.nyc is a top level domain (TLD) for New York City. It was delegated to the root zone by ICANN on March 20, 2014.
The New York-based company name.space, founded by Paul Garrin, began operating its own alternative root zone system in 1997 including a .nyc top level domain. name.space applied for inclusion of its .nyc, along with a number of other strings, as TLDs in the IANA root during the 2000 ICANN application round. Its application was refused. Another company Names@Work also put in an application in 2000 but withdrew for lack of funding.
The first municipal support for the .nyc TLD was the Internet Empowerment Resolution passed by Queens Community Board 3, a local planning unit of the City of New York, on April 19, 2001. The Resolution called for the city's Commission on Public Information and Communication or a public interest organization to acquire and develop the TLD.
By the mid-2000s interest in gaining local TLDs had arisen in other cities, notably Paris and Berlin. Some of those proponents contacted Thomas Lowenhaupt, the former Community Board member who had introduced the Queens Resolution. In 2007, with the Bloomberg Administration having indicated that it did not intend to apply for the .nyc TLD, Lowenhaupt formed a non-profit 'Connecting .nyc' to acquire and develop the .nyc TLD for community use. On June 6, 2008 Council Member Gale Brewer led the introduction of Resolution 1495-2008 supporting "the local efforts to acquire the .nyc Top Level Domain and urging The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to approve the City’s application in order to meet the needs of city residents via the Internet."