Every city has a kind of evil twin that looks like Beirut.
This shadow self is the city's own hypothetical disintegration, the awful promise of what will happen when the worst transpires. Civilization will come unstuck. Anarchy will break loose at last and weeds push up through the concrete, and the police will degenerate to a paramilitary tribe at war with other gangs that go howling through the wastelands like road warriors, blade runners.
The bad dream contains a few jagged particles of truth. Some American cities have come to look dangerously like their anti-selves: debts deepening, revenues inadequate, services falling...
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