Naked City

<p>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.</p><p>But as Sharon Zukin shows in <em>Naked City</em> 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 <em>Naked City</em> is a sobering update of Jacobs' legendary 1961 book <em>The Death and Life of Great American Cities</em>. 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.</p>