Sharon Zukin

On her book Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

Cover Interview of December 16, 2009

Editor’s note

Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline

“Can we consume the city without destroying it?”

We highlighted two quotes.

On the first page:

“Is the idea of authenticity only a means of preserving a city’s elite cultures? Or can it be used to ensure everyone a right to stay in the place where they live and work?”

On the second:

“I have been both exasperated and enchanted by the New York City’s gilt and dross, brutal honesty and flagrant self-promotion and ability to inspire dreams.”

art / sociology / architecture / new york city / urbanism / social mobility / consumption / food / gans herbert / brooklyn /

[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?

Iftikhar Dadi,
Interview of March 26, 2012

The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.

Richard Ned Lebow,
Interview of October 4, 2010