Individuals have more in common with cities than they may realize. They both are judged and desired due to how successful they tend to be. A strong driver behind a successful city is good design. For urban planners good design may seem simple, but, pointed out by author Jane Jacobs, is not. By providing a strong argument and comparisons in chapter twenty two of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs reveals that cities are difficult to design successfully. To begin her argument, Jane Jacobs uses an analogy of how city planners and scientist think and the three stages of scientific thought: problems of simplicity, disorganized complexity, and organized complexity. Out of these three options Jane Jacobs rules that a city
With health and wellness as a topic that is still very relevant as there become more urban developments, it is valid proof that Wright’s and Olmsted’s design principles and theories are useful precedents for contemporary designers.
TRIANGLE The Fire that Changed America by David Von Drehle The book, TRIANGLE The Fire that Changed America, written by David Von Drehle, is set in New York City primarily in the tenements of the Lower East Side and in Greenwich Village. The story provides a detailed account of life as an immigrant during the early 1900s, the garment workers strikes, the corrupt political structure of the time, several eye witness accounts of the blaze that killed 146, the missing safety procedures that could have saved them, the trial that attempted to bring the owners to justice and finally the political change and work force standards that came about as a result of the tragic event. The book begins by describing participants in a garment industry strike and how any form of challenge to the authority, the factory owners, would be handled. He describes the money-driven political corruption that allowed the owners to thwart any upheaval by sending out the muscles of the not-so-underworld to beat the strikers, women included.
The Tomorrow City by Monica Hughes The plot of this book centres around two adolescents, David and Caro and an evil supercomputer which aspires to control the futuristic city of Thompsonville. Dr. Henderson, Caro's Father creates the "perfect" computer designed to solve all of the problems of Thompsonville by gaining almost complete power of the city. The computer then begins to make rash decisions of it's own. It decides that humans are incapable of making decisions of there
In How America Can Rise Again, John Fallows addresses the current state of the United States of America as he tries to establish whether the nation is truly crumbling as many critics and experts claim. Fallows’ analysis of the situation is aided by the fact that he spent some time in Asia, particularly China and India, and is therefore able to compare the situation in the United States with that in two of the world’s fastest rising industrial powers. His analysis is also constructed around the views and opinions of some experts who he addressed with the of America’s apparent collapse. While speaking with historians, soldiers, politicians and experts in various fields, Fallows sought to establish whether the fears of America’s demise were justified or simply a repetition of the regular alarmist claims of discontent parties in the nation. While Fallows’ arguments regarding America’s current state are largely infallible, his conclusions are skewed by the fact that he only compares the United States to China, and not other significant powers such as the European Union.
In the reading “Walking in the City”, Michel de Certeau discusses the use of tactics and strategies when creating a city environment. Certeau explains that strategies are for big corporations, architects, and the wealthy and the powerful. These are the people who have a say in building the city. Strategies require urban planning, these people have the power to make these choices. On the other hand, there are certain tactics that civilians living in the city create to ease the difficulties of daily living. The little people, the civilians, or those who have no say, control the tactics according to Certeau. Tactics are created to make the living standards equal in a sense. The strategies and tactics that are used to create a city, play significant role in how the city will function as a whole.
The government of the United States of America is very unique. While many Americans complain about high taxes and Big Brother keeping too close an eye, the truth is that American government, compared to most foreign democracies, is very limited in power and scope. One area American government differs greatly from others is its scope of public policy. Americans desire limited public policy, a result of several components of American ideology, the most important being our desire for individuality and equal opportunity for all citizens. There are many possible explanations for the reason Americans think this way, including the personality of the immigrants who fled here, our physical isolation from other countries, and the diversity of the American population.
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
The main character Lisa was introduced as being scared and confused. “But now all the adults are gone”.This represents her change because she had been just a normal child until her parents had died along with every other adults and this had made them all confused and scared with nobody to look after them. She had tried to avoid other characters because she knew they would try to steal from her. When Lisa was around her brother she was kind and brave.”Please tell me a story”. This represent her being brave and kind because she had taken over the parent role by telling him stories every night and she was kind because she had made up the stories and they all had happy endings.However as the story went on she became harsh. Yet around her friends and her brother she was caring. Lisa had became very responsible and smart as time continued. “I called this meeting because…”. This represents her being smart and responsible because she had developed a group that kept everyone safe around their neighborhood. Lisa had used her brain and came up with an amazing idea that could have been the only reason anyone in the neighborhood was still alive a year later.
Jacobs views diversity as the number of ways in which limited areas of space are allocated, as opposed to having an inherent racial or cultural connotation. Jacobs emphasizes that various types of business and residences are the elements of prospering city neighborhoods. Jacobs begins to explore three main myths. These myths are arguments often cited by city planners against diversity. To begin, the first myth that Jacobs attempts to discredit is that diversity is unattractive. She repudiates this assertion by saying that the opposite is in fact true, in which homogeneity is unappealing. I believe that it is quite detrimental when city planners attempt to create a contrived atmosphere of diversity in order to conceal the existing homogeneity. This is accomplished by artificially building different shapes and styles of buildings to give outsiders the impression of diversity. Jacobs underscores the flaws of contrived diversity in the following excerpt:
development of statistical methods that enable us to quantify a city’s qualities or characteristics, the reliance on such numeric data as proof of accuracy has increased considerably. Even when the qualitative data is more accurate and credible, its authenticity is subjected to higher skepticism compared to that of quantitative data. Although characteristics of cities can be very well defined by qualitative methods, the lack of a quantifiable metric to support such characteristics questions the validity of the qualitative information. Much to the author's criticism, planners' over-reliance
Finally, this paper will explore the “end product” that exists today through the works of the various authors outlined in this course and explain how Los Angeles has survived many decades of evolution, breaking new grounds and serving as the catalyst for an urban metropolis.
On a positive note, there are designers who have accomplished what seems like the impossible and created spaces that stand timeless in their place. The Eiffel Tower, Grand Central Station, Sydney Opera House are just a few examples of spaces that provide a unique experience for the people and contribute to the identity of the city.
Throughout the western world once the need for urban planning was recognized albeit gradually there had been many stages of improvement in the way Planners approached urban problems. Various time periods saw evolution of different methodologies and strategies in the way planners plan. The paradigms shifted from focusing initially on large plans and city beautiful movements to more neighborhood based community improvement plans today. However, the most important change that had occurred over the period of time in planning thinking should be the way the focus had shifted from physical aspects of a city to community participation and intermittent process involved in making a plan. “Thus since the early 1960s, the plan has not occupied center stage” (Neuman 1998, 208). This Plans performed a secondary role, sometimes even as flexible documents to support the process. In the end the Planning documents saw more of the process in terms of bringing together various groups, citizen participation, identifying the issues, negotiating and mediating and forming the immediate strategies to tackle some of these issues. In the end the comprehensive plans and the strategic plans started dealing less with the physical aspects as the Plan implementation became more and more difficult and irrelevant to keep up pace with the fast change scenarios. So cities like Houston relied on no comprehensive plans but more on the large scale development projects, infrastructure led developments, and initiatives grown from the neighborhoods (Neuman 2003, 25). However it cannot be said there is a fixed way of planning as the process itself is constantly evolving and as more and more ways of theories surface, the debates of “content versus context, rational versus ...
The contemporary art- and architecture historian George R. Collins wrote a series of articles on linear planning in the late 1950’s and the 1960’s. Collins wrote in response to the rising popularity of the concepts for linear cities in those days. There was actual unplanned linear urban growth and lack ...
... architectures would led to a more organic organization beneficial to the people that choose to make their lives in this city. Although this model of a sustainable city is not a perfectly closed loop, it lays the foundation for one that is. Over time, with constantly evolving and improving technology and new methods of design from the scale of products to buildings, the gaps in the loop could be closed, and a “true” sustainable city could be fully realized.