I just spent a week in New York spitting out the portmanteau poetry of urban branding. SoHo! NoHo! TriBeCa! NoLiTa!—all innocuous neighborhood names picked to boost property values and spur development. Of course, some names don’t stick as well. The neighborhood north of Madison Square Park is aching to be known as NoMad (or sometimes, the ill-fated NoMaS). The area everyone still calls Hell’s Kitchen was supposedly deemed the less-fire-and-brimstone Clinton (where, as it abuts Chelsea,…

I just spent a week in New York spitting out the portmanteau poetry of urban branding. SoHo! NoHo! TriBeCa! NoLiTa!—all innocuous neighborhood names picked to boost property values and spur development. Of course, some names don’t stick as well. The neighborhood north of Madison Square Park is aching to be known as NoMad (or sometimes, the ill-fated NoMaS). The area everyone still calls Hell’s Kitchen was supposedly deemed the less-fire-and-brimstone Clinton (where, as it abuts Chelsea,…