Albany, New York, United States

🇺🇸 Albany is the capital of the U.S. state of New York and the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is located on the west bank of the Hudson River approximately 10 miles south of its confluence with the Mohawk River.

The city is known for its architecture, commerce, culture, institutions of higher education, and rich history. It is the economic and cultural core of the Capital District of New York State, which comprises the Albany–Schenectady–Troy Metropolitan Statistical Area, including the nearby cities and suburbs of Troy, Schenectady, and Saratoga Springs. The Capital District is the third most populous metropolitan region in the state.

The Hudson River area was originally inhabited by Algonquian speaking Mohican (Mahican), who called it Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw. The area was settled by Dutch colonists who, in 1614, built Fort Nassau for fur trading and, in 1624, built Fort Orange. In 1664, the English took over the Dutch settlements, renaming the city Albany in honour of the Duke of Albany, the future James II of England and Ireland/James VII of Scotland. The city was officially chartered in 1686 under English rule. It became the capital of New York in 1797 after the formation of the United States. Albany is one of the oldest surviving settlements of the original British thirteen colonies; no other city in the United States has been continuously chartered as long.

In the late 18th century and throughout most of the 19th, Albany was a centre of trade and transportation. The city lies toward the north end of the navigable Hudson River; was the original eastern terminus of the Erie Canal, connecting to the Great Lakes; and was home to some of the earliest railroads in the world. In the 1920s, a powerful political machine controlled by the Democratic Party arose in Albany. In the latter part of the 20th century, Albany's population shrank because of urban sprawl and suburbanisation; in the 1990s, the New York State Legislature approved for the city a $234 million building and renovation plan, which spurred renovation and building downtown. In the early 21st century, Albany's high-technology industry grew, with great strides in nanotechnology.

Economy Albany's economy, along with that of the Capital District in general, is heavily dependent on government, health care, education, and more recently, technology. Because of these typically steady economic bases, the local economy has been relatively immune to national economic recessions in the past. More than 25 percent of the city's population works in government-related positions. Albany's estimated daytime population is more than 162,000. Companies based in Albany include Trans World Entertainment, AMRI Global and Clough Harbour. Albany has the fourth highest amount of lawyers in its employment pool (7.5 lawyers per 1,000 jobs) compared to the rest of the nation, behind Washington, D.C., Trenton, New Jersey, and New York City, respectively.

Tech Valley Since the 2000s, the economy of Albany and the surrounding Capital District has been redirected toward a high technology focus. Tech Valley is a marketing name for the eastern part of New York State, encompassing Albany, the Capital District, and the Hudson Valley. Originated in 1998 to promote the greater Albany area as a high-tech competitor to regions such as Silicon Valley and Boston, it has since grown to represent the counties in the Capital District and extending to 19 counties from IBM's Westchester County plants in the south to the Canada–US border in the north. The area's high technology ecosystem is supported by technologically focused academic institutions including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. Tech Valley encompasses 19 counties straddling both sides of the Adirondack Northway and the New York Thruway, and with heavy state taxpayer subsidy, has experienced significant growth in the computer hardware side of the high-technology industry, with great strides in the nanotechnology sector, digital electronics design, and water- and electricity-dependent integrated microchip circuit manufacturing.

In 2012, the Albany-Schenectady area was listed fourth on Forbes Magazine's annual "Best Cities for Jobs" list, noting that job losses in state and local government were overcome by expansion of the high-tech field.