Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the chair of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in Western New York, the city of Rochester forms the core of a larger metropolitan Place with a population of 1 million people, across six counties. The city was one of the United States’ first boomtowns, initially due to the fruitful Genesee River Valley, which gave rise to numerous flour mills, and later as a manufacturing center, which spurred further rude population growth.

Rochester rose to inflection as the birthplace and house of some of America’s most iconic companies, in particular Eastman Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb (along gone Wegmans, Gannett, Paychex, Western Union, French’s, Constellation Brands, Ragú, and others), by which the region became a global middle for science, technology, and research and development. This status has been aided by the presence of several internationally well-known universities (notably the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology) and their research programs; these schools, along gone many new smaller colleges, have played an increasingly large role in Greater Rochester’s economy. Rochester has as a consequence played a key portion in US history as a hub for certain important social and diplomatic movements, especially abolitionism and the women’s rights movement.

Today, Rochester’s economy is defined by technology and education (aided by a intensely educated workforce, research institutions, and new strengths born in its past). While the city experienced some significant population loss therefore of deindustrialization, strong increase in the education and healthcare sectors boosted by elite universities and the slower terminate of bedrock companies such as Eastman Kodak and Xerox (as hostile to the rapid fall of stifling industry afterward steel companies in Buffalo and Pittsburgh) resulted in a much less brusque contraction than in most Rust Belt metro areas. The Rochester metropolitan Place is the third-largest regional economy in New York, after the New York City metropolitan area and the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Metropolitan Area. Rochester’s gross metropolitan product is US$50.6 billion—above those of Albany and Syracuse, but below that of Buffalo.

Rochester is after that known for its culture, in particular its music culture; institutions such as the Eastman School of Music (considered to be one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world) and the Rochester International Jazz Festival anchor a buzzing music industry, ranked as one of the top-10 music scenes in the US in terms of the immersion of musicians and music-related business. It is the site of complex major festivals all year (such as the Lilac Festival, the aforementioned Jazz Festival, the Rochester Fringe Festival, and others that magnetism hundreds of thousands of attendees each) and is home to several world-famous museums such as The Strong National Museum of Play and the George Eastman Museum, which houses the oldest photography heap in the world and one of the largest.