Is there anything more irritating than that predictable sigh, so often heard from the trendy anti-gentrification crowd, that New York was so much better, so much more authentic, when one couldn’t walk through Central Park without fear of sexual molestation; when Times Square was an outdoor brothel, controlled by illiterate gangsters who kept out both horrid corporations and those even more horrid (and uncool) tourists from Omaha?

The only argument worth making in defense the old New York is that cities in decline often produce great books and films about decline: Saul Bellow’s 1970 classic Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Tom Wolfe’s brilliant Bonfire of the Vanities, Al Pacino in Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon.