New York's architecture is visual shorthand for the city, says Ian Luna, architecture critic for The New York Times. But since the World Trade Centre tragedy there has been an even greater interest in rebuilding and celebrating its architectural heritage.

New New York: Recent Buildings in the City is one of those inspiring books that makes you want to visit New York as soon as possible.

The book gathers what editor Ian Luna suggests are the top 50 buildings of the past 10 years, built by big names such as Richard Rodgers, Norman Foster and Frank Gehry. The city in these photographs does look different (in atmosphere as much as physically) and by the time you've reached the end of the book - which has just a little explanatory text - you get a sense not only of what the city is like right now but also of how the look of contemporary architecture in general is shaping up. The buildings featured include public spaces like Moma's new gallery in Long Island and the Rose Tree Centre for Earth and Space along with private homes such as Japanese architect Tadao Ando's penthouse in a pre-war building with glass boxes jutting from the facade. Philippe Starck's fantasy-like Hudson Hotel is here as is Norman Foster's Hearst Building, a tower of triangulated glass and stainless steel. This idea of breaking away from the conventional grid of vertical columns and horizontal beams in such high-rise buildings is also evident in the LVMH Tower, which has a similar kind of broken angled shape.

But perhaps the most interesting thing is the way retail spaces, and fashion stores in particular, are facilitating some of the most experimental work. Shopping, we're told, is the primary generative force in the transformation of a city and the most notable in New York are Helmut Lang's Soho Parfumerie, a dimly-lit interpretation of an old apothecary; Costume National's all black space; Frank Gerhy's Issey Miyake store in Tribeca, with titanium sculpture emerging from the basement and twisting through the main retail floor; and Prada's enormous NY Epicentre, designed by Rem Koolhass, which has a stage, folding out from a great curving dip in the floor for film projections and lectures while you buy $600 shoes.

Fittingly, at the very end of the book, are the extraordinary finalist proposals for buildings to replace the World Trade Centre.

• New New York: Recent Buildings in the City (Thames & Hudson, €29.95)