NOT LONG AGO, a writer who had left New York City and was living in the South was interviewed in the New York Times. She said she had left because all discussion in New York—even among intellectuals and writers—turned sooner or later (generally sooner) to real estate. Certainly this suggests New York has come a long way from the crisis of 1975. With the price of co-ops and condominiums having gone up roughly tenfold, New York seems to be, as Martin Shefter’s subtitle suggests, “revived.”