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The LIfe and Death of Great American Cities
1
Conditions for Flourishing
The Life and Death of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs
Date 1
What is this book about?
The Beginning
This book is about the function of cities.
'how cities work in real life,... and what principles and practices in rebuilding can promote social and economic vitality in cities and which will deaden these attributes."
The diversity that is generated by cities rests on the fact that in cities so many people are close together, and contain so many different tasts, skills, needs, supplies and bees in their bonnets.
The Purpose of cities
It is the purpose of cities to mean these needs.
Cities are able to generate a certain amount of diversity because they can form various effecient economic pools of use.
If a city (or a district) is unable to form these mutually supportive pools of uses and people, they will fail.
Mutual Support
"The chief worth of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex; that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts, instead of simple uncoordinated ones, in order that the crowd may be fed, clothed, and housed, and moved from place to place. Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. They mean more life. life is an int in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it. (2)
Philosohpy
On More Life
1. What does More Life mean for you in the context of our work as community developers?
2. How does community development help create more life in neighborhoods?
What Does This Mean For Us?
Creating Great Cities is not about simple solutions.
The strategies that Jane Jacobs outlines through this book are equally art and science. They are complex and require intentionality and attention/committment to the long-game.
Simple, quick fix solutions will not create greatness or flourishing over the longhaul
What Does This Mean For our Author?
This is a book about diversity and concentration.
Thesis
How can cities generate enough mixture among uses to sustain itself?
Types of Diversity
Diversity
Diversity of USE: have more than one thing going on
Diversity of PEOPLE: Have more than type of person interesed in your place
Concentration?
Have enough people on the street at all time to support the safety, economic, and social needs of the city.
Cities need STRANGERS.
Concentration
WHY?
The right mix of diversity and concentration will lead to flourishing.
Sidewalks are primary public spaces
Sidewalks
Cities need strangers:
cities streets are safe because there are enough people on the streets at all times of the day and night. This creates its on form of surveillance.
You need people circulating on the streets. People who live, work, and visit [diversity] the street are all necessary to have enough [concentration] to prevent bad things from happening.
Sidewalks require places to go.
Sidewalk
Safety
The basic requisite for [sidewalk surveillance is enough quantity of stores and other public spaces along the sidewalk, enterprises and public spaces that are used morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Stores, bars, and restuarants work in complex ways to abet sidewalk safety. (36)
Sidewalks are for transportation.
Give people a reason to be on the sidewalk.
Draw people along past places which have public and private uses, and give people routes to get to other places, and have enough places that the walk is very interesting. Give people reasons to keep walking and overlapping w other ppl and places.
Sidewalks as cross-pollinators
Parks require life
life = diversity and concentration of people and uses
Parks
Parks are not for OPEN SPACE. Parks are to be used.
You want people using the parks as attractions, as a way to get between things, diversity of schedules.
People in Parks
Parks need people to use them as a regular part of their every day lives.
Having a diversity of people means that the park is being used all the time by different kinds of people as it fits into their lives.
Parks + Ppl
A Diversity of Uses
Parks and Uses
When a park is surrounded by restaurants, bars, offices, shops, public buildings, apartments, houses, the park can become a place for the people who are attending these locations to gather, to linger, to walk through.
When parks do not have enough people they become unsafe. People require uses.
Park Schedules
Every day
Parks need morning, afternoon, evening, and night visitors to remain safe and viable.
Having a variety of diverse uses helps to ensure that the park is being used regularly, every day, on a schedule.
Parks need Porous Boundaries
Boundaries
Uses should be placed around the perimeter of parks, especially uses for the park.
Have the bike rental shop OUTSIDE the park, so that people have to cross the street to get into the park.
This invites people enter the park and creates economic viability around the park.
What are Uses?
Uses
Primary and Secondary Uses
What are Primary Uses?
Anchors that people people into a place.
What are some anchors that you can think of?
Primary Uses
dwellings, offices, factories, universities
What are Secondary Uses?
Enterprises that grow in response to the presence of primary uses, to serve the people that primary uses draw into an area.
Having many primary uses helps to make sure that enough secondary uses grow, which creates diversity of uses.
Secondary Uses
Diversity
Multiple primary uses and secondary uses give people a reason to be on the streets or in the parks or in a city district.
If there is only one use in a district, there isn't enough diversity or concentration of people which is bad.
You want enough diversity that people are entering and exiting the district around the clock.
This is the definition of good mixed use.
The more intricately mixed the pools of users (and uses) are, the more services and shops there can be that need to sift their clients from all sorts of population, and in turn the more people are drawn in.
diversity + concentration = success
Things That Don't Work
Failure
The draw of duplication of use bc of the competition for land. This becomes boring. Diversity is almost everything.
borders that create dead end grey space. How can use create porous boundaries with fun, diverse things happening on both sides and around the border. how can you create diverse uses and pools of people around these sharp boundaries?
Final Thoughts on Failure
Title
The tendency for successful diversity in cities to destroy itself; the tendency for massive single elements in citiies cast a deadening influence, the tendency for population instability to counter the growth of diversity, and the tendency for both public and private money either to glut or starve development and change. (242)
We need all kinds of diversity, intricately mingled in mutual support. we need this so city life can work decently and constructively so that people can sustain and further develop their society and civilization