Sharon Zukin: Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places (2009)

As cities have gentrified, educated urbanites have come to prize what they regard as “authentic” urban life: aging buildings, art galleries, small boutiques, upscale food markets, neighborhood old-timers, funky ethnic restaurants, and old, family-owned shops. These signify a place’s authenticity, in contrast to the bland standardization of the suburbs and exurbs.

But as Sharon Zukin shows in Naked City, the rapid and pervasive demand for authenticity–evident in escalating real estate prices, expensive stores, and closely monitored urban streetscapes–has helped drive out the very people who first lent a neighborhood its authentic aura: immigrants, the working class, and artists. Zukin traces this economic and social evolution in six archetypal New York areas–Williamsburg, Harlem, the East Village, Union Square, Red Hook, and the city’s community gardens–and travels to both the city’s first IKEA store and the World Trade Center site. She shows that for followers of Jane Jacobs, this transformation is a perversion of what was supposed to happen. Indeed, Naked City is a sobering update of Jacobs’ legendary 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Like Jacobs, Zukin looks at what gives neighborhoods a sense of place, but argues that over time, the emphasis on neighborhood distinctiveness has become a tool of economic elites to drive up real estate values and effectively force out the neighborhood “characters” that Jacobs so evocatively idealized.

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2009
ISBN 0195382854, 9780195382853
312 pages

review (PD Smith, The Guardian)
interview with the author (Rorotoko)

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Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff Cox, Jacob Lund (eds.): Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces, No. 1 (2011)

Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces is a fake newspaper presenting cutting edge research in an accessible free tabloid format. The newspaper is a 100% genuine copy of the famous Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

The increasing demand for publication of academic peer-reviewed journal articles must be met. Unfortunate examples demonstrate that this may lead to plagiarism. This is not a viable solution. Research must be original and academia is not lacking original content. But perhaps researchers need new visions of how to produce research? Perhaps the readers need new ways of consuming research? Why not imagine academic research as something that can be consumed on a daily basis, in the train or at the breakfast table?

On April 1, at 1 pm, Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces was handed out to the public at the metro station ‘DR Byen/Universitetet’ in Copenhagen as well as at the central railway station in Aarhus and the State Library. Also, issues were tactically placed in selected free newspaper stands and at University lunchrooms worldwide.

Emerging from the Digital Aesthetics Research Center and the Center for Digital Urban Living (Aarhus University), the aim of Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces is to encompass the changing concept of the ’public’. This is the result of an ongoing research in the computer interface.

The starting point for the newspaper is that the computer interface is a cultural paradigm affecting not only our creative production and presentation of the world but also our perception of the world. Its authors recognize that in the past decade, interfaces have been expanding from the graphical user interface of the computer to meet the needs of different new technologies, uses, cultures and contexts: they are more mobile, networked, ubiquitous, and embedded in the environment and architecture, part of regeneration agendas and new aesthetic and cultural practices, etc. Nyhedsavisen: Public Interfaces investigates these new interfaces that affect relations between public and private realms, and generate new forms urban spaces and activities, new forms of exchange and new forms of creative production.

The newspaper is organised into thematic strands (urban, art, capital) and brings together researchers from diverse fields – across aesthetics, cultural theory, architecture, digital design and urban studies – united by the need to understand public interfaces and the paradigmatic changes they pose to these fields.

All articles derive from an initial conference and PhD workshop held in January 2011, at Aarhus University.

Publisher Digital Aesthetics Research Center & Center for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University, Aarhus, March 2011
ISBN 87-91810-18-3
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
24 pages

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Operacija Grad: Priručnik za život u neoliberalnoj stvarnosti (2008) [Croatian]

“Fraza “neoliberalna stvarnost” zvuči ponešto visokoparno i rasplinuto, no čim se ta stvarnost konkretnije sagleda pa je opišite kao refeudalizaciju javnih prostora i dobara, pitanja koja nas ovdje zanimaju gube svoju prividnu nedužnost i postaju oruđe u borbama za stvaranje i očuvanje prostora javnog i kolektivnog djelovanja. S onu stranu kulturnih i političkih kruha i igara, nadamo se da će vas ovaj priručnik potaknuti da postavite u pitanje novi društveni konsenzus, koji vam kao jedine dvije opcije ostavlja trijumfalizam i viktimizaciju.” (iz uvoda)

Editors: Leonardo Kovačević, Tomislav Medak, Petar Milat, Marko Sančanin, Tonči Valentić, Vesna Vuković,
lektura: Tonči Valentić
Executive editor: Tomislav Domes
Publisher: Savez za centar za nezavisnu kulturu i mlade, Multimedijalni institut, Platforma 9,81 – Institut za istraživanja u arhitekturi, BLOK – Lokalna baza za osvježavanje kulture, SU Klubtura / Clubture, Zagreb, December 2008
ISBN 978-953-95317-2-8
272 pages

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