Vanishing New York : how a great city lost its soul / Jeremiah Moss.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 437-442) and index.

The East Village -- Hyper-gentrification in the revanchist city -- Ludlow Street and the Lower East Side -- The battle for New York's soul -- The Bowery -- The neoliberal turn -- Little Italy -- September 11 -- Greenwich Village -- Bloomberg -- The Gold Coast of Bleecker Street -- In the new New York -- High Line 1: the meatpacking district -- The new gilded age and the Enron society -- Chelsea -- On the sidewalk -- High Line 2: West Chelsea to Hudson Yards -- The trouble with tourists -- Times Square -- Suburbanizing the city -- Harlem and East Harlem -- Gentrifiers and the new manifest destiny -- Brooklyn -- Coney Island -- Queens -- The South Bronx -- On memory and forgetting -- Conclusion.

"An unflinching chronicle of gentrification in the twenty-first century, and a love letter to lost New York, by the creator of the popular and incendiary blog Vanishing New York"--Jacket.

"For generations, New York City has been a mecca for artists, writers, and other hopefuls longing to be part of its rich cultural exchange and unique social fabric. But today, modern gentrification is transforming the city from an exceptional, iconoclastic metropolis into a suburbanized luxury zone with a price tag only the one percent can afford. A Jane Jacobs for the digital age, blogger and cultural commentator Jeremiah Moss has emerged as one of the most outspoken and celebrated critics of this dramatic shift. In Vanishing New York, he reports on the city's development in the twenty-first century, a period of "hyper-gentrification" that has resulted in the shocking transformation of beloved neighborhoods and the loss of treasured unofficial landmarks. In prose that the Village Voice has called a "mixture of snark, sorrow, poeticism, and lyric wit," Moss leads us on a colorful guided tour of the most changed parts of town--from the Lower East Side and Chelsea to Harlem and Williamsburg--lovingly eulogizing iconic institutions as they're replaced with soulless upscale boutiques, luxury condo towers, and suburban chains. Propelled by Moss' hard-hitting, cantankerous style, Vanishing New York is a staggering examination of contemporary "urban renewal" and its repercussions--not only for New Yorkers, but for all of America and the world"--Publisher's description.