Discussion Notes - Naked City, Sharon Zukin PDF

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Notes based upon personal reading and seminar-style discussions of the text "Naked City" by Sharon Zukin in Professor Steven Gregory's Neoliberal Urbanism course. ...

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DISCUSSION POINTS FROM NAKED CITY: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF AUTHENTIC URBAN PLACES

Most modern text we’ve read thus far. Have been in the city for a couple weeks so most of what I have heard of Brooklyn… has been from the 70s and previous. Sharon Zukin and Jane Jacobs (17)  

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In essence, Zukin is going back through Jacobs argument and filling in what she missed. “Jacobs failed to look at how people use capital and culture to view, and to shape, the urban spaces they inhabit. She did not see that the authenticity she admired is itself a social product” (17). Jacobs focuses too closely on the built environment as a creation of the government

Cyclical search for authenticity       

“Brooklyn seemed more ‘authentic’ [to writers] because it resonated with most [of their] own origins” (40). Neighborhoods are continually changed in search of authenticity, moving ceaselessly toward homogeneity. Idea of grit Authenticity throughout generations. Moves from immigrants and new beginnings to become modern society which came in search of it. Authenticity – make claims of ownership – belonging Authenticity is not grounded or explicit but created by people looking in. Who is it who makes the claims to authenticity. Authenticity used as a label to package something for sale to a consumer

Privatized Public Space  

Street policing by shopkeepers/businessmen mentioned in Jacobs’ work applied in an organized fashion “Authenticity” in public spaces = democratic, open to everyone. Privatized public spaces “reinforce social inequality” (deny the homeless, loitering teenagers…) and “weaken the diversity of experiences and contacts” (128).

Does any neighborhood in the city today have the right to be both poor and black?” (70).   

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Poor people losing their right to the city as authenticity moves away from the immigrant past to a creative, hip future. Capitalism demands use of cities to their full economic weight. Only neighborhoods that are currently unwanted by businesses/wealthier residents – neighborhoods in Brooklyn that have not been benefitted by their authenticity because they are authentically dangerous. Authenticity of Harlem as black cultural space being threatened

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How do you adjudicate the different claims? Who has the right to the city?

Internet/Blogs/Media 

Real estate blogs: “voyage through unfamiliar neighborhoods […] a way to investigate the balance between the agony and the ecstasy of neighborhood change” (89).

Symbolic Economy 

Loosely speaking, the symbolic economy is defined by three points: it is urban; it is based on the production of symbols as basic commodities; and third, it is based on the production, in a very self-conscious way, of spaces as both sites and symbols of the city and of culture.

Criticisms of Zukin 

Her message wasn’t clearly defined and referenced throughout the work.

(Casey) Should we try to protect authentic areas?  

Rent stabilization – but always includes developer friendly exemptions Economic justice stronger argument than claims of authenticity....