Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination by May Joseph (review)

May Joseph’s Fluid New York is an important addition to the conversation about the environment and life in New York City. This is a thoughtful book whose key metaphor is water: Joseph is persuasive that although New Yorkers were unprepared for superstorm Sandy, water serves to link “public space and private lives” in ways that “defining cartographic lines do not.” She describes and evokes “a dense set of interconnected maps and routes … Arab grocers, South Asian cabbies, Caribbean nurses and doorman, African merchants.”

Joseph shows how New York City is a “marine biosphere”; reading Dutch maps from the 17^th century, she suggests how the environment has been shaped by water, and how the “language of the street” discussed by Jane Jacobs recreates “transcontinental air and sea routes.” Joseph’s book is better at evoking these powerful ideas than at proving them. She relies heavily not only on maps, but on Russell Shorto’s popular history The Island at the Center of the World (2005), and also on popular protests for Tibet and Falun Gong, in an effort to demonstrate the performative aspect of her argument.

Several of her ideas are stated flatly without interrogation, and this tendency becomes frustrating for the reader; for example, “Manhattan’s density deters any effort at segregation. Its irrepressible flows from the streets resist stagnation.” Maybe, but maybe not. It’s true we have a diverse city, but the segregated schools, for example, occur with Manhattan’s density. Another example: “The disconcerting IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING … has cultivated a culture of alarm and nervousness.” Joseph doesn’t say what this culture of alarm consists of, or whether she feels nervous, or whether her sources confirm or disconfirm this idea. Other mistakes also tend to weaken her argument. For example, in a fascinating discussion of the African Burial Ground National Monument, she says it is “on the corner of Duane and Reade Streets.” It’s not. It is on Duane Street, but those streets are parallel. Such details are not trivial. Joseph says she “wrote this book as a memoir of downtown Manhattan,” and the conflicting demands of memoir and scholarship tend to make the writing turgid at times. For example, in her preface set on September 11^th: “Billowing smoke. Scorching flames interrupt the skyline. …” Smoke is always billowing, and any undergraduate writing student should know not to repeat what we’ve seen or heard on television. At the crux of her main argument, she says: “a culture of fluid urbanism is under way.” Of all the verbs to choose, I wonder about “is under way,” especially when the subject is water.

Nonetheless, Fluid New York would be useful in any course about the history of New York City. It could be paired well with Sharon Zukin’s Naked City (2011) or Marshall Berman’s New York Calling (2007). For scholars interested in how the environment shapes and is shaped by urban life and culture, Joseph’s book deepens our understanding.