The Death And Life Of Great American Cities Summary

On the topic of Jacob’s ideas to discourage criminal behavior, she is an open critic of the common theory of improving cities’ vibrancies by making room for more green space before considering whether the new parks would be properly integrated . If a park is located in “a low-traffic area such as the residential edge of a neighborhood, ” misallocated green space can become “havens for transient populations or criminal activity ,” and become the type of place where teenagers go to abuse drugs or criminal activity happens. Jacobs was a supporter of encouraging further testing and observation of greenspace models to “broaden understanding of the relationship between green space and health ,” but she recognizes that if the greenspace is not misallocated …show more content…
Her first book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities was written as a critique to the failing 1950s urban planning policies that led to the further decline of many already struggling neighborhoods, it was her most popular book and it ignited a spark of controversy among urban planning professionals in the field . Jacobs’ called this popular piece “the relation of the function to design in large cities.” One thing that Jacob criticized in her book was how the government supported the many urban planners who wanted to inject failing cities with big monopolizing industries along with areas of town specified for only one type of industry with the assumption that large industries would stabilize the economy because of “better internalization of the rewards to innovation” and good business experience would attract more capital than local competition . Unlike most urban planners at the time, Jacob’s theories supported that “variety and diversity of geographically proximate industry promote innovation and growth” where a batch of many types of local business led to the strengthening of the city’s economy . Models of both types of local business economies were tested by Glaeser and colleagues resulting in “negative evidence on MAR’s design…and consistent with Jacobs’,” with MAR being an influential urban designer in support of monopolizing industry at the time . To further enhance the importance of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacob’s argues that her theories about urban economies do not only strengthen one community at a time, with many growing cities comes a growing region, resulting in a well-developed nation because of efforts started at grassroots levels . Because of universal application of Jacob’s theories become especially important as populations