基本説明
A highly original account of gentrification in New York City, arguing that 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.
Full 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.
Contents
Preface ; 1. Origins and New Beginnings ; UNCOMMON SPACES ; 2. How Brooklyn Became Cool ; 3. Living Local in the East Village ; 4. Why Harlem is Not a Ghetto ; COMMON SPACES ; 5. Union Square and the Paradox of Public Space ; 6. A Tale of Two Globals: Pupusas and IKEA in Red Hook ; 7. The Billboard and the Garden: A Struggle for Roots ; 8. Destination Culture and the Crisis of Authenticity
