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Memo from Manhattan: The High Line at Dusk

By Sharon Zukin
Shortly before 8 p.m. on a warm September evening the High Line, Manhattan’s newest public park and the only one located above street level, is crowded. Men and women, old and young, tourists from overseas and longtime New Yorkers have climbed the winding metal stairs to the former railroad freight line, now a mile-long, landscaped walkway, just to view the sunset over the Hudson River. There are more people up on the High Line than down on the streets.

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Memo from Lower Manhattan: The Mosque

By Sharon Zukin
Of all the mosques, in all the towns, in all the world, why did this mosque cause a furor in this town? I’m speaking about Park51, an Islamic “community center promoting tolerance and understanding,” as its website says, which is being planned to replace an old five-story building in Lower Manhattan that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory store with a modern, thirteen-story multi-service facility modeled on Jewish community centers and the YMCA. The burning issue…

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Urban Renewal from NYC to Amsterdam: A Podcast

The forces of real estate development and rebranding campaigns are transforming urban landscapes around the world─and Sharon Zukin has seen much of it first hand. In the following podcast she explains what happens to the people when a city gains financial capital or decides to change its image. Zukin teaches sociology at Brooklyn College and the City University Graduate Center, and is author of this year’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.

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