Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places Book

Sharon Zukin is certainly a talented observer, and this is a good addendum to the writings of Jane Jacobs for anyone who's studied how cities become what they are. Especially in the way Jacobs' vision of cities has become perverted since the '60s by dipshit developers-- who really are the Robert Moseses (Mosi?) of our time.

So she studies a set of New York neighborhoods and how "authenticity" is constructed there. The major flaw in her analysis is the way she interprets authenticity as being constructed in a certain way. While her intentions are excellent and she tries pretty hard, her viewpoint is still largely mired in privileged-class assumptions about what authenticity is. So I suppose keep that in mind.