As cities have gentrified, educated urbanites have come to prize
what they regard as "authentic" urban life: aging buildings, art
galleries, small boutiques, upscale food markets, neighborhood
old-timers, funky ethnic restaurants, and old, family-owned shops.
These signify a place's authenticity, in contrast to the bland
standardization of the suburbs and exurbs. But as Sharon Zukin
shows in Naked City, the rapid and pervasive demand for
authenticity-evident in escalating real estate prices, expensive
stores, and closely monitored urban streetscapes-has helped drive
out the very people who first lent a neighborhood its authentic
aura: immigrants, the working class, and artists. Zukin traces this
economic and social evolution in six archetypal New York
areas-Williamsburg, Harlem, the East Village, Union Square, Red
Hook, and the city's community gardens-and travels to both the
city's first IKEA store and the World Trade Center site. She shows
that for followers of Jane Jacobs, this transformation is a
perversion of what was supposed to happen. Indeed, Naked City is a
sobering update of Jacobs' legendary 1962 book, The Death and Life
of Great American Cities. Like Jacobs, Zukin looks at what gives
neighborhoods a sense of place, but argues that over time, the
emphasis on neighborhood distinctiveness has become a tool of
economic elites to drive up real estate values and effectively
force out the neighborhood "characters" that Jacobs so evocatively
idealized. With a journalist's eye and the understanding of a
longtime critic and observer, Zukin's panoramic survey of
contemporary New York explains how our desire to consume authentic
experience has become a central force in making cities more
exclusive.
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