The notion of race has played a prominent role throughout the housing and fiscal situation in New York City. Sharon Zukin highlights these factors as major playing fields in the shaping of present day Harlem in her novel, “The Naked City: The Life and Death of Authentic Public Places.” She speaks on the unique gentrification that has played in this area. There are the usual displacement of low income families in replacement for upper middle class residents. Race plays a major role in the shaping of Harlem, however, Zukin makes an interesting note to discuss how there is presence of white families displacing African American families, but also the notion that wealthier African America families are also displacing the original lower income residents of Harlem.
The Impact of the Need for “Authenticity”
The idea of “authenticity” has its stake in many different conversations and debates, including a push towards the truth in a time when facts are scarce, a quest for originality, and an emphasis on going back to the fundamentals behind embellishments created in our society. “Authenticity” becomes an important topic of discussion when focusing on culture, whether that be for cities of America or of a group of people in a lesser known country on the other side of the world. Sharon Zukin, in Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, identifies this idea of authenticity as a type of culture used as a cause for waves of migrations of certain people in particular areas like Williamsburg (49-50), as an appropriate description of the hip hop cultures formed by African American communities of “black Brooklyn” (56), and the semblance of the history of Harlem used to create a specific image of the “dark ghetto” and the “Harlem Renaissance” (68-71). In trying to define the “authenticity” that attracted people to these areas, Zukin focused on the people and history of each of the areas as the basis for why they were considered authentic and why people fought to protect it or to follow it.
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