![Naked City : The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, Hardback Book Naked City : The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, Hardback Book](http://speedyhen.dmmserver.com/media/640/97801953/9780195382853.jpg)
Naked City : The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places Hardback
by Sharon (Professor of Sociology, Professor of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn Col Zukin
Hardback
- Information
Description
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.
Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:312 pages, 19 black and white halftone illustrations
- Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication Date:07/01/2010
- Category:
- ISBN:9780195382853
Information
-
Out of StockMore expected soonContact us for further information
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:312 pages, 19 black and white halftone illustrations
- Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
- Publication Date:07/01/2010
- Category:
- ISBN:9780195382853