How do I return rows with a specific value first?

If your SQL dialect is intelligent enough to treat boolean expressions as having a numeric value, then you can use:

SELECT *
FROM `Users`
ORDER BY (`city` = 'New York') DESC, `city`

On SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and many other database systems, this is what you can use:

ORDER BY CASE WHEN city = 'New York' THEN 1 ELSE 2 END, city

My answer may be old and not required but someone may need different approach,hence posting it here.

I had same requirement implemented this, worked for me.

Select * from Users
ORDER BY
(CASE WHEN city = 'New York' THEN 0 ELSE 1 END), city
GO

this is for SQL

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