A kaleidoscopic portrait of an enduring metropolis, The Intimate City reveals why New York, despite COVID and a long history of other calamities, continues to inspire and to mean so much to those who call it home and to countless others. They take readers back to an age when Times Square was still a beaver pond and Yankee Stadium a salt marsh across the Brooklyn Bridge, for green tea ice cream in Chinatown, for momos and samosas in Jackson Heights, to explore historic Black churches in Harlem and midcentury Mad Men skyscrapers on Park Avenue. All the walks can be walked, or just be read for pleasure, by know-it-all New Yorkers or anyone else. The book includes new walks through LGBTQ Greenwich Village, through Forest Hills, Queens, and Mott Haven, in the Bronx. The Intimate City is the ultimate insider’s guide.

The walks unpacked the essence of urban life and its social fabric-the history, plans, laws, feats of structural engineering, architectural highlights, and everyday realities that make up a place Kimmelman calls “humanity’s greatest achievement.” These intimate, funny, richly detailed conversations between Kimmelman and his companions became anchors for millions of Times readers during the pandemic. What began with a lighthearted trip to explore Broadway’s shuttered theater district and a stroll along Museum Mile when the museums were closed soon took on a much larger meaning and ambition. Michael Kimmelmans new book: The Intimate City. At a scary moment when everything seemed uncertain, walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was still a rock, joy, and inspiration. Image 2 of 4 from gallery of Michael Kimmelman Unfolds Our Understandings of Communities in Uncertain. Wherever they liked, he wrote-preferably someplace meaningful to them, someplace that illuminated the city and what they loved about it. From the New York Times architecture critic, his celebrated walking tours of New York City, now expanded, covering four of the five boroughs and some 540 million years of history, accompanied by some of the people who know it bestĪs New York came to a halt with COVID, Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of architects, historians, writers, and friends, inviting them to take a walk.

Michael kimmelman the intimate city