The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town?

In a series of essays, each by a New Yorker taking on a specific locale or topic (Harlem, Orchard Street, ""the City of Perpetual Arrival""), this book wrestles with the question posed in the subtitle, and what it means if the answer is yes. Unfortunately, the writing here is markedly uneven, plagued by an arch tone and too much generalization. Eric Darton's ""News from Nowheresville,"" in which he discusses Robert Moses's Coliseum and the ""vertical mall"" that replaced it-the Time Warner Center-makes a telling example, rendered ineffective by glib overstatement (""Here real estate pornography has reached ... a kind of ultimate pitch""), charged language (""The evil of banality"") and jokey speculation (""imagine what sort of havoc the pounding did to the kidneys of the machine operators""). Bright spots do shine through, including Suzanne Wasserman's quick-and-dirty history of the disappearing neighborhood fair and the rise of street fair corporations like Mardi Gras Productions. Marshall Berman's essay sketches an evocative portrait of Times Square over the past hundred-plus years, expertly combining personal experience, colorful detail and urban theory. More pieces as well-crafted as Berman's would have made this collection a worthy read; as is, readers curious about social changes in the city should look elsewhere (such as Berman's 2006 On the Town). b/w photos throughout.