»On the origin of cities

Having heard that this year's National Spelling Bee winner took the prize with autochthonous, I wondered where I might stumble upon that word. The answer: on the first page of the Introduction to Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 -- the year that Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, and The Bronx united as boroughs of New York City. This 1100-page volume, the first in the self-billed definitive history of the city, has a table of contents that runs to ten pages.

Once you have a city, you have to decorate it:

Image a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where very street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that a stop leaning against the wall - its wet.