Learning Responsibility On City Sidewalks By Jane Jacobs

This enables them to become equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding to live safe, healthy, positive lives as they grow up.

Nature in its tranquility provides a calming sensation away from the buzzing city life. The ability

Rebecca Solnit’s Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche stresses her concerns about the suburban wave that has plagued the world in recent times. According to her, the mind, the body, and the world have a special bond that is being vanquished by the lack of recreational walking. In the eighteenth century, there was a “golden era” for walking because recent accommodations made it possible for the general public to enjoy the untamed nature all around them. This era was short-lived, as suburbs rose to popularity so did their unorthodox labyrinths which made walking simple distances nearly impossible to the public. The reason why walking in nature is important, Solnit shares, is because it allows the mind to flow freely without the corruption of everyday obstacles that the suburbs brought. She explains that in order for the mind to avoid being molded into a sterile dull thing, it must imagine in nature. If we do not continue to walk, the history we have with walking will diminish as will the special bond our ancestors cherished so dearly. Without it, Solnit fears that we will no longer be able to produce such things, however, in recent times walking is not a luxury many can do. I disagree because society has changed to the point where walking is not only a rarity but also a threat to many.

In the essay “Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche,” Solnit argues that human beings are losing the ordinary connections between the body and the world is caused by the advanced innovations that are being implemented. Walking has been part of human culture since the time of the Homosapien. According to Solnit, if walking continues to be devalued by our society, a lot of practical benefits and lifestyle will be gone. Back in the days, many people treated walking as a pleasure when one person takes another person out for a walk. It represents one of the cultural activities. Furthermore, walking not only can be a delightful activity, it also serves as a transportation tool. The efficiency of getting around the neighborhood

The theme of this reflective account is engaging children in participation, and enabling children to have a voice. The Every child matters documentation (Department for Education 2010) focuses on the important role of the adult in enabling children to make decisions and encouraging them to participate and make a positive contribution. As a result through this account, how children in my setting are encouraged to participate in the outdoor play space will be explored. A small piece of research was carried out which will be reflected on, as will theory relating to children making a positive contribution in the early years.

The beautiful blossoms that bloom in Californian spring, the summer daisies alongside the cooling lake, long after the summer the trees have lost their leaves entering autumn to fresh white snow out in the mountains. Nature is able to show us its true beauty without any falseness and modifications. After all, is it not ironic how people go to museums to look at paintings of colorful flowers, green hills, and clear water streams; those are beauties that can easily be observed in real life outside of the urban environment which are surrounded by them, or how people buy recordings of the calming sounds of nature, similar to what you would listen to at night in the woods or smell nature aromas of the candles. What we are doing is trying to mislead our minds and pretend to think that we are in the woods but are instead cornered inside our small, well-furnished, and full -with-technology apartment.

Some might say, that this issue is the problem why many parents end up leaving their children alone at a nearby place, such as the park. As a result, in summer, it’s the season where parents start to research ways to keep their child entertain while they leave to work. However, many of people get paid minimum wage, so many of the clubs they sponsor for kids to join are either postponed or get rid of it. Luscombe argues that, “we cannot expect somebody to fund enriching child centric summer activities on minimum wage.” Many of the parents are are “caught in a double bind” an the lower their earnings are, the more inflexible in their job/ schedules are. Since many of the parents are very busy, sometimes they don’t have time to find a babysitter and end up getting really stressed because parents don’t don’t have know where to take

Cities are generators of economic life and source of changes in the world. Thereby, Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities puts into relief the role of cities on the social and economic levels, while denouncing the disastrous consequences of urban renewal programs. To that extent, in chapters 2 and 3, she discusses "The Uses of Sidewalks”, arguing that over all people need safety and trust in their city. Therefore, first she claims the necessity of keeping streets and sidewalks safe because they are the “vital organs” of cities (29). Secondly, she argues that the functioning of cities should be organized in order to foster human interaction in which “casual public

The people nowadays also abuse on what nature can provide to them. People are influenced by the western Culture, Man is more powerful and can have dominion over nature and that nature as they see become merely an instrument to satisfy human needs and wants. This kind of thinking or we can say attitude towards nature is called the “Anthropocentric Attitude”. Man reduce the value of nature as it is and it’s important because nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man and that the value of non-human things in nature is merely instrumental. An opposite thinking would be the Eastern Culture, for they value nature very well and they treat nature being one with them. This thinking or attitude is known as “Ecocentric

In life we are all confronted with the idea of nature along with society. Although both have their pros and cons they work together to give us freedom and order among individuals.

“What brings children to the park” is a study conducted by Loukaitou-Sideris and Sideris “aimed to understand how park visitation patterns differ between boys and girls, among children of different races and ethnicities, and between inner-city and suburban children. The study surveyed children and their parents in 12 middle schools and analyzed the results. The study also included an observation of children at 50 inner-city and 50 suburban parks and used multiple regression models containing park and neighborhood level variables to relate them to the numbers of children using parks” (Loukaitou-Sideris and Sideris, 2009).

Learning how to be a positive contributor to society is an important expectation of society. When students are in class, he or she are expected to soak up as much of the information as they can and eventually apply it, forwarding the progress of a nation. Society expects school to teach knowledge. Not waste time attempting to shape opinion, or recruit students for political and social causes.

Despite the negative factors of living in urban environment, there are a great number of positive sides that affect the life quality of people who live in urban cities. Perhaps, the

Along the rising cities, living situations also developed and then people’s selections and options as well as liberty regarding how they wanted to carry their lives even enhanced. But simultaneously, the constancy got decreased plus the traditions plus customary support schemes like family also lost their significance and importance. People today have several options plus freedom yet little guidance upon which available choice is right one or how should they actually behave. Anxieties as well as shame also arise if individuals feel that they have in fact not made right choices otherwise if they think that they are in reality not doing as good as they actually could. With rise in cities individualism became more and more dominant plus development of self-identity also became the main point and aim of every person. Everything became subject towards change, and happened more rapidly than ever before within the human history (Tayyab and Khan, 2010, p.50-55).

Essential values are linked to the rise of the city – democracy, freedom, citizenship, equality. It was the city which lead to the invention of new political, economic, or technical ways which afterwards spread throughout the nations and the world. Cities are like melting pots, mixing and clashing, producing new concepts and ideas. Through architecture and city planning, basic ideals, order, and norms are being constructed thus implying it evolves out of disorder. To ensure that identity, social and political order would be preserved they often had to be bordered and, but to maintain their vigor they had to remain open to the world. Later on capitalism came hand in hand with state building and it destroyed the autonomy the city had enjoyed until that time, and moved it to the national level. The concept of urban citizenship was lost aswell and national