Here's my list of what's been suggested so far. (As a native New Yorker, I've taken the liberty of including E. B. White's memorable little book. Until someone comes up with something published earlier it can serve as a kind of terminus post quem.)
Big Cities, Big Ideas
A Meeting of the Committee on Design, New York, May 15-18, 2014
Suggested Reading (by date of publication)
Guidebooks and Maps
Cohen, Paul and Augustyn, Robert T., Manhattan in Maps. Rizzoli, 2006.
NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission,
Guide to New York City Landmarks, (4th Edition). Wiley, 2008.
White, Norval et al., AIA Guide to New York City (5th Edition). Oxford, 2010.
History, Cultural Geography, Local Color
White, E.B., Here is New York, Vintage, 1949.
Caro, Robert, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Knopf, 1974.
Koolhas, Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, Monacelli,1974.
Morris, Jan, Manhattan 45, Oxford, 1987.
Sante, Luc, Low Life, Lures and Snares of Old New York ,Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991.
Carr, Caleb, The Alienist, Random House, 1994.
Millhauser, Steven, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, Vintage, 1996.
Shorto, Russell, Island at the Center of the World, Vintage, 2005.
Ascher, Kate, The Works: Anatomy of A City, Penguin Books, 2007.
Sanderson, Eric W., Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, Abrams, 2009.
Jackson, Kenneth T., ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (Second Edition) Yale, 2010.
David, Joshua and Hammond, Robert, High Line:The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
Ballon, Hilary, ed., The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811 - 2011,
Museum of the City of New York and Columbia University Press, 2012.
Stern, Robert A.M. et al., The Monacelli Press:
New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age. 1999.
New York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890-1915. 1983.
New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism between the Two World Wars. 1987.
New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism between the Second World War
and the Bicentennial, 1995.
New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial
and the Millennium, 2006.
Media
PBS series Treasures of New York (http://www.thirteen.org/programs/treasures-of-new-york/ ) Stanford White and Costas Kondylis episodes.
Mitchell, Joseph, "Street Life: Becoming Part of the City", The New Yorker. Feb.11, 2013.
(http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/11/130211fa_fact_mitchell)
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Barton Phelps FAIA
Principal
Barton Phelps & Associates, Architects and Planners
Los Angeles CA
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