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is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. According to the United States 2000 Census, the city had a total population of 67,088, living on a land area of 3.28 km² (1.27 sq mi). It is the most densely populated city in the United States, with a density of 52,977.8 per square mile - roughly twice as dense as New York City. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area with about 17% of the city's employed residents working in New York City.
Union City was incorporated as a city by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on January 1, 1925, replacing both Union Hill and West Hoboken Township.
The area of what is today Union City was originally inhabited by the Lenape, but was later settled by Germans in 1851, who moved across the Hudson River from New York City in search of affordable land and open space.
The area between what is now Palisade and Bergenline Avenue, from 22nd to 32nd Street was a Civil War installation called Camp Yates. Trolleys began to operate in West Hoboken and Union Hill in 1890, after the area was electrified. The area on which Roosevelt Stadium stood was part of a farm called Kerrigan Farm. The street that now runs from 15th Street to 25th and ends at the stadium site is called Kerrigan Avenue.
From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, German Americans and Dutch dominated the area. They, along with Swiss and Austrian immigrants, founded the European-style lace making industries, for which they were famous. Union City and West New York became the "embroidery capital of the United States", and the embroidery industry's trademark is on the Union City Seal.
At the turn of the 20th century, Irish and Italian immigrants came to the city, and dominated the city until the late 1960s. The first Cubans immigrated to Union City in the 1940s, having been attracted to the city in search of work after hearing of its famed embroidery factories. Successive waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Near East and Latin America have contributed imagination and skill to the industry in subsequent years. Then, as today, Union City is a destination for immigrants because it serves as a more affordable and less congested alternative to Manhattan.
. Until 2008, one of the city's two high schools at the time, Union Hill High School, continued to bear the name of that former town. After World War II, veterans relocated to Bergen County, causing a short-lived decline in the population. In the late 1960s, a large migration of Cuban refugees fleeing Fidel Castro's regime came and settled in Union City, making Union City for many years the city with the largest Cuban population in the U.S. after Miami, hence its nickname, "Havana on the Hudson." In recent years however, the Hispanic population has diversified. Today's influx of immigrants comes from the Dominican Republic, Central and South America. Middle class people from New York City have also settled there.
The easternmost streets of Union City, in particular Mountain Road and Palisade Avenue, boast some impressive views of neighboring Weehawken, Hoboken and the New York City skyline, a feature which, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, was exploited by numerous Union City citizens, such as those who stood in the courtyard of the Union City Boxing Club to view the event's aftereffects. A piece of wreckage from the attack was used to create a monument that now stands in that courtyard.