Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an avant-garde urbanist whose writings encouraged a fresh outlook to city planning. Even though she had no formal training as a city planner, “The Death and Life of great American cities” is still one of the most prominent books on urban planning in which she presents innovative thinking about how cities function, develop and fail. Jacobs explains how cities should function as cohesive systems in which they have their own logic and ‘vitality’ which inevitably adjusts overtime to how they’re being used. The book is evidently a venomous attack and heavily criticizes the modern orthodox planning and rebuilding cities in the post war U.S. Apparent from the very start, Jacobs uses a very striking and straightforward opening line: “This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is …show more content…
1). The fact she then deliberately reiterates the word “attack” (pg. 1) highlights her explicitly aggressive view on the entire establishment. In Jacobs eyes, the strategies in rebuilding which the planners followed has clearly not been successful: it has neither eradicated elements of slums, nor has it halted the decay of neighbourhoods within cities. She places this blame not only on city planners, but upon philosophers and educators. “Jane Jacobs believes that most problems, if solvable at all, will be solved not by the elaborate schemes of experts but by spontaneous invention.” Jacobs particularly condemns both the notion of Garden Cities by Ebenezer Howard and the radiant city idea of Le Corbusier, which both dominated the forward thinking at the time, contending that they lack a clear understanding of how cities actually function. Corbusier’s idea was that streets were deemed bad and proposed a strict, totalitarian idea full of symmetry and high rise buildings. Ebenezer Howard concluded cities as a whole were bad “he hated the city and thought it an outright evil” (pg. 17), and
Another noteworthy urban sociologist that’s invested significant research and time into gentrification is Saskia Sassen, among other topical analysis including globalization. “Gentrification was initially understood as the rehabilitation of decaying and low-income housing by middle-class outsiders in central cities. In the late 1970s a broader conceptualization of the process began to emerge, and by the early 1980s new scholarship had developed a far broader meaning of gentrification, linking it with processes of spatial, economic and social restructuring.” (Sassen 1991: 255). This account is an extract from an influential book that extended beyond the field of gentrification and summarizes its basis proficiently. In more recent and localized media, the release the documentary-film ‘In Jackson Heights’ portrayed the devastation that gentrification is causing as it plagues through Jackson Heights, Queens. One of the local businessmen interviewed is shop owner Don Tobon, stating "We live in a
Actress Jane Wyatt dies on October 20, 2006 at the age of 96. Reports say she passed away in her Bel-Air home in her sleep due to natural causes. Upon news of her passing, hundreds of websites and message boards mourn and exchange stories as to how this woman has affected their lives. An online guest book was immediately created in order for Jane Wyatt fans to congregate and write down their memories of her through television and film. The fans, although never meeting her in person, connect with her through a different level. The fans relate to her through the public eye, not simple as an actress, but as a friend, educator, and mentor. On the tragic day of October 20, 2006 Jane Wyatt's spirit moves on, but her legacy and achievements remain in our hearts, text books, television, and film till the end of time.
Jane Addams was a Victorian woman born into a male-dominated society on September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. Her father was a wealthy landowner and an Illinois senator who did not object to his daughter’s choice to further her education, but who wanted her to have a traditional life. For years after his death, Addams tried to reconcile the family role she was expected to play with her need to achieve personal fulfillment.
The life of Jane Kenyon was one full of victories, hardships, and all around love for her creative and poignant poetry that she shared with the world. Throughout the terrible events that plagued her adulthood, Kenyon maintained persevering and doing what she loved most, which was to keep writing and inspiring others. Many people who read her poetry were able to catch a glimpse into the underlying meaning that was intertwined into the verses. The purpose of Kenyon's writings was to show the world about her attempt to do her best in staying strong even through all the deprivations that occurred in her life. She was able to combine her private life with her love for her work, just like most great poets do. However,
In the stories expressed by Harriet Jacobs, through the mindset of Linda Brent, some harsh realities were revealed about slavery. I’ve always known slavery existed and that it was a very immoral act. But never before have I been introduced to actual events that occurred. Thought the book Linda expresses how she wasn’t the worst off. Not to say her life wasn’t difficult, but she acknowledged that she knows she was not treated as bad as others.
He is able to relate these social structures to human society by looking at the way our cities are organized. He links the work of Jane Jacobs by determining the patterns of ant colonies to the patterns sustained by cities over centuries,
“The Deeper Problems We Miss When We Attack ‘Gentrification’”exhibit their opinion on the positives of gentrification and the potential of “revitalization” in low-income urban communities. Badger argues that gentrification brings nothing more than further opportunities for urban communities while integrating citizens of different social classes.Furthermore , she continues to question if gentrification is in fact the monster that brings the prior expressions against gentrification where she says “If poor neighborhoods have historically suffered from dire disinvestment, how can the remedy to that evil — outside money finally flowing in — be the problem, too?”(Badger) Stating that the funds generated from sources external that are brought into these communities can’t be problematic. This concept is further elaborated in the article “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor” where Vigdoor list the potential positive enhancements gentrification can have on an urban area in America ,stating that gentrification can
Williams, Timothy. "Blighted Cities Prefer Razing to Rebuilding." The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 Nov. 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2014. .
Segrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1996.
Location, location, location -- it’s the old realtor 's mantra for what the most important feature is when looking at a potential house. If the house is in a bad neighborhood, it may not be suitable for the buyers. In searching for a house, many people will look at how safe the surrounding area is. If it’s not safe, they will tend stray away. Jane Jacobs understood the importance of this and knew how cities could maintain this safety, but warned of what would become of them if they did not diverge from the current city styles. More modern planners, such as Joel Kotkin argue that Jacobs’s lesson is no longer applicable to modern cities because they have different functions than those of the past. This argument is valid in the sense that city
In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.
Gentrification is described as the renovation of certain neighborhoods in order to accommodate to young workers and the middle-class. For an area to be considered gentrified, a neighborhood must meet a certain median home value and hold a percentage of adults earning Bachelor’s degree. Philadelphia’s gentrification rate is among the top in the nation; different neighborhoods have pushed for gentrification and have seen immense changes as a result. However, deciding on whether or not gentrification is a beneficial process can become complicated. Various groups of people believe that cities should implementing policy on advancing gentrification, and others believe that this process shouldn’t executed. Both sides are impacted by the decision to progress gentrification; it is unclear of the true implications of completely renovating impoverished urban areas; gentrification surely doesn’t solve all of a community’s issues. I personally believe that gentrification is not necessarily a good or bad process; gentrification should occur as a natural progression of innovative economies and novel lifestyles collide within certain areas. Policy involving gentrification should not support the removal of people out of their neighborhood for the sake of advancement.
Wolf, Peter M. Eugene Hénard and the beginning of urbanism in Paris 1900-1914. New York: P.M.W., 1968. 29-33.
Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987
Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987