In visions of future New York City, the waterfront appears as a highly
symbolic space, a site of possibility and transformation, imbued with
complex cultural meanings. Crucial for the understanding of the urban
waterfront and its development are the metaphors used to describe
changing relationships to it, across genres. This article focuses on one
specific metaphorization of the watery edge of New York City, that of
the “Sixth Borough.” It examines the 2011 New York comprehensive
waterfront plan Vision 2020 and Jonathan Safran Foer’s short story “The Sixth Borough,” part of the novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, but published as a separate short story in the New York Times
(2004, 2005). Read side by side, these texts offer a compelling—if
contradictory—view of how the words to describe the city engage with
eruptions in the material world.