In Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination, May Joseph, a social science and cultural studies scholar, explores the history, experience, representations, and political implications of New York City’s relation to its natural environment, especially its aquatic surroundings –be they rivers, harbor or ocean. Of particular interest to Joseph, and the reader, is New York’s status as an archipelagic metropolis. While the book does not purport to provide a straightforward his..

Marche, Guillaume

English

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European journal of American studies  
Reviews 2015-4
May Joseph,Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan
Urbanism and the Green Imagination
Guillaume Marche
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URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/11157
ISSN: 1991-9336
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European Association for American Studies
 
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May Joseph,Fluid New York:
Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green
Imagination
Guillaume Marche
1 In Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green
Imagination,  May  Joseph,  a  social  science  and  cultural
studies  scholar,  explores  the  history,  experience,
representations,  and  political  implications  of  New  York
City’s  relation  to  its  natural  environment,  especially  its
aquatic surroundings –be they rivers, harbor or ocean. Of
particular interest to Joseph, and the reader, is New York’s
status as an archipelagic metropolis. While the book does
not  purport  to  provide  a  straightforward  history  of  New
York, since that history has already been written by others,
to whom Joseph refers, the reader does learn a lot about
the  city’s  history  –  for  instance  about  racial  and  ethnic
diversity ever since the first Dutch colony and the traces of
that  early  history  that  are  left  in  the  city  today.  In  fact,
Joseph approaches today’s New York as a palimpsest of its
history  since  the  times  of  the  encounter  between  Dutch
settlers  and  Native  Americans  in  the  sixteenth  and
seventeenth centuries, all the way to the early 2010s – the
book’s  time-span  ends  with  Hurricane  Sandy,  which  was
Joseph’s actual impetus for writing. For example, the author
offers an archaeology of the complex status of the turf in
the  southern  part  of  Manhattan,  which,  unbeknownst  to
most New Yorkers, hosts a hidden necropolis of African
May Joseph,Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination
European journal of American studies , Reviews 2015-4 | 2015
1
slaves and former slaves: Joseph views New York as literally
haunted by this invisible, imperceptible, yet real presence.
2
What  Joseph  aims  to  highlight  are  the  historical
movements whereby New York’s topographical substratum
as a territory surrounded by water was gradually made less
perceptible  from the  colonial  times  to  the  mid-twentieth
century,  until  various  natural  disasters,  allied  with  many
New Yorkers’ growing environmental conscience, forcefully
brought  this  natural  condition  back  to  attention.  For
instance,  the  author  recounts  experiences  whereby  New
Yorkers  are  faced with  signs  of  the hills,  rivers,  swamps
that used to define New York’s topography, have been made
invisible  through  urban  growth,  but  do  resurface  in
sometimes unexpected ways.  Thus,  says  Joseph,  for  New
York as for many comparable metropolises, the dilemma is
to  balance  urban  growth  with  preservation.  Yet,  the
equation is made more complex for New York – due to its
unique topography – and at the same time more emblematic
–  due  to  the  city’s  remaining  iconic  status  worldwide.
Joseph  thus  accounts  for  the  city’s  ambivalent  record  of
destruction  and  conservation  of  heritage  landmarks  and
communities in the past fifty years, but also highlights more
recent  efforts  to  reinvent  New  York’s  relationship  to  its
environment. Interestingly, while the book – just like most
of the city’s civic and economic life – is very much centered
on  Manhattan,  Joseph  explores  the  significance  of
Manhattan’s uniqueness as a relatively small island in what
was for long one of the world’s largest cities, by taking into
account such factors as the experience of commuting, the
diversity of communities living in the other boroughs, and
the fluctuating hubs of urban innovativeness that spring up
here and there in Brooklyn or Queens, for instance.
3
The book is theoretically grounded upon the notions
of metropolitanism and cosmopolitanism, the former notion
leaning toward a civil, administrative view of local city life,
while  the  latter  clearly  emphasizes  politics  and  civic
engagement in the grander scheme of things: 
Metropolitanism is a condition of life as well as an approach to city planning and
governance. . . . Cosmopolitanism, an aspect of metropolitan life, is a fraught and
contingent  ideal  historically  embedded in  the  very  idea of  the  polis,  or  city.  It
contains the idea of world citizenship, a sense of belonging that exceeds the finite
definitions  of  human  association,  such  as  nation,  race,  and  language. . . .  The
inherent tensions between a regional metropolitanism and a pedestrian-centered
political  cosmopolitanism  intertwine  to  produce  New  York’s particular
manifestation of fluid urbanism. (21–22)
May Joseph,Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination
European journal of American studies , Reviews 2015-4 | 2015
2
4 The succession of Joseph’s chapters thus take the reader
through a detailed account of Dutch colonial cartography
and its delineation of coasts and rivers, to the growth of the
modern, industrial  and commercial  city,  to new efforts at
frugal urban living, to greening experiments, to the specific
challenges  of  multiculturalism  in  an  archipelagic  urban
environment.  This  account  has  its  baddies  and  goodies,
such  as,  respectively,  Robert  Moses,  the  urbanist  who
pushed  in  favor  of  the  automobile’s  supremacy  in  New
York’s mid-twentieth century development, and Jane Jacobs,
the  1960s  community  activist  who  led  and  inspired  a
movement for less growth, more conservation, in the face of
development projects that would have basically annihilated
Greenwich Village as we know it. Joseph also expounds her
key ideas, such as New York’s being paradigmatic of urban
verticality (as opposed to the growing American model of
horizontal urban sprawl from Los Angeles to Atlanta) or its
status as the site of a unique confluence between rivers and
ocean.
5
Among Joseph’s most interesting and original ideas is
her situating New York within a Dutch and, later, English
colonial continuum. By setting her narrative in a broader,
worldwide colonial and postcolonial context, Joseph at the
same time challenges the idea that industrialized and Third-
World countries are as essentially distinct, as many would
be  inclined  to  think,  and  highlights  the  specifics  of
American metropolitanism. Among the book’s best passages
are  indeed  chapters  5  and  6  –  “Nomadic  urbanism  and
frugality” and “Nyerere, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi” – where
Joseph  draws  from  such  diverse  inspirations  as  Weber,
Simmel,  Tönnies,  the  Dalai  Lama,  Gandhi,  and  the  1967
Arusha Declaration to make a case for a model of urbanism
that  is  more  environmentally-conscious,  less  driven  by
mercantile commodification, and more attuned to the public
need  for  a  collective  form  of  urban  citizenship.  In
subsequent  chapters,  Joseph  also  accounts  for  the  City’s
efforts  to  green  itself  since  the  end  of  the  Giuliani  era,
under the Bloomberg municipal administration. She views
this shift as a major qualitative change because, unlike top-
down bureaucratic management, it takes into account some
of the ideas that  have sprung up from citizen initiatives,
such as community gardens, urban cycling, as well as the
sheer  physical  appropriation  of  urban  space  through
running, swimming, and a variety of festivals. Yet, Joseph
also  blames  the  city’s  unpreparedness  for  environmental
catastrophe  and  contrasts  New  York  with  other  coastal
cities  –  including Third-World  metropolises  –  that  have
May Joseph,Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination
European journal of American studies , Reviews 2015-4 | 2015
3
accomplished  far  more  in  terms  of  transforming  their
infrastructures in the context of climate change.
6
In fact,  a further originality in the book is  that the
author  situates  her  research  in  relation to  her  personal
history of growing up in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, at the
time of  independence,  when the new nation pursued the
then-common path of Third-World socialism. Joseph thus not
only  contrasts  New  York’s  metropolitanism  and
cosmopolitanism  with  cities  in  developing  countries,  but
also invokes the Cold War context when there were such
things  as  a  First  World  (capitalist),  a  Second  World
(socialist),  and a Third World.  Further,  the author stages
and represents her own experience of writing, but also of
living in New York. This is not limited to the introduction, as
a way to situate the book-project for the reader – a rather
customary thing for a contemporary scholar to do: instead,
throughout  the  book,  Joseph’s  text  is  enriched  with
impressions  of  events  attended,  observed,  or  simply
chanced  upon.  This  endows  the  text  with  both  a
documentary  dimension  and  a  testimonial  vein,  since
Joseph does not simply provide the equivalent of field-notes,
but  also  presents  her  personal  experience  –  including  in
some especially moving details at the end of the book – as
part of the research itself. 
7
Joseph’s  account  of  fluid  New  York  thus  proceeds
malleably and diachronically to remind readers of what lies
below – literally – today’s cityscape, not merely for the sake
of illustration, let alone erudition, but so that the temporal
element may warrant some degree of critical distance about
the  actual  meaning,  both  symbolical  and  political,  with
which the urban environment is invested. In fact, readers
with  a  social  scientific  turn  of  mind  may  be  somewhat
disappointed  with  the  book’s  lack  of  an  analysis  of  hard
empirical facts and get the overall impression of a cultural
commentary  given  somewhat  in  abstracto.  Yet,  as  she
emphasizes malleability versus fixity, and experience versus
structure, Joseph does cite such authors as Goffman and de
Certeau.  Surprisingly,  though,  she  neither  cites  Walter
Benjamin’s  Arcades  Project whose  legacy,  along  with
Baudelaire’s,  looms  so  large  upon  most  contemporary
writing on city-life and urban flânerie, nor Chicago School
sociologists  like  Ernst  Burgess  or  Louis  Wirth  whose
theoretical and ethnographic work on urban ecology, ethnic
succession,  and  urbanism as  a  way  of  life  seem akin  to
Joseph’s take on how a city’s environments are constructed
May Joseph,Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination
European journal of American studies , Reviews 2015-4 | 2015
4
by and through the experience of flesh and blood people
physically inhabiting urban space – rather than preexisting
structures simply, one-directionally conditioning life in New
York.  A further surprising blind spot  in the book is  that,
even though Joseph does mention gentrification here and
there (e.g. 67, 145, 147), she does not make it a theme of
her discussion; nor does she make democracy an issue per
se,  even  as  her  discussion  of  municipal  accountability,
cooperation, and governance (e.g. 202–203) would seem to
point in that direction. Accordingly the terms are not even
indexed.  The text  itself  is  not  exempt from rather wordy
passages1 and questionable interpretations, as when Joseph
does ascribe to Max Weber’s analysis of the protestant ethic
or to Ferdinand Tönnies distinction between Gemeinschaft
and Gesellschaft undue prescriptive intents.2
8
But  the  book  makes  a  unique  contribution  to
scholarship  thanks  to  the  breadth  of  its  time-span,  its
original interdisciplinary methodology, and the perspective
it offers on how New Yorkers can, and do, reinvent their city
through a wide range of initiatives.
NOTES
1.  E.g.  “Yet,  the  language  of  metropolitanism  eludes  daily  parlance.  As  a  discourse,
metropolitanism  permeates  city  life  without  translating  its  intimacies  into  a  vernacular  of
dailiness.” (71)
2.  “Weber advocates austerity as a way of socially managing the desires of the unruly body.”
(106; emphasis added) “Nostalgic for supposedly binding forms of community embedded in a
fast-disappearing folk culture, Tönnies articulates a rising sense of alienation at the end of the
nineteenth century.”(109; emphasis added)
AUTHOR
GUILLAUME MARCHE
Université Paris-Est Créteil
May Joseph,Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination
European journal of American studies , Reviews 2015-4 | 2015
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