The capital city of New York State, situated on the west bank of the Hudson River about 140 miles north of New York City, has a large range of urban, suburban, and rural land uses within its limits. Albany is obviously an old city. While it shared in the common urban experience of rapid growth during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its population in recent decades has remained close to the 127,000 reached in 1930. The 1960 census reported that Albany contained only about 130,000 residents.