The Manhattan Yankees? Planning Objectives,City Policy,and Sports Stadium Location in New York City

The owners of the New York Yankees professional baseball team have claimed that they are dissatisfied with the location of the team's current ballpark in the economically depressed South Bronx. To appease them, Mayor Giuliani proposed constructing a new stadium for the Yankees in Manhattan, prompting a city-wide debate over whether the team should stay in the Bronx or move to Manhattan. This article outlines the two competing proposals and evaluates their claims. The Manhattan site is linked to the image creation of New York's downtown while the Bronx site sees the stadium as part of a broader regeneration scheme for a deprived part of the city. This article discourages a blind acceptance of Manhattan-centric planning, and presents the argument that the Bronx site is in the best interests of New York.     

Séances in the City: The “Operational Aesthetic” and “Modern Spiritualism” in the Popular Culture of New York City, 1865–1870

This paper will demonstrate that spiritualism became a significant element of popular culture in New York City between 1865 and 1870 because it catered to the “operational aesthetic” so prevalent in urban entertainments. The historian Neil Harris invented the term “operational aesthetic” to denote the spirit of playful inquiry common to the urban culture of mid-nineteenth-century America. By the 1860s, urbanization had undermined the social transparency so integral to the American Republic, causing cultural anxiety about the fraud and deceit, which was thought to thrive on urban anonymity. Several cultural genres, including detective fiction and urban guides, not only reflected, but also invited the investigation into, the divorce between the “superficialities” of the city and the “processes” driving criminal behavior. Spiritualism featured regularly in these genres, particularly the urban guides, as it was appealing to people eager to uncover another instance of urban deceit. Similarly, spiritualists attracted skeptical and agnostic audiences who shared this interest in investigation. Apparent “exposés” of spiritualism, therefore, as well as the mediums themselves, reached out to skeptical audiences, drawn to the “operational aesthetic” inherent in spiritualist demonstrations.     

Remembering and Forgetting Sites of Terrorism in New York, 1900–2001

Abstract

This article assesses the manner in which terrorist attacks have been remembered and forgotten within New York during the twentieth century. As a 'global city', New York has frequently been the focus of individuals and groups seeking to promote their cause by attacking targets in the city, its businesses, its infrastructure, its organizations, and its citizens. By examining how these events were reported and subsequently incorporated or dismissed within both the urban fabric and the city's 'collective memory', this article addresses how violent terrorism is engaged with by society. Building upon the advances made within the study of modern conflict archaeology, this article examines the possibility of an archaeology of terrorism.