Critical Analysis of The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs - Book Report/Review Example

Due: The Death and Life of Big Cities Modernization and the timeline for conceptual ideas can be d a couple of centuries back. Activists and intellects of the modern era such as Jane Jacobs have tried to prove to the world as how many of the practices around the urbanization are flawed and require better solutions in order to protect the future of urbanization. Jacob’s concept is towards giving the suggestions as to how modern day cities practically work rather than giving a concept of how they should. The book summarized gives true implementations that are to be carried out to enhance the overall performance of the cities. Summary of the Book The book is divided amongst the four parts which focus on important issues and solutions in each case. In the first part of the book, she focuses on the orthodox principles and tries to challenge the concepts through philosophical perspective of a sidewalk. She considers as how pavements have a certain role in peoples life, towards protecting, contacting and assimilation of children thus creating an environment of trust. All the influence of social norms from shop keepers to children playing the park are to be safe guarded and cannot be artificially created through extreme modernization Jacob’s emphasis that a city is much like a neighborhood where protection, discrimination of all sorts are to be minimized under a system where there are three autonomous dependent bodies of city, districts and streets. The system being dependent would enable the system to be assured to end the problems when they arise. (Jacobs, 2000) As cities is an accumulation of diverse, closely knitted support, part two of the book provides four important information and solutions towards ensuring economically and socially diverse stable cities. The four steps ensure: 1. Districts must provide more functions to ensure people are present in a certain area through a timely support. 2. The systems of “blocks” in the cities should be shortened in length which gives more option to have economic growth and options towards meeting destinations throughout booming cities. 3. Buildings around the cities should have distinction to give the opportunities to everyone with different wages and ability to pay rent to have equal opportunity. 4. More people around the cities should have living spaces and work opportunities that can add to the city life. This diversity check is important to ensure a visible city life. (Donath, 1997) For Jacob’s it is necessary to have all of these components and important part towards the city otherwise the city can die and have a dull promotion in addition to the stable cities. As diversity is amongst the main reasons towards a successful city, she also mocks the orthodox concepts of how diversity creates problems from traffic conditions to adding to the beauty of the city. She further claims that diversity cannot be considered as the prime cause of traffic congestions as it is not caused by people but by vehicles. An area in which diversity exists boosts walking. Diversity cannot be held responsible for disastrous periods. She supports it by point out at places like junkyards which are made for the civilians convenience limits diversity. (Jacobs, 2000) Diversity should be increased if one wants to increase the success of such places. Another reason might be the existence of bars and theaters in areas in which there is high unemployment, situating them in a place where diversity exists would be a healthier decision. The concluding reason includes placement of places like parking lots, gas stations, truck depots and huge advertisements and businesses in wrong areas. She suggests that by controlling the freedom of using frontage can help reduce these issues. (Jacobs, 2000) The third part of the book states the four forces that can take the lively cities towards the destruction. These forces are the self-destructive features of diversity, immense population growth towards instability of diversity, effects of public and private money over the economy of the cities and destructive control of single element in the lively cities. For Jacob’s self-destructive factors for successful cities are linked towards creating single elements in the city. With most of the cities trying to increase their profit, they oust least profitable companies and limit the diversity for the many classes of people in the surrounding. This creates a gap towards introducing better diversity and options into turning into a single element society. This only profits a specific group and it is hard to figure out the borderline regarding this issue. Jacob’s suggest that there should be an accumulation of all types to have different alternatives for everyone. (Jacobs, 2000) Population instability can cause death to successfully planned cities as it starts to create slums, to Jane Jacob’s belief slums are there due to no improvement provided in the area. The alienation to the people and the area is the cause of growing slums which can only be solved by taking effective measure such as assigning duties to the certain level of government to provide those areas with improvements which can have an individual impact. The last declining factor for cities in part three related to the use of private and public money. Jacob’s argues regarding how money does have limitation as it cannot completely buy a successful city. She further divides the money flow into three different dimensions, money through non-governmental and traditional means, money and credit flow through governmental lending and borrowing, and money and credit flow in the underground world. No matter which source they do come from they always have a catastrophic effect in the society. The money is not regularized in a systematic way and is directly input under a single line which causes only a massive growth for a very short period of time and later disrupts the potential of city life. (Proshansky et al) The concluding part of the book gives effective solutions to improve performances of the cities. These are practical approaches related to the mental and physical approach to the situations. The major points discusses are to not fill the cities with automobiles so that it can have less environmental effect for people to have a better living conditions. To accomplish this she suggests having difficult travelling routes that discourages extreme traffic along side having public transport so that the work is never disrupted. (Proshansky et al) Specific solutions towards providing housing to the tenants are also given. Jacob’s suggest the practice for not making projects but rather giving them spaces in regular houses where they can give them subsidized rents. The government can adjust these rents accordingly to the growth of the tenant’s income and ensure they live under the general public to avoid any future problems. Accepting that corruption exists, Jane Jacob’s suggest improving the plans every eight to ten years from its initiation. (Rodwin,1961) She also creatively suggests how to keep the interest of the pedestrians towards visual travelling in making the streets in different patterns as straight blocks of roads can put pressure of infinity in a person’s mind. Having patterns, bends and irregular pattern buildings are to help the visuals of the walker. Jane Jacobs main conclusion toward the book is towards having horizontal structures rather than vertical structures which can help in simplifying the complexities faced under the city planning. Critical Analysis Upon understanding the real concept behind having successful cities in the modern age, her ideas back in 1961 are very much needed in the 21st century. Unfortunately they are not much practical in the cities that prevail in today’s time. The number of sky scrapers continues to build and the race towards accumulation of money with bigger, richer and fancier cars is filling the cities with division of gap between the rich and the poor. For Jacob’s the cities should be a big neighborhood with equality and diversity written all over it, unfortunately, when compared to these situations in the modern age there are major lacks as everyone has boundaries and limitations towards encouraging anyone to do the same. Jane Jacob’s criticism towards having high rise buildings is justified but meeting today’s demands of technology and potential growth of the economy, bustling cities such as New York would seize to exist. Her accusations are justified as they do represent the difference between the rich and the poor. In regard towards the project housing, the ideas of tenant housing is one of the most strong ideas shared in the book, this concept has been read by city planners and district governors to understand and apply tactics to avoid problems and alienation of certain groups. Unfortunately these practices have not been seen in a larger scope and government due to racing towards the economic growth and making more money forgets the welfare of the people. (Rodwin, 1961) “In our American cities, we need all kinds of diversity.”- (Jacobs, 2000) Modern cities all around America have been creating examples towards ensuring there is equal opportunity towards everyone in the surrounding. With international citizens growing and following the “American dream” to this very date, it can be seen that the diversity threshold has been on the growth. With modern practices of acquisitions and helping in encouraging of different goods, the business in larger cities is much more planned. This in relation to Jane Jacob’s book can be seen as practical examples towards having livelihood of the cities increase every day. (Donath, 1997) References: Proshansky, Harold M., Abbe K. Fabian, and Robert Kaminoff. "Place-identity: Physical world socialization of the self." Journal of environmental psychology 3.1 pg (1983): 57-83. Donath, Judith S. "Inhabiting the virtual city: The design of social environments for electronic communities." (1997). Rodwin, Lloyd. "Books." The NY Times. 5 Nov. 1961. Web. 28 Mar. 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/17/reviews/jacobs.html>. Jacobs, Jane." Project for Public Spaces. 2000. Web. 28 Mar. 2014. . Read More