Summary Of The Death And Life Of Great American Cities By Jane Jacobs

Urban planning is an important aspect of city life, especially in light of today’s dynamic economy and environment. With increasing levels of crime, pollution, and environmental degradation, many cities are looking for new solutions to solve these. Large influences on the ideas that are shaping urban planning today come from urban theorist, Jane Jacobs. Jacobs challenged the way urban planners, architects, urban designer and sociologist thought about cities. In order to solve “the kind of problem which cities pose”, Jacobs promotes the idea of the use of sidewalks includes three majors. It is about city sidewalk safety and sidewalk contacts. Jacobs wrote that “there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street.” Through analyzing and observing such things as city streets and sidewalks, neighborhood parks within a city and what Jacobs refers to as “the four generators of diversity”, Jacobs has developed theories that can guide city planners, architects, urban designer and most

Well known in cities at the time were the City Beautiful movement and the city practical, however, social issues were merely pushed to the side. Wirka (1996) explains that “both are undoubtedly important movements in the history of planning” (p. 57), however, she goes on

Urban decay is an issue in the United States and will cause the act of gentrification. Urban decay is current in most, if not all, inner cities of the United States. Middle and upper class avoid traveling around downtown cities in their state because they do not feel safe. Government and private markets are implementing gentrification to decaying urban areas. The positive effect of gentrification is that there will be a renovation of buildings and local businesses. This is a controversy because these renovations will be create a higher property and push out local businesses to implement new businesses to appeal gentrified citizens; ultimately, targeting the lower class by displacing them. “The Search for Marvin Gardens” by John McPhee and “Gentrification

Through Jane Jacobs’ book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she details precise features that make a city successful. Among these, safe sidewalks, lively parks, and diversity of uses and users are the most important, and will be the focus of study. This paper will compare and contrast the changes taking place in the Budlong Woods community with those that are successful or unsuccessful in other city neighborhoods. Through these comparisons it will be determined whether the money invested in Budlong Woods will drive the community into prosperity, or like many other city rehabilitation projects, simply be a waste of money that strips the area of its diversity and unique characteristics.

Gentrification, a very controversial topic that has just recently been brought to the surface in the past few years, is “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste” (“Gentrification”). The two central arguments behind gentrification reflect its deeply political controversy. One side of the political spectrum argues that gentrification decreases the rate of crime and increases a neighborhood’s value, while the other side argues that gentrification is a form of institutionalized racism that replaces low-income families and dramatically increases rates of homelessness.

In this unit, we learned about gentrification and its effects on contemporary urban areas. Gentrification is “the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle income families or individuals, raising property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses,” (dictionary.com, n.d.). People who argues for gentrification reasoned that it will help the poor neighborhoods grow financially, allows for people of different racial, ethnic, and class background to come together to intermingle. However, the dark reality of gentrification is that it destroys the neighborhood, creates further division between people, and especially, they push to marginalize the working- and

From an analytical aspect, Jane Jacobs and The Death and Life of American Cities mark a defining perspective in planning history and theory. A vast amount of visionaries prior to Jacobs constructed their ideal manifestations of what cities should aim to resemble and provide, while the profession of urban planning itself continued to progress into the new age of development. Set in a time of urban renewal, Jacobs’ book dares to contest previous proposals and concepts through her personal beliefs, though she was never actually an educated planner, architect, or landscaping major. Her critique is based on experiences and accounts she gathered

The desire for a Utopian city is not a surprising aspiration. While in an ideal world cities could be plotted and planned out perfectly, the readings from this week explore why this is not productive to attempt in society, and also discuss the problems with city planning and government policies. While the readings do not necessarily complement each other entirely, they all appear to be speaking for the same message. The rigorous structure and planning, whether by city planners or government organizations, is toxic to urban life, as it has aided racial segregation, disrupted the natural flow and security of city dwellers, and created a “divided metropolis” (Sugrue).

Jacobs’ on the other hand took on city planning. She wrote a book in 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities where she talked about the problems at the urban core of American Cities. Jacob is very popular for her opposition against modernist city planning. Her plans are great, but the truth is these are old arguments. That is what she got wrong, she did not set her sights

The plan that our council has set up should not be allowed to pass because of the negative implications it brings along with it. There is promise of new buildings, cleaner streets, nicer homes, and a more beautiful city as a result of all this. This however is ignoring the plethora of problems it brings to the current poorer residence. Gentrification isn’t anything new in today’s world and has changed a cities culture, stopped businesses, increased taxes, and has caused many people to be homeless. It destroys the beauty made by a community and its timing could not be any worse as it approaches the Holiday season. The plan is only beneficial if you’re middle and upper class, while being terrible to working and lower class. Of course there

The book’s author, Jane Jacobs, was an American-Canadian journalist, writer and activist, whose husband was an architect. She had no degree in urban planning, but during the time of reporting the

The book is an analysis of the early urban planning policy which is implemented in almost many of the neighborhoods in United States. Jane Jacobs describes the important factors that is really affecting cities and proposes considerations and techniques to improve the city's actual performance by looking into things that influences on how the cities work rather than how it works based on urban planners and designers.

This language has given the world some of it’s greatest urban spaces around the world, be they Paris or Copenhagen, Marrakesh or Mumbai. The new world certainly hosts a few as well, however, America’s cities were still relatively new when the automobile took hold of the American imagination and market unlike any other product and the growth of cities evolved to incorporate as well as to cater to this new invention. Rings of suburban development began to surround urban centers of America’s cities, collector roads feeding from one development to another, past the first strip malls further and further away from the walkable core that once defined communities large and small. Urban centers fell into neglect as businesses and those with the means moved to the shiny suburbs where two car garages, shiny new kitchen appliances and a yard to mow awaited. In a reversal of this trend, urban centers have once again become desirable as generations of young Americans seek an alternative to the suburban lives they were raised in, preferring instead the vibrancy and culture of a city. The problem, there simply isn't enough of this sort of real estate to go around and many have been priced out of the market. So for many, the satellite suburbs and seas of asphalt in between remain the only

“The best that can be said of the conception is that it did afford a chance to experiment with some physical and social planning theories which did not pan out. “ This quote reflects Jane Jacob’s philosophical ideas in an attempt to criticize the social housing’s design approach and its associated urban planning in modern era. “The physical and social theories” outlines the urban planning idea of social housing (Utopian idea) and according to Jane’s statement, such experiment of these theories were deem to be unsuccessful. It is inevitably certain to some extent that a provocative statement towards modern era social housing approaches would hold true due to the minimal success the plans brought to the city, such as solving the working class commendations temporarily. Nevertheless, it is a failure to deliver long-standing social improvements corresponded with the increasing suspicion of modernism, one cannot simply attribute ill fate to its “innovative physical features” (As Jane said, the Utopian and Utopia), but should rather considered a range of other elements in the larger aspect of society: factors such as difficulty of racial integration, problems of financing and management, lack of bridging between architecture and planning, as well as the increasing preference of suburban lifestyle from the rising mid class. These problems reflected evidently in some stereotypes of social housing communities built in the modern era such as Pruitt-Igoe, sunny side Gardens, Paul

The essay asks us to take an in depth comparison of two extracts: Jane Jacobs ‘The Kind of Problem a City’ and Schön ‘From Technical Rationality to Reflection in Action’. The essay asks to compare and contrast how each author perceive the natures of the problems that planners face. The focus is placed, by Jacobs, heavily on the failings of planners due to problems of a city being seen as problems of disorganised complexity, whereas cities should be seen as problems as of organised complexity. Jacobs argues that cities are themselves problem made up of multiple smaller variables of problems. In his text, Schoen places a large emphasis on explaining how the growth of science and the prestige of science has helped to shape the modern world. Schön states that planning is a minor principle similar to social care, compared to a major principle such as the medical profession. There is also a large emphasis put on the “swampy lowlands” which are used to describe those who choose to get involved with crucial yet messy situations, using their experience and methods such as trial and error to solve the problem. Compared by Schön to those who choose the “high ground” using technical rigor and standing by an image of solid professional competence. On the surface they appear to be contrasting in what they propose, however upon further analysis a comparison can be drawn from many common features.