Naked City
The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7308869 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Grace Mckee (University of Virginia, corresponding author), G A McKee |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 370-370 |
| Publication date | 2012-05-22 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jas144 |
| OpenAlex | W2050504581 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 18 |
Sharon Zukin’s Naked City poses a powerful critique of the idea of “authenticity” as a defining and desirable characteristic of urban places. Focusing on the transformation of New York City neighborhoods in recent decades, Zukin argues that the desire to find an authentic urban experience has often provided a starting point for the revitalization of once-derelict parts of the city. In doing so, however, the artists, hipsters, and even community gardeners who claimed that such spaces unintentionally made the areas more hospitable to intensive capital investment, paving the way for the gentrification, commodification, and homogenization (through chain stores) of the very neighborhoods that they once sought out as unique urban places. Zukin traces this process first through case studies of Williamsburg (in Brooklyn), Harlem, and the East Village. This is followed by examinations of how the Greenmarket in Union Square, Latino food vendors at a soccer complex in Brooklyn’s Red Hook area, and community gardeners in East New York all created new forms of authenticity in often-contested public spaces. She finds a common discourse of authenticity running through the transformation of all these locales, as newcomers simultaneously celebrate an “authenticity of origins”—in the history and unique existing character of each place—and an “authenticity of new beginnings”—as they seek the rootedness and sense of place that may come with long-term connection to a community (p. 237). Zukin finds, though, that all such expressions of authenticity prove profoundly unstable
Aesthetics · Art · Commodification · Economic growth · Economy · Gentrification · Media studies · Sociology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Urban Agriculture and Sustainability
Spatial Barriers and the Formation of Global Art Cities
Preface
Creative Class Culture
Arriendo en propiedad
Cultural heritage in the realm of the commons
Go get a job right after you take a bath”
Our interests matter’
The space-time compression of Tokyo street drinking
Public Space, Common Space, and the Spaces In–Between
Alien domesticity
Dispatches from ‘the frontline of gentrification’
It's the ’Hood. But That Means It's Home!”
It's Our Environment
Urbanism and Neoliberal Order
No place for trust—the significance of trust in housing development
Imagine! You Have Nothing to Lose
The Organization of Craft Work
Philanthropic Partnerships in the Just City
| Citations per year | 1.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2022 (11) |
| Highly cited | No |