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Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, by Sharon Zukin. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 294pp. $27.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780195382853.
Sharon Zukin aims to reveal the socio-spatial, political dynamics of neighborhoods within New York City in recent times. She frames her critique around the concept of authenticity, real places for people who really need them. Her chapters venture into Brooklyn, Harlem, the East Village, the city's Union Square, Red Hook, and East New York. One reads stories about local people and socio-cultural events in which the author's accounts provide an empirical grounding to validate her theoretical claims for the authenticity of place. Zukin's book is more than an update to Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1992). She uses recent theories and adeptly incorporates them into her neighborhood analyses.
Zukin is remorseful about the loss of authentic places within New York City's neighborhoods. The reader can too quickly interpret her concern as nostalgia, such as buying a latte at Starbucks rather than at a local coffee house. But Zukin's claims for authenticity are grounded on theoretical turf. She rightfully argues that low-income New Yorkers need a permanent ground upon which to live, because the poor pay a price for being displaced into other neighborhoods. Local businesses rely on local customers, typically lost in such moves. Just as important, the social networks created in these local places are...