The Ortiz family slept fully dressed in case their building caught fire that night. The Ortizs, or the Brennans, or the Washingtons — it didn’t matter, it could be any surname, it could be a surname just like yours, exactly like yours. They lived in the South Bronx, in nearly century-old brick buildings of four, five or six stories with no elevators, and they went to bed in the clothes they would wear the next day, with their shoes on — especially the children — because going down three flights of stairs in socks on a burning stairwell could mean the difference between living and dying. Mothers left a bag by the door with documents, a family photo, and whatever cash they had, always the same ready bag, like people who live near a war front. Because, in a way, New York’s decade of fire was a war front.

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There are cities that grow outward, spreading across the landscape like an oil stain. That kind of growth is, broadly speaking, more convenient but harder in other respects, because to serve any development on the outskirts — any planned residential area, any subdivision — you have to deploy a whole system of services, communications, and infrastructure there, which sometimes — often — arrives after the housing in those new neighborhoods has already filled up with people.

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