sq mi
Queens 108.72 2,358,182 2,405,464 21,690
Brooklyn 69.38 2,653,963 2,736,074 38,253
Staten Island 57.52 501,290 495,747 8,715
The Bronx 42.17 1,406,332 1,472,654 33,349
Manhattan 22.66 1,664,862 1,694,251 73,471
New York City 300.45 8,584,629 8,804,190 28,573

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts — the five boroughs and New York City · NYC Dept. of City Planning — Population Estimates and Trends, July 2026 release · NYC Dept. of City Planning — 2020 Census results for New York City

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