Analysis: Take a Position in Sharon Zukin's The Naked City - Essay Example

?Harlem was once a place where there was authenti of racial identify. There was a "black cultural sublime", as Sharon Zukin quotes in chapter twoof The Naked City, explaining "Why Harlem is not a Ghetto". There was a period in Harlem's history when it was a waterspout of pure black culture, during the 1920s and 1930s, the period of the Harlem Renaissance. But people would also tell you that this sprout had continued into the 1940s with the appearance of such jazz artists as Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. Zukin has noted that this cultural waterspout has been uprooted. Today, Harlem has become gentrified and has fallen under the sweep of a new black middle-class entrepreneurship and the flow of corporate money promoting high end commercial growth. But rents are going up and so is the cost of living. Living styles are changing. Ma-and-pa stores, and people who had their roots in Harlem, are being forced to move out. Zukin's thesis is that the soul of Harlem has been lost with the gentrification. I support her thesis and do, like she, think that urban development must in better ways merge the new with the old. Harlem use to be the place where, then segregated, where all kinds of black people lived. There were professionals and poor people. There were drug addicts and doctors. There were also black intellectuals and black poets. All these people, it seemed, gave the community a certain rhythm that appeared to rebound through America. Perhaps in this way Harlem was seen as a pressure cooker and it was cooking black art that soon became American art. But all this kind of art activity is gone today. During Harlem’s old days of cultural pride, oddly during the segregation period, Zukin notes that the interest groups were primarily two. There was the conservative black church-going middle-class on one side, holding up the morals of their social class. On the other side were the others, the poor people, the low-life who probably contributed to the obvious illegal drug climate that seem to have always been in Harlem. During those periods there was a lot of crime in the area. Some of it was forced by the atmosphere of segregation. Black people couldn’t move anywhere else, and the middle-class had to stay with the low-life class. But this was a period when Harlem was fully self-functioning. It was writer's Claude McKay's "Negro metropolis" and several vibrating centers of life. Zukin notes Abdul-Jabbar's portrayal of Harlem as a city within a city with several vibrating centers of life. From the churches to the dance and nightclubs, these centers extended to the upscale Strivers' Row where the black elites lived, also on Sugar Hill. And there were the places, the public library and the YMCA, where the artists and writers gathered, among the small strips of retail centers. It is strange how segregation forced black people into one place but then how this place became such an active resource of spirit for America. However, poverty seemed to eventually overtake this creativity. The segregation had also forced such isolation that there was no way for the community to actually receive real help or aid. The description of Harlem as a "black ghetto" became a reality to the extreme. Harlem became a place of desolation, Zukin notes. During the 1970s, the common view was that people feared Harlem and its crime and drug culture amidst the environment of poverty. Violence and poverty seemed to over-ride the community then. It was as if its life blood was being ignored. Somehow, changes had to come. It took awhile, but change did finally come. Harlem’s historical segregation, in important ways, had ended. Perhaps change comes through from the interests of a community that have been evolved to receive it. Or it comes from outside. Over the course of time, culture changes and life styles change. For awhile, the change in Harlem had always seemed to come from some sort of white patronage. It was a change that was not its own. Zukin notes this in the controversy surrounding the 1968 "Harlem on My Mind" exhibition sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of art. The exhibit represented the kind of participation and change that a community could not have and accept. The kinds of change improved over time. Money begins to flow in. From the impoverished 1970s, Reaganomics and the Clinton administration heralded a new age of redevelopment and entrepreneurial investment. Government funding was directed under the gaze of Congress Representative Charles B. Rangel who encouraged developers through the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), sponsored by the federal government. Mayor Giuliani came in and reduced crime. It took more years, but in the early 2000s, $335 million was floated into Harlem for commercial development projects. Basketball-turned-business magnate Magic Johnson bundled business investment funds in partnership with the development arm of Chase Bank, an effort leading to major contemporary and effective commercial development. Along with such private interest investments as funds from the Clinton Foundation, all of this meant monumental, almost un-soul-like change. Is Zukin making an argument for not changing Harlem? No, I don’t think so. She is saying something else. She sees new interests that are bringing change. They have less to do with art and people than with money and commerce. Are these new interests the community’s best interests? This is Zukin’s essential question. Several groups claim the interests and the heart of Harlem today. The new groups include more affluent and educated blacks, many who are international; white middle class residents; more government agencies and businesses such asreal estate developers. Bill Clinton has an office there. His foundation has put out loans and venture capital for the new somewhat upscale retail interests. These groups do represent the new interests of Harlem. What about the residents? What about the small stores? What about Sikhulu Shange whose small CD-record shop on 125th Street represented something like the dashiki that Shange wore, a garment of cultural pride. But people didn’t need to go to Shange’s shop anymore. Today, music is easily downloaded. Zukin’s argument can be seen as there are a lot of new interests in Harlem today. They have money and plans for commerce. But they do not represent the heart of what Harlem was. Zukin is not arguing that change should be stopped. Change has to be accepted in many ways. But urban planners should think of better ways of combining the old with the new. There are many challenges in urban planning. But today the concentration seems to be mainly on how to build ways for commerce to develop and not on ways for how all strata of people may living together. Zukin does note that black people do seem to have class differences among themselves, reflecting the whole community of America at large. But perhaps this is where urban planners and developers can make a difference. It would be developing a way of looking at the former soul of a community and the new soul of the community. Change is not going to stop, but although it may not be possible to keep the soul of a community within change, it should not be ripped out. The common people, the low-end retail and ma-and-pa stores cannot afford to live in Harlem today. They represented the heart of Harlem. Zukin’s argument can be seen as, that heart, like Shange, for better or worse, was evicted. Zukin, Sharon. Naked city: the death and life of authentic urban place. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010. Read More