NEW YORK CITY

Life in the shadows
Richard Swift explores the underside of New York City.

Among the ruins
Marshall Berman traces the destruction of the Bronx.

FLAKING PAINT AND BAD AIR

Rebuilding the city
How we can make our cities better places to live.

Plundering power
Machine politics is alive and well in New York. Tom Robbins reports.

America meets the world
New York has long been a magnet for newcomers. John Beam investigates.

SOCKS TO SUNGLASSES, T-SHIRTS TO TELEPHONES

Crime wave
Martin Mittelstaedt describes how New York's culture of crime is distorting social relations.

CITIES - THE FACTS

Capital of capital
New York is the centre of global finance, but the bankers don't seem to care, argues Walter Russell Mead.

Harlem feels the pinch
By Peggy Dye.

Simply... the urban dilemma

Bowery blues
Property developers and real estate speculators are changing the face of old New York. Beverly Cheuvront reports.

RATS, ROACHES AND ROBBERY

It's been a while since we've featured two mug shots at the top of this editor's letter. Normally only one of us is responsible for what appears between the covers of NI each month. But this issue is special: a co-operative effort between both of us in the Canadian editorial office. In fact the whole process of producing this month's magazine has been a bit of an experiment.

This time instead of sending one of us to our main UK office to oversee the editing, design and paste-up we've turned the tables and imported one of our two Oxford-based designers to work with us. The experiment has not been without trauma - we've spent many anxious moments wondering whether all the parts would mesh. Instead of everyone all comfy in one office we've been running all over town - from typesetter to design studio to our cramped editorial office. Our NI designer Alan Hughes was calmed by what he calls our 'laid back' North American style (we are uptight too but we repress it). So in the end, with the help of Toronto colleague Richard Peachey, we did manage to churn out the magazine on New York City you're now holding. We see it as the colonies fighting back.

But why an issue on New York? After all our job is supposed to be background analysis of global development trends. Where does New York fit into that picture? Like London, Paris and Tokyo, New York is a 'global city' whose economic clout is felt around the world. It is also the flagship city of the American empire (it's not by accident that New York is called the 'Empire City'), a city at the heart of Western popular culture where the lavish dreams of millions of immigrants have confronted the hard reality of Manhattan concrete.

New York is an urban hothouse where the air crackles with tension and energy. It 'is a city that embodies the myth and romance of 'bootstrap capitalism' - where anyone with the wit, the will and the talent can make it to the top. Aggressive, competitive self-interest built the city - and now the same force threatens to destroy it. New York is a barometer for the problems of modem urban life, from the homeless camped out under the bright lights of Broadway to the thousands of abandoned buildings that pock-mark the city.

Housing, transport, health care, unemployment, essential services, crime, political corruption, the growing polarization of wealth and poverty - these are key concerns in New York as they are in dozens of fast-growing Third World cities. That's why in this issue we've tried to balance some good material on New York City with background data and information on global urbanization and the severe problems facing cities in the developing nations. The two themes are meant to complement and reinforce each other.

Those parallels are the reasons we decided to focus the NI lens on Manhattan. The same forces that are shaping present-day New York also operate in every Third World city. Developing countries are pulling out all the stops to build their very own 'global cities'. Mini-Manhattans are springing up in virtually every Third World nation. But like New York's money moguls in their steel and glass towers these 'Third World Manhattans' have almost nothing to do with the lives of the average Third World citizen.

Despite the dark side of city life both of us confess to being city-lovers: there's an infectious thrill in the anarchy, the intensity and the neurotic speediness of New York. Part of that attraction is the ordinary and the extraordinary people who live there. You'll meet some of them in this issue and we think you'll agree on that score at least that New York has few equals.

Letters
Letter from Mawere
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Maria del Nevo
Reviews: including Wendy Brandmark classic
Country profile: Algeria

COVER ILLUSTRATION: David Prothero
Thanks to Richard Peachey and Al McMillan for their efforts in this month's issue.
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER