Because of its dynamic population and superb movement infrastructure, New York City can become a model of a new kind of many-centered metropolis, with Manhattan -- the world capital -- remaining its center of all centers.
A gigantic, 15' tall Superman statue stoically stands guard at the center of Metropolis, a small town in Southern Illinois with a population of about 6,500.
Dollhouse-style 17th- and 18th-century brick townhouses in the city center give the metropolis a small-town flavor, but this dynamic city has nearly one million people when its satellites -- Roubaix, Villeneuve d'Ascq and Tourcoing -- are counted.
It's a five-minute walk to get there, or to Spring Street, which is the bustling center of this metropolis.
After all these years it's still a thrill to see them from far away, across the Hudson River, piled up like exclamation points at the center of the metropolis, or sticking out of the treetops, forming a great manmade escarpment at the edge of Central Park.
And yet, the decision to designate a large space at the very center of a metropolis for presenting archaeology and to expose the underground history of urban spaces to the everyday inhabitants and visitors of a city is a revolutionary plan.
No matter where we are in the world, whether it's the center of booming metropolis or the outskirts of some barren desert, we can always look up and bear witness to a constantly shifting wondrous display of nature in the sky above.
"One experience Brooklyn's writers have shared," Hughes writes, "is living just outside the colossal, churning center of the metropolis — across the river from what is still often referred to as 'the city.'" In one way or another, Brooklyn's writers have often wound up writing against Manhattan — even if sometimes that meant, as in the case of Malamud and Alfred Kazin, they were writing toward it.
THE GIST: The overarching question of both the show and the course centers on the metropolis: Why do cities develop as they do?
Roads leading into the city were clogged in the early morning as white-robed protesters walked to the city center from corners of the sprawling metropolis.
