The restructuring in New York City, along with Manhattan New York Hotels, has led to the development of a two-tiered economy. Because financial and business services dominate the postindustrial economy.This hospitality economy of unregulated activities includes a wide array of small-scale, low-overhead operations. Even many legal enterprises have what in New York City patois is known as "under-the counter" income. The restructured city manifests increasing income inequality, educational disparities, and social problems among individuals outside the formal job market. These socioeconomic divisions are also increasingly evident at the metropolitan scale. The greater New York region illustrates the shift from a monocentric to a polycentric urban spatial structure. The city-of-realms hypothesis assumes a contemporary movement beyond radiating sectors and multiple nuclei to a metropolis of semiautonomous, functionally separate, and socially distinct activity areas. Greater New York meets the fourfold criteria for the emergence of urban realms (Vance 1990). First, a diversified topography and physical geography, which in this case is dominated by rivers and bays, demarcate different areas. Second, the massive general size of the metropolis allows demographic bases for fragmentation. Third, increasingly diverse economic specialization characterizes the various realms. Finally, the regional geography of transportation, though retaining strong commuter railroad links to Manhattan, increasingly emphasizes peripheral automobile linkages.
There are twelve such urban realms in the New York CMSA, each of which encompasses one or more counties linked by proximity, prevalent transportation and commuting corridors, economic activities, and state-wide political jurisdictions.