Vision Proposals for Safe Cities - Essay Example

In an effort to curb the horrid living conditions, city planners brought forward new ideas and visions of what healthy cities should look and be like. The visions of Ebenezer Howard, Daniel Burnham, and Jane Jacobs led to the designs of safer cities and have fostered urban planning for more than a century. Ebenezer Howard idealized a vision termed as ‘garden cities’, where he proposed that cities should get built in the countryside. His vision aimed at the resettlement of city residents to the countryside.

In his plan, Howard visualized that industries should get grouped within specific areas of the countryside. He intended for public parks to become centered within the middle of cities. His ideas focused on dividing cities into different regions each with varying functions. In her vision for modern cities, Jane Jacobs idealized that there must be an interaction between design and urban safety. Jacobs’s vision draws a link between the fear of crime and urban design. She postulated that a successful city district is that which makes the residents feel secure on the streets even when amongst strangers.

Her design implied that streets should get filled with bars, stores, restaurants, street vendors, pedestrians, and full of street lights (Werkele 1). She did not support the idea of having underused open spaces such as parks within cities as she saw that they would contribute to insecurity.Daniel Burnham’s vision for better and safer cities got named as ‘the city beautiful’. He proposed that for cities to become better there was the need for inner slums within cities to get torn down.

He proposed that the peoples’ cultural center should get built within the city center. His design aimed at creating grand impressions where all the important monuments and buildings were to get built along a single boulevard. In his impression of a beautiful city, he proposed that residences become located in the suburbs while the city streets become gently curved.