In a sense, New York / New York was “legally” no longer a condensed Manhattan. Nor was it a movie set (that would have been a different suit altogether). It was essentially a souvenir of the kind that you dropped in your beach bag; but now ballooned out into a monument the size of a casino/hotel. It stood in memoriam to tourists not quite remembering which building went where. It was a monument to condensed memorabilia.
Norman M. Klein, in The Electronic Baroque: 1955-2050. From The Vatican to Vegas, 2004 p346.
