Interestingly enough, the population of Albany in the 1910s was 100,253 while the population was 97,856 at the time of the 2010 census. Albany has close ties with the nearby cities of Troy, Schenectady, andSaratoga Springs, forming a region called the Capital District. The bulk of this area is made up of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Metropolitan Statistical Area(MSA). Its 2010 population was 870,716, the fourth-largest urban area in New York and the 58th-largest MSA in the country.
In the 20th century, the city opened one of the first commercial airports in the world, the precursor of today’s Albany International Airport. The 1920s saw the rise of a powerfulpolitical machine controlled by the Democratic Party. The city’s skyline changed in the 1960s with the construction of the Empire State Plaza and the uptown campus of SUNY Albany, mainly under the direction of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. While Albany experienced a decline in its population due to urban sprawl, many of its historic neighborhoods were saved from destruction through the policies of Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, the longest-serving mayor of any city in the United States. More recently, the city has experienced growth in the high-technology industry, with great strides in the nanotechnology sector.
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