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 1961 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.
