The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Essay Example

Diversity Within a Re-exploring My Own Neighborhood Through the Eyes of Jane Jacobs In her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs makes a valid and interesting argument concerning the state of the nation's cities. Even though the book was first published over forty-five years ago, the information that Jacobs presents is still relevant. Her diagnostic evaluation of the American city is perhaps as accurate, precise and timely today as it was when the book was written. The heart of her argument is that a city needs diversity at all of its levels in order to flourish. Jacobs states that the ubiquitous principle "is the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially" (19). As I was reading the text, I felt compelled to verify the facts that were presented against my own personal experience of growing up in a major East Coast city. It is always a treat to re-examine my own home town from someone else's perspective. Without a doubt I found Jacobs' poignant assessment of city life was something with which I could strongly identify. Each section of the text highlights a critical aspect of the city that becomes through Jacobs' voice a substantial statement about the inner workings of the urban community. At first glance some of the subject matter might seem peripheral but for the exceptional insight and understanding demonstrated by the author. I didn't know that a man-made landscape could be considered a living organism until Jacobs made the reference to a city being a kind of ecosystem. Everything needs to be balanced and in harmony for all of the occupants to survive in such a fragile place. Nothing makes you think "city" more than the idea of the sidewalk, which is the pedestrian's portion of a city street. Investigating the sidewalk is surely an essential component to gaining an understanding of any urban community. In a crowded city filled with businesses, municipal structures, and parked cars these are just about the only public spaces left for people to spend their time. A safe place to walk is only one of the many functions that the sidewalk fills in a typical city. The sidewalk is like a living conduit that connects all of the separate houses and turns them in to a neighborhood. In a big city, the sidewalks seem to go on and on forever. You could imagine that it would take years to explore all of the streets in even a modest sized community. Like most inner city kids, I spent my entire youth playing on the sidewalk. The streets where I lived were always buzzing with activity. In the mornings many small children marched past my house on the way to the local elementary school. Adults strolled to their cars and sped off to work, while the elderly folks tended the garden or simply sat on the stoop socializing. The corner store two doors down from me was another hub of intense movement. Many different people would come and go at slightly different hours of the day, so that there was a constant stream of foot traffic. There were the morning deliveries of newspapers and mail. Maintenance workers and meter readers seemed to visit on a regular basis. Cars carrying tourists who got lost on their way to the airport would occasionally cruise past and stop to have a look. At dusk the teenagers would carouse and mingle. A variety of people used the sidewalk each day for their own purposes, and sometimes those lives would intersect with each other. As Jacobs states, "lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city's wealth of public life may grow" (95). As I look back I can see that I had lived in a healthy community. There were other neighborhoods that I knew about which were decidedly unhealthy. The local housing projects for example were the places that my friends and I scrupulously avoided. For some reason these tenements were tucked away in a part of the city that was easy to bypass. The run-down buildings were an eyesore, and you didn't want to mess around with the kids who lived in the projects. Drugs were pervasive in this part of town. Also there was poverty, alcoholism, and sickness. I remember the kids at school who lived in the projects. It seemed like they were always recent transplants. Nobody really knew their story, where they came from, or when they would be leaving. It's hard to say what the main difference was between my neighborhood and their neighborhood. At least I knew everyone in my own neighborhood. There were families that had been living there for generation after generation. As Jacobs reminds us, "the first relationships to form in city areas, given any neighborhood stability, are those in street neighborhoods and those among people who have something else in common" (174). Such things were obviously present in my own neighborhood. From the many devotees walking to church together for morning or evening services to the sportsmen playing an impromptu game of stick ball, people were constantly meeting out on the street. Much to my surprise, the public housing projects in my home town were torn down a few years ago. It always seemed as though the buildings were going to be permanent fixtures, yet the prime real estate on which they were built attracted too much attention. Expensive condominiums for wealthy young professionals replaced the former slums. Apparently a city cannot afford to keep such unsustainable projects funded indefinitely. I do not know what happened to the residents of the tenement buildings after their eviction. Perhaps they left town to find another city that could house them. I believe that Jacobs is correct in saying that "cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success, in city building and city design" (9). There are so many different forces that come into play in a big city that it can be impossible to predict the outcome of any particular course of action. The urban poor are only one group on the long list of people who need homes. Competing for the low-income housing in my neighborhood were the new immigrants that arrived from South America. The populations of immigrants from diverse countries around the globe have historically been the lifeblood of my town. Remnants of countless ethnic restaurants from every culture bear witness to those who have lived in the city and then moved on only to be replaced by the next wave of settlers. As each ethnicity brings their enthusiasm and dreams to the city, they help prosperity to grow for all of the residents there. As in any ecosystem a constant input of fresh energy prevents the stagnation that leads to death. References Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Modern Library, 1993. Read More