For the past few years, blog comments sections, acting as virtual town squares, have offered residents around the country a forum in which to weigh in — and vent — on a wide spectrum of local issues. But given New York’s size and diversity, not to mention its fabled brashness, political energy and high emotion, its blogosphere is taking a particularly striking shape.

The issues that are consistently "hot button" are those tied to gentrification. "Queens does not care for being cool," wrote one anonymous commenter.

From the archive:

Great cities have always been hard to manage. Like other complex systems, they grow spontaneously but then demand more management and investment if they are to avoid decay and disintegration. A time comes in the lives of big cities when the need for regulation and rational allocation of space, money, and other resources prevails over impulsive processes.

Also:

In Atlanta, the buzzwords of soft-core urbanism are everywhere these days.

The city itself, a small splotch of fewer than half a million residents in a galaxy of sprawl, is now attracting the affluent ... with their bloated new houses ... landlords sell out ...

Finally:

Do you understand the difference between "Is it worth buying?" and "Can it be sold?"