The Cultures of Cities

Rating:
Summary: Interesting study on the role of culture in modern cities
Review: At first the book was hard to get through because of all the theory in the first chapter. After that the seperate chapters were very interesting to read.

Some of the topics are North Adams and the museum, Bryant Park in New York, Disneyland (always fascinating for people interested in urban studies), Brooklyn.

Her chapter on immigrants and restaurants is fascinating, she shows that many restaurants are run by people not from that culture (A Spaniard running a Brazilian restaurant) and that many people who aspire to be artists work in these restaurants.

For people living in New York or Brooklyn this book is a must.

Rating:
Summary: interesting, but too little variety
Review: I liked that this book was easy to read and largely free of jargon and academic talk. There was a lot of topics covered from urban paranoia to consumer behavior, but most of these topics dealt with New York as their sole example. True there were chapters on Disney and Berkshires, but I would have liked to see more variety of locales as most cities have different "shared cultures" than New York and it would be nice to see some of these differences reflected in her book.