The dying city : postwar New York and the ideology of fear /
Brian Tochterman.
- Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, (c)2017.
- 1 online resource.
- Studies in United States culture .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Highbrow vs. hard-boiled: literary visions of New York, 1947-1952. E.B. White's cosmopolis ; Mickey Spillane's necropolis -- Cancer and death: New York narratives in planning theory, 1953-1961. The case for municipal surgery ; On planning necropolis -- Intellectuals interrogate necropolis, 1961-1967. Farewell to the universal city ; Untangling the pathologies of ungovernability -- Detour to Fun City: cultural responses to the death of New York, 1967-1985. Fear City on film ; The lure of decay.
"As a sense of crisis rose in American cities during 1960s and 1970s, a period defined by suburban growth and deindustrialization, no city was viewed in its death throes more than New York. Feeding this narrative of the dying city was a wide range of representations in film, literature, and the popular press--representations that ironically would not have been produced if not for a city full of productive possibilities as well as challenges"--