beware! we installed solar cells on our brooklyn rooftop 2 yrs ago. They are working very well, better than expected, but I still have to take a picture of my meter, in my basement, and email it to ConEd, because they cant read the meter that they installed!!!

Good retort Mike C. from Tribeca. Never expected that line . . . Guess you've never been to any of the housing courts in NYC and seen who most of the landlords and landlords' attorneys are. And I guess you don't much about who most of the powerful and often shady developers in the city are either.

Regarding the topic "electric city" on Leonard Lopate:
Coal power stations provide more than 50% of our electricity, and are probably the biggest air polluters. How does that impact the "greenness" of electric cars?

Erin--If you only knew how many beautiful buildings have been torn down recently in Astoria! You don't have to apologize -- except for not knowing the area's recent history. You could still be in Asotia, but if all these Soviet-style appartments buildings weren't given permits, you might be on a much more interesting street with some history and beauty,.

Telegram Sam - too true - when my father moved away from the Bronx with his family in the 60's, it was changing; when my parents moved to Brooklyn in the late 70's, it was changing; now that I'm still living here in 2010, it's changing. New York City was founded by the Dutch as a money-making scheme, welcoming all who wanted to take part in a growth opportunity.

But: there were many years of humanistic social programs in the 20th Century following years of straight-up no-holds barred capitalism. These programs were funded by the city and state, which gave many, many people the opportunity to rise up from immigrant working-class to middle-class and then upper-middle-class. It seems these days that the opposite is more true, and that if you don't have the income of a lawyer or financial industry employee it might be pretty hard to rise up in class, own a house and a car, raise kids, and have a good standard of living.

Telegram Sam--and jtt- can't deny how boring and how limited the choices in a neighborhood dominated by new buildings these days. If you don't see and feel the difference, then you would be just as happy 80 miles from the city in some chain restaurant at a strip mall. and jtt-- yes lyn is living the current authentic life by commuting from qns. I do too, its not bad. But landlords and developers that destroy gorgeous historical buildings on a massive scale, for today's profits (the Bloomberg Way), doesn't give superior results-- more preservation might be better, can you admit this?

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone for gentrifying Astoria. I had no idea.

Gotta comment again. So much wrong info, I can't even start... Lenny, have a Red Bull and call her on some of this BS! Limit housing prices? You want to watch a city die, do that. The city has been changing constantly for 400 years - this is the ONLY consistent aspect of New York's history. Nostalgia is a mental illness.

Plus, she doesn't sound like she's even from New York. Just sayin.

Telegram Sam, right on. I can't believe I'm hearing a sociologist use the word "authentic" without interrogating that term, as if authenticity isn't itself a construct.

No, Ramz from Brooklyn, your comment isn't "un-p.c." It is anti-Semitic.

Everthing Leah from Manhattan (#16)said. NYC and everywhere else in the world has changed and will continue to change - thank goodness.

Rent Control and Rent Stabilization is not a dirty word. What's dirty is the way it's used by landlords as a way to do the least possible work to maintain their property. What's clean is that it enables many of us to stay in our home neighborhoods, and take part in the life of this city without having to move away due to insane rents.

Here, here Natalie!

Can your guest talk about Sunset Park a little more? Is it an authentic neighborhood? What do you see for the future?

this just in douglaston is the new astoria!

One conspicuous absence here - Bloomberg.

Funny how the fact that many neighborhoods in jersey (that look just as appealing), never get as much cache as the ones in nyc...

I think the popularity of brooklyn is due to that brooklyn was once it's own city...

Doesn't it appear there is too much emphasis on tourism especially by elected officials in NYC? At some I feel tourism is a negative and creates higher prices for dining and events for local people. Notice how the NYC and Co tourism company has these price fix promotions only at times when there is an off season tourism.

This is smug, elitist nonsense. A lot of this is "authenticity" from a very specific viewpoint: the liberal white educated/creative class.

Why are the Polish in Greenpoint are "authentic" and the yuppies and hipsters aren't. Most Polish immigrants who live there now moved in during the late 80s-early 90s, predating the Manhattanite invasion by 15 years tops.

Anyway, I question the timeliness of the research here. Red Hook is right now booming, at least the enclave close to Fairway. Many restaurants, boutiques, galleries, and rents are higher than, say, Yorkville in Manhattan.

lynn,

you ARE living the true new york experience.

the psuedo hipsters in what used to be the lower east side definatly ARE NOT.

Can the guest comment on the westward migration of people from NYC into New Jersey - Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark?

Has her research shined any light on theseneighborhoods, many of which are already genetrified, some of which aren't.

How can these places maintain their authenticity?

I'm paraphrasing Colson Whitehead, but it seems that nothing characterizes New York and New Yorkers so much as the urge to identify a time in the city's history, crystallize it as "authentic" and then bemoan its loss. What a solipsistic and self-indulgent perspective. This city is hellbent on self-amnesia: it is ALWAYS changing, and I find these complaints about change and gentrification as subtle and invidious attempts to exert some the hegemony of the "authentic" and de-legimitize the experience of other experiences and viewpoints.

Ada Louise Huxtable's "Classic New York; Georgian Gentility to Greek Elegance" (Doubleday, 1964) is another prescient and excellent book on the subject of New York's ever changing neighborhoods.

For instance, concerning The Church of the Transfiguration in Chinatown she wrote: "One fact that persistently escapes preservationists is that a live and functioning building is far more desirable than a dead building in a perfectly 'restored' environment. The 'Chop Suey' sign here is preferable to an artfully 'aged' tavern sign in an imitation 'old' street."

Hey Leonard. I interned for you a number of years ago - good to hear you're still going strong here. A few comments: I currently run theater workshops for middle school students in Bushwick, and have really noticed changes in that neighborhood. Growing up in Park Slope in the 80's, the word "Bushwick" conjured up pretty unsavory images. Now I go there weekly and am pleasantly surprised by the neighborhood and its youth. However, I also notice various "artist" businesesses that have opened, mostly along the L train line - coffeehouses, hip-looking restaurants, etc. It's still a very industrial area, with factories for wide stretches, at the same time.

The population is a mixture of South American, Dominican, African-American, and now Artist (mostly White, college-educated, cultured, working in Manhattan). The immigrant population, I'm told, has helped to revive business in the area. At the same time, the artist population has moved up from Williamsburg for cheaper rents and more warehouse space, opening their own version of "Bushwick". Which population is "authentic"? What strikes me is that the two populations seem pretty divorced from each other - do the "artists" care about the working class community and its issues (gangs, education, sanitation, safety, streets, youth, etc.), and do "working people" in the neighborhood have a view of the "artists"? I'm just making observations as someone from outside the area, who works in schools there. Again, great guest, and keep up the good work.

Is it possible that we can stop referring to low income residents of New York as "poor people" as though it were some sort of permanent condition or even ethical characterization? I know that's not implied, but one of the reasons cities need to support a diverse array of incomes is to give up-and-coming young professionals and artists a chance to live in them. I'm a grad student, so I'm certainly low income, but I don't consider myself "poor" since there are many kinds of capital. And members of the working class, so to speak, ought not be entirely defined by their income or the fact they "work" for a living. Well, I'm not always one for euphemisms, but a better vocabulary often makes for a more enlightened attitude and robust conversation. We're not looking for charity, just opportunities.

This is why I do love living on (the much maligned) SI. From the door of my house, I have three bakeries, a wine shop, two salumerias (Italian butchers, basically), a fish store, 2 taverns and a vegetable store within a three minute walk.

Why does Lenny suggest "blighted" -- they were not blighted. As a former artist he should see the beauty in those simple, aged buildings. Who would paint a glass and steel monstrosity? People and beauty are being lost.

If your guest had grown up in the Brownsville/East New York section of Brooklyn in the '50s and early '60s, she might have had a more jaundiced view of the appeal of "grittiness" and "authenticity." I'll take the less "gritty and authentic" over those "halcyon" times any day. The mystique of grittiness is best appreciated from afar.

I know this is impolitic and un-p.c. to ask(but then again this is NYC, and as a currently disfavored minority myself, I've had to endure plenty of un-p.c. commentary over the last decade and more): isn't gentrification and the killing on NYC's soul driven almost entirely by wealthy white people, especially it seems, white Jewish landlords and developers? They seem to have all the power and seem to be making it pretty difficult for working class, immigrant, minority (who just happen to be in the majority of the population) New Yorkers to continue living in this city. Does Sharon Zukin ever address this angle of the story? Or is that simply just too un-p.c. to even broach?

People that make a decent living can't live there. Most immigrants and middle class have to live in the outer boroughs.

I live in Queens (work in Manhattan) and I don't feel like I have a true NYC experience because I can't afford to live in Manhattan.

Gentrification is a mixed bag----it is good and bad.

The gentrification I have been seeing is quite sad. Many niche stores and places are replaced with generic stores that can be found in Anywhere U.S.A. NYC is becoming less unique because of these generic stores...(it is of course unique in many ways (density, transport mode split, etc.)

i live in hells kitchen. there havent been TOO many luxury buildings put up or other signs of gentrification, but the area has increased in terms of the gay population, which i love, because i think it makes the neighborhood safer for some reason... theres been an influx of gay bars and dog pampering stores lol. now if we can only get rid of all the thai restaurants in the neighborhood (nothing against thai food, but theres one on every block!)

Before the film, 'Naked City' was the title of Arthur Fellig AKA Weegee's first published collection of photography. A seminal work of modern art.

"Naked City" was also the title of Weegee's book of photographs!

The Leonard Lopate Show has been such a great addition to my life I hardly know where to begin in saying thank you.