Money Jungle: Imagining the New Times Square
Benjamin Chesluk
For more than a century, Times Square has mesmerized the world   with the spectacle of its dazzling supersigns, its theaters, and its   often-seedy nightlife. New York City's iconic crossroads has drawn crowds   of revelers, thrill-seekers, and other urban denizens, not to mention   lavish outpourings of advertising and development money.     Many have hotly debated the recent transformation of this legendary   intersection, with voices typically falling into two opposing camps. Some   applaud a blighted red-light district becoming a big-budget, mainstream   destination. Others lament an urban zone of lawless possibility being   replaced by a Disneyfied, theme-park version of New York. In Money Jungle,   Benjamin Chesluk shows that what is really at stake in Times Square are   fundamental questions about city life--questions of power, pleasure, and   what it means to be a citizen in contemporary urban space.      Chesluk weaves together surprising stories of everyday life in and around   the Times Square redevelopment, tracing the connections between people from   every level of this grand project in social and spatial engineering: the   developers, architects, and designers responsible for reshaping the urban   public spaces of Times Square and Forty-second Street; the experimental   Midtown Community Court and its Times Square Ink. job-training program for   misdemeanor criminals; encounters between NYPD officers and residents of   Hell's Kitchen; and angry confrontations between city planners and   neighborhood activists over the future of the area.     With an eye for offbeat, telling details and a perspective that is at once   sympathetic and critical, Chesluk documents how the redevelopment has   tried, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, to reshape the people and   places of Times Square. The result is a colorful and engaging portrait,   illustrated by stunning photographs by long-time local photographer Maggie   Hopp, of the street life, politics, economics, and cultural forces that   mold America's urban centers.