From The Peopling of New York City
This website presents a perspective on the lives of immigrants in New York City, a place well-known for its diversity and large population of immigrants. Social investigators travel here to study the influx of immigrants and the lives they establish. We are a part of such a movement. We wish to shed light on the lives of immigrants in New York City through the leisure activities they engage in at our public parks.
Our researchers have focused on three popular pastimes of New York immigrants: team sports, board games, and martial arts. If you are interested in physically rigorous activities, click on the team team sports page for more information on soccer and cricket or the martial arts page for Tai Chi. If you like strategic thinking, visit our board games page, which includes Chinese chess, dominoes, and chess.
Our researchers investigated the parks that host popular immigrant leisure activities, researched those participants' favorite games and sports, and interviewed them in order to enhance the understanding of how various cultures have adapted their popular activities to New York City. Through this website, we hope to share the knowledge we gathered about the immigrants of New York with the rest of the world.
Writers often address the "unfortunate" conditions of immigrant life. The purpose of this website is to show that there exists another side, and to present the positive aspect of not only how immigrants live, but also how they've helped shape the culture of NYC. Through exposing the recreational activities of various groups, we want to show the imprint immigrants continue to leave in the city they now call home.
This Wiki is created by the students from the Interdisciplinary Seminar, Peopling of New York, of Spring 2010 in Baruch College. The class is taught by Professor David Rosenberg. Visitors can check out our staff by navigating in the "Who We Are" section.
If you are interested in finding a park near you or learning some more about public parks in NYC here's a link that would direct you to their official website: NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.
