Questioning The Urbanity Of New York City

A new book brings together perspectives on how New York's urban renaissance has made the city less urban and more suburban.

1 minute read

June 28, 2007, 7:00 AM PDT

By Christian Madera @http://www.twitter.com/cpmadera

The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? is a "collection of 14 essays [that] captures the sense of frustration shared by anyone bothered that prosperity in American cities seems inseparable from corporate branding. Worse, the newcomers with the wherewithal to pay obscene housing prices don't seem interested in the politics that a prior generation held dear."

"In other words, there's a changing of the landscape and a changing of the guard. And a fear that something irreplaceably, uniquely "urban" is being lost."

"..."At any given moment, the temporary population of the city overwhelmingly comprises people who either now live in suburbia or who have grown up in suburbia," [Francis] Morrone writes. "I suspect that it is this overwhelming suburban presence that has made Manhattan seem a simulacrum of itself, a pod-city."..."

FULL STORY: Critics of 'suburban' cities long for the old urbanity -- or chaos

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 in The San Francisco Chronicle

Social / Demographics New York

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

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