The Sociology Book

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artists moved to the area, it
developed a cultural vibrancy; the
presence of the artists meant that
secondary businesses—such as
coffee shops, restaurants, and
art galleries—opened to support
their activities. The area became
increasingly funky and edgy, and
proved attractive to the new class
of young urban professionals who
wanted to live somewhere new,
exciting, and different from the
staid, post-war homes in which
they had grown up.
The third and decisive step
in gentrification was reached when
young professionals began to move
into the area—in this case, to
become part of the urban bohemian
environment and lifestyle. There
were now people with money
interested in living in what had
previously been an undesirable
area. The fact that this new and
more affluent group suddenly
wanted to live in the area attracted
the attention of profit-driven
developers, who began to buy up
comparatively cheap property—
often, criticizes Zukin, with
subsidies from the city authorities—
and convert it into apartments that
resembled the lofts in which the
artists lived. As a result, rents began
to steadily increase. Artists and
poor people found it hard to afford to
live there anymore, and they begin
to move out.
The final step in gentrification
was reached when the area was
colonized by the more affluent
middle and upper classes.
The galleries and coffee shops
remained, but the mix of people,
the vibrancy, and the cultural
activity that had made the
area popular was lost. In effect,
the artists became unwitting
accomplices of gentrification,
and then its victims: their success
in breathing new life into Lower

Manhattan resulted ultimately

in their exclusion from what they

had helped to regenerate.

The search for urban soul

Zukin’s work has been influential

in clarifying what drives change

in modern cities: the cultural

and consumerist needs of some

social groups wishing to pursue

a certain lifestyle, rather than the

development of new forms of

industry. However, for Zukin this

way of life is just another form of

consumerism that is ultimately

empty, offering a “Disneyfied”

experience in which diversity

and authenticity are marginalized

MODERN LIVING

by the prevalent cultural forms and

lifestyles promoted by multinational

media companies. The result is that

poor and marginalized groups are

effectively excluded from urban life.

A naked city

Zukin’s more recent work, such

as Naked City, has focused on how

gentrification and consumerism

have created bland, homogenous,

middle-class areas and robbed

cities of the authenticity that

most people long for. She

also notices that the pace of

gentrification has sped up. What

used to take decades to unfold

now only seems to require a

few years: an area is deemed

to be “cool” and very rapidly the

developers move in and begin a

process that fundamentally alters

its character, invariably destroying

what was special. In fact, the

distinctiveness of a neighborhood

has actually become a tool of

capitalist developers—one that

results in the exclusion of the

characters who first gave an

area its real “soul.” The challenge

for planners is to find ways of

preserving people as well as

buildings and streetscapes. ■

Sharon Zukin

Sharon Zukin is currently

a professor of sociology at

Brooklyn College in New York,

and at the CUNY Graduate

Center. She has received

several awards, including the

Wright Mills Award and the

Robert and Helen Lynd Award

for career achievement in urban

sociology from the American

Sociological Association.

She is the author of books

on cities, culture, and consumer

culture, and a researcher on

urban, cultural, and economic

change. Her work has mainly

focused on how cities are

affected by processes such as

gentrification, and investigating

the dominant driving processes

in urban living. She is also an

active critic of the many changes

that are occurring within New

York and other cities.

Key works

1982 Loft Living: Culture and

Capital in Urban Change

1995 The Cultures of Cities

2010 Naked City: The Death and

Life of Authentic Urban Places

It’s just inexorable, this

authenticity in the visual

language of sameness.

Sharon Zukin