Full Description
Authenticity resonates throughout the urbanizing world. As cities' commercial corridors and downtowns start to look increasingly the same, and gentrification displaces many original neighborhood residents, we are left with a sense that our cities are becoming "hollowed out," bereft of the multi-faceted connections that once rooted us to our communities. And yet, in a world where change is unrelenting, people long for authentic places. This book examines the reasons for and responses to this longing, considering the role of community development in addressing community and neighbourhood authenticity.
A key concept underscoring planning's inherent challenges is the notion of authentic community, ranging from more holistic, and yet highly market-sensitive conceptions of authentic community to appreciating how authenticity helps form and reinforce individual identity. Typically, developers emphasize spaces' monetary exchange value, while residents emphasize neighbourhoods' use value—including how those spaces enrich local community tradition and life. Where exchange value predominates, authenticity is increasingly implicated in gentrification, taking us further from what initially made communities authentic. The hunger for authenticity grows, in spite and because of its ambiguities. This edited collection seeks to explore such dynamics, asking alternately, "How does the definition of 'authenticity' shift in different social, political, and economic contexts?" And, "Can planning promote authenticity? If so, how and under what conditions?" It includes healthy scepticism regarding the concept, along with proposals for promoting its democratic, inclusive expression in neighbourhoods and communities.
Contents
Introduction: Planning for AuthentiCITIES Part I: Mooring Chapter 1: Chinatown, not Coffeetown: Authenticity and placemaking in Vancouver's Chinatown Chapter 2: Neighbourhood authenticity and sense of place Chapter 3: Urban authenticity as a panacea for urban disorder? Business improvement areas, cultural power, and the worlds of justification Chapter 4: A framework of neighbourhood authenticity for urban planning: Three aspects and three types of change Chapter 5: Negotiating diversity: The transitioning Greektown of Baltimore City, Maryland Chapter 6: Planning and authenticity: A materialist and phronetic perspective Part II: Performing Chapter 7: Authenticity makes the city: How "the authentic" affects the production of space Chapter 8: Authenticity's many performances in the urban studies literature Chapter 9: Tactical urbanism as the staging of social authenticity Chapter 10: Sincerity, performative authenticity, and tourism in New Orleans Chapter 11: Gardening in America Chapter 12: Utilizing comical mascots (yuru-kyara) to create city authenticity? Chapter 13: Authentic Downtown Project: Intentional community-making in the digital age Part III: Healing Chapter 14: Relocated authenticity: Placemaking in displacement in southern Taiwan Chapter 15: Coding the "authenti-city": North Harbour and Århusgade Quarter, Copenhagen Chapter 16: Diálogos for Latino Communities Chapter 17: Planning for reconciliation: Indigenous authenticity in community engagement and urban planning in Canadian cities Chapter 18: Urban-social imaginaries of authenticity—and the John Lennon Wall
