Gender and the Urban Planning Community’s Reactions to Jane Jacobs In April, 1956, Jane Jacobs spoke before a crowd of architects, academics, and urban planners at the Harvard Urban Design Conference. Five years later, she would publish The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a book that tore down contemporary city planning and lead to the profession being rebuilt in Jacobs’s image (or, rather, in the image of people claiming to be rebuilding the profession in her image – as Max Page notes, there is no “other urbanist whose ideas more people profess to understand who is less understood [4]”). But at this point, she was little known in the planning community – in fact, she originally was not even scheduled to speak; she only agreed …show more content…
Much of this criticism was tinged with separate spheres ideology and made direct references to the space Jacobs was expected to occupy as a woman. Jacobs was derided by many as a “militant dame (83).” Lewis Mumford, well-known as a historian, social critic, and author of The City in History, wrote a critical review of Death and Life entitled “Mother Jacobs’ Home Remedies,” in which he painted a portrait of Jacobs as a folksy, downhome housewife whose writing and opinion were mostly based on intuition. The image he presented there, of Jacobs as the uninformed housewife operating purely on her own observation without academic training, stuck, among critics and supporters alike. Those who appreciated her insights referred to her “common sense” insights – insights they believed she gained exclusively from her experience as a housewife simply looking out her window, while critics like Mumford mockingly referred to her “home remedies” and thought of her as “an amateur and a housewife who could comprehend no more than the domestic simplicity of Greenwich Village (Laurence 2011, 16),” someone with no grasp of the historical perspective and technical knowledge necessary to speak with any level of authority on …show more content…
One focus of Jacobs’s activism that might be considered a practical gender interest, for example, is her efforts to improve public housing projects. This could be thought of as a practical gender interest because a much greater proportion of households in public housing are headed by women than in the general population (75% of Section 8 beneficiaries, as of 2012 [“Housing Spotlight”]), so more women would benefit from improvements to public housing than men would. The same applies to attempts to alleviate poverty more generally (something Jacobs concerned herself with in her activism intended to preserve neighborhoods and build community, which she believed to be a fundamental part of a process she called “unslumming”) – because the poverty is higher among women than men, a general reduction
In “Whoever We Are, Loss Finds us and Defines Us”, by Anna Quindlen, she brings forth the discussion grief's grip on the lives of the living. Wounds of death can heal with the passing of time, but in this instance, the hurt lives on. Published in New York, New York on June 5, 1994, this is one of many Quindlen published in the New York Times, centered on death's aftermath. This article, written in response to the death of Quindlen’s sister-in-law, and is focused on an audience who has, currently is, or will experience death. Quindlen-a columnist for the New York Times and Newsweek, Pulitzer Prize winner and author-has written six bestselling novels (Every Last One, Rise and Shine, Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue) and has been published in the New York Times and Newsweek.
In May Miller’s Poem “Death is not Master” the persona explains that death is not the master that will increase the desperation but it is a way to become eternally calm. Many poems on the topic of death explain it as powerful thing that fears the existence of human beings, but Miller’s persona death is a way to achieve eternal serenity. She explains death as something that can end all the worldly tears, desires and tension and transform the human memory into a sculpture which is unaware of tensions. Miller’s persona believes that blocking death will be unfair as it will be a barrier to the everlasting happiness and calmness that lies inside the grave. Miller’s persona is an elaboration of Christian beliefs that death ends all worldly problems
Death and Reality in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates
When I first read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I did not pay close attention to the deflating of authority with the characters Poncio Vicario, Colonel Aponte, and Father Amador. After listening to the presentations, everything made more sense. The true depth of the Vicario brothers’ threat to kill Santiago fails to be recognized by those in authority. The most respected official of the town, Colonel Aponte, does little to prevent the murder and fails to uphold the honor he has been charged with protecting. Instead of letting Santiago Nasar know about the murder plot against him, the Colonel goes back to his game of dominos at the social club. In addition “Colonel Lazaro Aponte, who had seen and caused so many repressive massacres, becomes a vegetarian as well as a spiritualist” (Garcia Márquez 6). The punishment for his neglect results in him eating liver for breakfast.
In the free verse poem "When death comes" by Mary Oliver, the speaker contemplates what the inevitability of what death means to humans. Structurally, the poem bears no rhyme scheme as it depicts the free thought of the speaker. The voice of the speaker in this poem resonates with curiosity and the idea of life after death. Through the utilization of rhetorical devices such as repetition, alliteration, symbolism, and personification, the reader will come to understand that underlying tone that death is imminent regardless of how one 's life is spent. Within the poem, the source of tension resides in the constant internal struggle to oust the cycle of life and death. In some instances, Oliver’s curiosity and acceptance of death allows her to
Death and Grieving Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss.
Landscape architecture has been around since the beginning of time, but it was not until Frederick Law Olmsted came along that the idea of integrating design into the landscape with plants, water, and structures that it turned into a thriving profession. To many, Olmsted is considered “a pioneer in the profession of landscape architecture, an urban planner, and a social philosopher, one of the first theoreticians and activists behind the national park and conservation movements” (Kalfus 1). Growing up, he did not ever graduate from formal schooling and just sat in on a few classes while at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Instead, he acquired his education from being out in the world through traveling and reading. He had a hard childhood. His mother died when he was just four years old and on his journeys around the world to Europe and China, he became sickly with seasickness, paralysis of the arm, typhoid fever, apoplexy, sumac poisoning, and at times suffered from depression. For many years he went on a journey within himself to find out whom he really was and what he wanted to do with his life, career wise. Frederick had one brother, John Hull, who died in 1857. This left Olmsted feeling empty and at loss of what to do. That was when Calvert Vaux came and filled the space in Olmsted’s life that his brother left. Vaux convinced Olmsted to enter the Central Park Commissioner’s design competition with their design entitled the “Greensward Plan.” With the success in that project, Olmsted figured out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, which was to become a landscape architect. Olmsted practiced from the years of 1857 up until he retired in 1895. Olmsted’s two boys, adopted son John Charles and biological son Frederick La...
Daniel H. Burnham was born in 1846 and he was a modern city planner. The lack of attention paid by historians to Daniel Burnham seems peculiar in spite of his enormous contribution to the architectural field. Also an influential planner, he was the prime organizer and chief of construction for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Burnham developed plans for Washington D.C., Cleveland, San Francisco, Chicago, and Manila. At his death in 1912, Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Burnham was not a creative architect, but he was a great man.”
In Thomas Nagel’s “Death,” he questions whether death is a bad thing, if it is assumed that death is the permanent end of our existence. Besides addressing whether death is a bad thing, Nagel focuses on whether or not it is something that people should be fearful of. He also explores whether death is evil. Death is defined as permanent death, without any form of consciousness, while evil is defined as the deprivation of some quality or characteristic. In his conclusion, he reaffirms that conscious existence ends at death and that there is no subject to experience death and death ultimately deprives a person of life. Therefore, he states that Death actually deprives a person of conscious existence and the ability to experience. The ability to experience is open ended and future oriented. If a person cannot permanently experience in the future, it is a bad or an evil. A person is harmed by deprivation. Finally, he claims that death is an evil and a person is harmed even though the person does not experience the harm.
Mike Wise’s article Death and Deception documents the scandal that engrossed the Baylor Bears men’s basketball programs during the summer months of 2003. In June 2003, Patrick Dennehy, a Baylor basketball player, was murdered by his teammate Carlton Dotson. Dennehy had transferred to Baylor and the upcoming 2003-2004 season would be his first as a Bear; he redshirted the 2002-2003 season. Baylor’s head coach, Dave Bliss, was also forced to resign that summer after the increased scrutiny that Dennehy’s murder brought upon the basketball program led to many of Bliss’s rule violations being discovered. The after-effects of what occurred in the summer of 2003 stuck with Baylor’s basketball program for quite awhile as their probation only ended
Often when a person suffers through a tragic loss of a loved one in his or her life they never fully recover to move on. Death is one of hardest experiences a person in life ever goes through. Only the strong minded people are the ones that are able to move on from it whereas the weak ones never recover from the loss of a loved one. In the novel The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks, character Billy Ansel – having lost his family serves as the best example of brokenness after experiencing death. Whether it is turning to substance abuse, using his memory to escape reality or using Risa Walker as a sexual escape, Billy Ansel never fully recovers from the death of his twins and his wife. This close analysis of Billy’s struggle with death becomes an important lesson for all readers. When dealing with tragedies humans believe they have the moral strength to handle them and move on by themselves but, what they do not realize is that they need someone by their side to help them overcome death. Using unhealthy coping mechanism only leads to life full of grief and depression.
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.
A growing population of women’s activists can be attributed to the growing number of courses being offered and information available. Only a few decades ago this would not have been heard of. It is due to the increasing amount of awareness on the topic of women’s status as second class citizens that activism has increased. Through various media, we have learned of topics such as the “glass ceiling”, the working conditions of women in Third World countries, the current injustices against women being carried out in the First World, reproductive rights, as written about by Angle Davis, and other limitations imposed on women.
The mystery behind Jane Austen’s death is mainly due to the gross lack of understanding of disease during the Regency Era. As we learned from chapter one of Paula Byrne’s book The Real Jane Austen, young Miss Austen nearly died from a typhus infection when she was just a girl. One of several theories suggests that Miss Austen succumbed from a stress induced recrudescence of her original typhus infection, known as Brill-Zinsser Disease. However, because of the overwhelming incompetence of the medical field prior to the turn of the twentieth century, we can never truly be sure.
... through organizations which help improve the standard of living of females. Women’s participation in community-related activities has proved to be of great benefit for them.