We've touched upon Weegee as the origin of The Naked City (at least within artistic projects), yet the term goes way extends into some interesting realms other than the film.
Guy Debord used the term in one of his famed psychogeographical topology experiments. What you see above is actually a map of Paris, which premiered in the Situationist's Premiere Exposition de Psychgeographie (sorry French - I don't do accents) in 1957. In order to produce this - and other subjective maps - Debord practiced "the integration of past or present artistic production into a superior environment construction." This means existing maps, pieces of art and personal relationships to one's environment create unique, remixed visions of the city. He felt these maps were improvements over normal civic maps, which I agree with in an intellectual (aka they are cool) sense, but I wouldn't take this over a crisp subway map.
The idea of integrating the past and present (with a dash of futurist ideas) is no longer strange in the world of music, yet it certainly came as second nature to John Zorn's Naked City - a mishmash genre clusterfuck project that he started in NYC in the 80s. Most people nowadays know Zorn from The Stone or some strange experimental hobnob, but Naked City is still his most wild undertaking in some ways. Mixing elements of free jazz, prog rock, death metal, vocal experimentation, hardcore, dub (and the list goes on and on and on and on), Zorn creates his own interpretation of New York. Everything is stripped down to pure elements and it's all the more abrasive and strange for it. It's also just as goofy as the city itself.
