“In this perceptive addition to literature on the history of urban planning and development, Schlichting shifts attention from the downtown core of New York City to show that the urban periphery was not so peripheral after all. . . . Highly recommended.”

Choice

“New York Recentered takes into account the twin dynamic of New York as an island city and as a regional entity. This is a welcomed change in perspective that allows the author to examine metropolitan growth and development from the relatively unstudied, but important, vantage point of the periphery. Goodbye to center city–heavy perspectives on Gotham!”

 

Martin V. Melosi | author of The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present

“New York Recentered is an important work in urban history because it will force us all to look beyond Manhattan and take in New York as a regional city united by water. I don’t know of another book that attempts to look at the regional city in this way, and I commend Schlichting for the originality of her approach, the thoroughness of her argument, and the success she has achieved.”

David Schuyler | author of Embattled River: The Hudson and Modern American Environmentalism

"While New York Recentered is a multifaceted revisionist work, the book never loses focus and does not get bogged down in arcane jargon. This is a credit to the author’s skills as a writer and instincts as a historian. Theoretical terms are defined clearly and deployed seamlessly, and the writing is graceful and lively. Notwithstanding the analytical profundity of her work, Schlichting always elevates the human element—systematically demonstrating that generations of diverse local interests exacted a 'cumulative influence' (9) that 'made possible the realization of a modern regional city by the mid-twentieth century' (14). In telling those stories, as much as in her critical interventions, Schlichting makes significant contributions to New York history. Indeed, like the author’s conceptualization of the regional metropolis itself, her monograph’s powerful totality is the worthy sum of its fascinating parts."

New York History