The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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…

observed patterns in the way cities were constructed in both physical and social aspects of their environments. For the first time in American history, a fresh and innovative, at the time radical, movement sprung up due to the observations and claims that Jacobs proposed in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. During the 1950’s, modernism had already become an established (and universally accepted) ethos in American city planning. Jane Jacobs witnessed the shortcomings of the…

planning is a successful process the city life is not as bad a people think. She thinks in a way that if a system works, don’t ruin it. She is big into thinking that if residents take responsibility of the pros and cons in the city then things can go smoothly with improving and planning new things. I think the perspective was old when Jacobs was writing this because housing projects were still prominent back then and now they are not as big. The housing was built for lower-income people, so when…

In Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, Jacobs sheds light on the thought process behind city planning, how that thought process came to be, and how that thought process is corrupt. Through giving specific examples via different big cities (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc.), she weaves in her overall message: that the base of city planning, and therefore cities in general, are a “hoax”; cities are built on a “foundation of nothing”. The founders on which modern city…

In Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities , the author mainly focuses on the following three arguments: first, a city should have its complex structures. Planners should not create new structures by breaking the connections between the existing structures. Second, a city must contain diversity. Different districts should show various functions to become vital. Third, like human, city also grows and have its characteristics. Those patterns can not be manipulated by people. …

spaces for the better. The planners often neglected to consider the needs and priorities of the people who had and were expected to live in their projects, and thus they ended up destroying rather than improving community life. Activist and urban studies writer Jane Jacobs explored instances of urban renewal in neighborhoods across America during the 1950-60s, and documented important findings about the movement in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs argues that urban…

Jacobs adored how cities worked. She loved the street life. Her philosophy surrounded the value of ‘eyes on the street’. She believed a city was more safe and vibrant if there were active pedestrians. She valued small mom and pop stores and being able to look out her window and see her community. Jacobs took on the role of advocating for these values when they were being threatened, specifically by Robert Moses. Moses, known as New York’s “Master Builder” was determined to build an expressway…

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald many symbols are used to support the themes and characters. The Valley of Ashes is a symbol that represents death, poverty, moral decay, and the unattainability of the American Dream. It reveals a lot about the themes, such as the gap between the hollow rich and the hopeless poor, and the characters, like Myrtle and George Wilson’s lives and deaths. The Valley of Ashes was a dumping ground between Long Island, or the East and West Eggs, and New York…

The 1920s were a time of extreme inequality in wealth distribution as a select few achieved the American Dream, with great wealth, while the majority of people maintained working class status, suffering from wealth control in the top one percent. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby gives insight into the lives of the select few, as it follows wealthy characters from lavish parties to expensive restaurants in New York City; the wealth and frivolity of the 1920s upper class fills the novel. In…

While reading the story The Great Gatsby, there are many different symbols that Fitzgerald used. The symbols were presented to show a sign. There were four important symbols that were presented. East Egg and West Egg, this was explaining the differences between middle class and high class. Another symbol that was significant were the colors. The colors consist of: green, yellow, white and blue. These colors in the story showed lots of imagery. Additionally, using these colors there was one…