Illustrations by Rodrigo Corral Design with Ben Wiseman and Tracy Morford

Our fourth annual “Reasons to Love New York” issue lands at a time when there are plenty of reasons not to feel the love so keenly: sweeping budget cuts, Plaxico, talk of tolls on the Brooklyn Bridge. No matter. Because, for one thing, our governor is not named Blagojevich. And for another, the payoffs from living in this city remain stratospherically high, regardless of what the Dow does on any given afternoon. It is still the place that makes people dream hard, whether that dream is about gaining fame and fortune or simply giving an old life the slip. It is still endlessly diverting, and an avid promoter of change. And it is still, as always, full of people who know how to survive and who are eager to help their neighbors do the same. This year, as in years past, the reasons we’ve accrued are timely and timeless, glaring and obscure, straight-up and strange. And, once again, a number of them came from our readers. In fact, we’d like to quote one of those readers right now, Jennvine Wong, whose reason is itself a quotation, from the architect Le Corbusier. “A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe.” We’d quibble with that ratio, but with the sentiment not at all.