What quantifies a city? The people, the amenities, the culture? What if such factors take a drastic change, is the city still the same? Such are the points which garner the platform of Sharon Zukin’s piece, Naked City, Zukin claims that cities have lost its “edge” and its “difference.” Chronic crisis stemming from economic distress developed further gaps in rich and poor splitting neighborhoods into the glamourous suburbs and the “dangerous” and “unappealing” slum areas. However, as of recent, that which was the culture arising out of the lower-class lifestyle of the cities are also being displaced by the rise of networked chain stores, trendy café’s, and lofts for the urban young- labeled hipsters. Longtime residents of many regions such as Williamsburg and Harlem, are therefore displaced or left to move elsewhere as the city which was once filled with their culture no longer belongs to them. The entrepreneurial hipsters have nevertheless gentrified such areas, claiming to preserve the authenticity of culture, all the while slowly eating away at the essence of the region undergoing modernization.
Zukin argues that the “soul” which was once part of these “dark ghettos” and define the backgrounds of the individuals there, are now undergoing falsification in identity. That is, identities of cultures are now being forged as organic farmers markets and posh cafes which claim to hold the essence of the neighborhood rather take away from just that, and nevertheless raise the value of the area. Therefore, turning the once convenient and affordable area that many residents are used to, to modernized “clean” and expensive cities these individuals are no longer familiar with. Zukin therefore finds that does the preservation of culture mean that the elite can figure out what should remain and what should chance as a manner of strengthening economic infrastructure in a neighborhood, or should everyone have a right to maintain the neighborhood they want to live and work in.
A short documentary on a resident of a portion in Brooklyn, NY called Boerum Hill undergoing gentrification, depicts this- moreover however, I found the comments on this video the appealing focus. The elder interviewed, Mrs. Loretta McDonald, walks around her neighborhood, and points out that which has changed over the years since she was a child growing up in the region. She recalls the memory of candy stores, laundromats, Walgreens and other conveniences that have now been closed down to accommodate for wealthy apartment buildings or construction of other business focused establishments. This documentary was therefore focused on showing how life changes drastically for an individual who has lived their entire life in a certain neighborhood used to the conveniences once made available and now taken away. The comments on this video however are individuals calling this elderly woman “infantile” or “ignorant” of the positive effects that her neighborhood is undergoing now that it is modernizing. They say that she is “whining” or “complaining” when her living conditions are getting better. But is it as those commenters say, is that really the case?
Zukin states, “They encourage mixed uses, but not a mixed population. They never speak of maintaining low rents on commercial properties, so they cannot combat the most common means of uprooting the small shop owners who inspired Jacobs’s ideas about social order and the vitality of the street.”(Zukin 25) Relating to the video linked, the mixed used of the elderly woman’s neighborhood is surely encouraged- even by those vicious commenters- but they fail to notice that businesses don’t just close, people lose jobs, friends, and as such the essence of that neighborhood no longer exists. It is therefore not about “cleaning- up” a neighborhood or leaving it “dangerous” and “dirty”; it’s about giving people a choice about the neighborhood they want to live in, we can always clean up a city without taking away what’s in it- but such are not the tenets of gentrification, which states that we instead must take away to make better.
Question:
- Is gentrification about making a neighborhood better as many would like to argue- by “cleaning it up” or is it rather taking away from the “soul” of a city and unnecessarily taking away what belongs?
- Zukin states, “Racism forced Harlem to grow into a ghetto.” (Zukin 65) Therefore, the “dangerousness” that many argue is taken away was in place because of the social prejudices and urban planning, now, new social prejudices in rich and poor and new hipster planning are causing Harlem to grow into an increasing area of rich townhouses. How is it that prejudice and urban planning continue to displace cultures to make the area “better”?
- Is there a certain “right” to a region of land, or should it just be changed freely to match the modernizing world? Does the region therefore have an authenticity or originality in the first place? Who determines this, or rather, who can?
