For more than two centuries, theorists have attempted to interpret the city. Many argue that gentrification of the city has destroyed the neighbourhood’s soul. Zukin claims the soul is a city’s authenticity, its living entity, the very heart of it and the very feature that makes a city unique. Similarly, Debord argues that in modern society, the authentic social life has been replaced with its representation in the urban environment, resulting in increasingly mediated and passive human interactions. Seen as a direct result of modernist urban planning, Debord names them inauthentic places or mere representations of social life, where the watching of spectacles has replaced direct interactions between people. Through his critical Marxist lens, Debord questions the attempts made by the shapers of modern urban places to create places that offer genuine, authentic spaces and social life. Brisbane city, with its colonial heritage, has seen many changes since its foundation in 1824. In 200 years, Brisbane has evolved from a convict colony into the third largest Australian city with a population of 2.4 million people across its metropolitan area. Like other Australian cities, Brisbane has gone through recent and dramatic gentrification as part of an urban renewal boom. Brisbane is not a planned city. Instead, it developed over time, emerging from patterns of governance and migration as a result of political, social and economic patterns. Since the 1990s, gentrification and urban renewal have transformed the inner-city neighbourhoods of Brisbane into higher-density neighbourhoods. Traditionally, this area was inhabited by working-class people of low-income. While the transformation has supported economic growth, revitalisation and beautification, it has equally been subjected to the loss or reduction of urban culture, good social life, neighbourhood distinctiveness and local authenticity as coined by Debord and Zukin. This paper explores this, somewhat typical, urban gentrification through the lens of authenticity and finds, surprisingly, that authenticity emerges despite radical alteration to existing environments. The study recovers some experts’ perspectives through qualitative interviews with four urban designers and architects from Brisbane. An analysis of these interviews yields the experts’ explanations on urban authenticity in gentrified Brisbane. Further work incorporating the views of residents is being undertaken but has not been completed at the time of submission.