In this eye-opening cultural history, Brian Tochterman examines
competing narratives that shaped post–World War II New York
City. As a sense of crisis rose in American cities during the 1960s
and 1970s, a period defined by suburban growth and
deindustrialization, no city was viewed as 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. Tochterman reveals how elite culture producers,
planners and theorists, and elected officials drew on and
perpetuated the fear of death to press for a new urban vision.
It was this narrative of New York as the dying city, Tochterman
argues, that contributed to a burgeoning and broad anti-urban
political culture hostile to state intervention on behalf of cities
and citizens. Ultimately, the author shows that New York's
decline--and the decline of American cities in general--was in part
a self-fulfilling prophecy bolstered by urban fear and the new
political culture nourished by it.