“The Use of Sidewalks.” Jane Jacobs. 1. What essential question is the author addressing? How sidewalks are the most public and important parts of the city, and how we as citizens/neighbors watching it (eyes on the streets) constitute a vital component of urban and suburban street’s security and comfort. 2. What is the thesis being examined or proposed, in what context? One of the most important aspects of an environment is the safety of it, if the users feel secure, safe, and comfortable in an open space amongst other unknown people, it means that such place is successful. Moreover, the matter of feeling safe or unsafe is attributed to the amounts of incidents that happen in a certain place. Indeed, it generally it does not take …show more content…
To be more specific, the fact that people design big windows or balconies facing the street instead of a yard, pool, or interior court, is highly influenced by the idea of neighbors watching the immediate street to make it safer and watch for others. Additionally, many suburban programs where people get together to walk on the streets a night in groups to assure nothing abnormal happens is also extremely driven by her argument. Moreover, successful public spaces will always be used by different kinds of people, if a place is interesting to look at or be at, any type of public seating architects, designers, planners, or even neighbors decided to install, will eventually get used. On the contrary, if that space is not designed for the people themselves, no matter how beautiful a space may be, if people don’t feel comfortable, they’ll never spend time on it, and therefore, the space would never be as safe as others because of the lack of users. “The Charter of the New Urbanism.” 1. What essential question is the author addressing? Firm statements that if followed, a city can improve at an enormously fast rate. Such arguments have to do with public spaces, communities, natural environments/ ecology, the distinction between pedestrian, public transit and private transportation’s via,
Finally in 1991, the federal government initiated a ‘Better Cities Program’ which aimed to make Australian cities sustainable and more liveable. It encoura...
In an excerpt of The Street, Ann Petry illustrates Lutie Johnson's determination against the formidable wind and offers a perspective that sheds light on its underestimated consequences. Through personification and selection of detail, the narrator effectively characterizes the wind and its unrelenting "fingers" as an unwelcoming and obtrusive force that is capable of uncovering society's filth.
Where the Sidewalk Ends is written by Shel Silverstein. Where the Sidewalk Ends is written on 1974. Shel wrote this poem in the literature fiction. I thought that the poem “Where the Sidewalk Ends” was a great poem because it talked about a sidewalk that ends at some place. Some of the literary devices that were in the poem was and, the, and walk. Some of the rhyme devices that were in the poem as well was walk, chalk, his, and is. My opinion of the poem was that I thought it was very weird to see a very long sidewalk (Shel Silverstein Poems). I was very surprised to see that the sidewalk was long. One thing I did not understand was how there was a very long sidewalk. One other poem that Shel Silverstein wrote was “Messy Room” and it was very
Technology turns into something new everyday. From computers to smartphones, technology comes in all shapes and sizes. Most people hope to receive new advancements from technology to do more activities for them. This is not in the best interest for mankind. In Ray Bradbury’s three short stories The Veldt, The Pedestrian, and August 2026, Bradbury describes three different worlds, where he shows the possible outcome of the world if technology advances too far. Each story leads to negative effects on humans and the worlds that they live in. Technology does not have all of the solutions to present day solutions.
For Jacobs these four keys started just outside the front door, she recognised the importance the street had in cultivating diversity as well as how a lack of safety on the streets could impact it negatively, “The problem of sidewalk and doorstep insecurity is as serious in cities which have made conscientious efforts at rebuilding as those in cities that have lagged” (J. Jacobs …). Although efforts were often made by planners to make the streets safer she felt they missed the mark and that in some ways districts were even tailor made for easy crime. The orthodox approach was that if green space such as a park was provided nearby then it would provide an area for safe play and recreation within the city, however it was often the case that the issues of insecurity on the streets spilled over into the parkland as well. “It is futile to try to evade the issue of unsafe cities by attempting to make
The sidewalk is a social structure for the people who work and live in it. They are mentors for each other. They play the same role of self-direction and psychological fulfillment of a formal job or family for example; where the society is shrunken on that one sidewalk. They form an informal social organization and social control so they can survive against the outer social system; meanwhile, this social organization organizes property rights and division of labor. Although their life seems deviant, they still practice conventional social practices and norms. Although it might seem that these men are engaged in random behavior, yet there is an organized interaction of norms and goals, and a shared collective self-consciousness from having a shared common history.
he doesn't he even own one. This where you can see how he is different
Cities by John Reader, the acclaimed historian attempts to dive readers deep into the territory of urban historians, depicting and analyzing the greatest cities of planet earth. From the earliest examples of cities to the ultra modern cities, 7000-9000 years later, of Mumbai or Tokyo, Reader paints the picture loud and clear. Cities around the globe are home to half of the entire planets population! Those living in cities, consume nearly 75% of all natural resources in the entire world. From the ruins of the earliest cities to the present, Reader will explore how cities develop and thrive, how they can decline and die, how they remake themselves. In the beginning of chapter two, Reader states, “The first cities are said to have arisen from rural communities whose intensified farming practices produced surpluses large enough to free craft workers and other specialists from working on the land (Reader 10).” With that being said, the first cities were basically an intensification of agriculture. He starts with extreme detail describing the “oldest-known cities” from around 9000 years ago. Starting with the claimed first city Çatal Hüyük. This was a large Turkish neolithic site, has been described as the world's first city. Stretching back over 9000 years, at times up to 10,000 people might have lived there. As Reader stated, the site was discovered in 1958 by the British archaeologist James Mellaart. He was unsure in categorizing Catal Huyuk as a city or a town. From what we think as of a city today, like New York or Paris, classifying Catal Huyuk as a city can be difficult. Catal Huyuk was a settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC. Certainly it is a site of immense historic and social...
Of the many problems affecting urban communities, both locally and abroad, there is one issue in particular, that has been victimizing the impoverished within urban communities for nearly a century; that would be the problem of gentrification. Gentrification is a word used to describe the process by which urban communities are coerced into adopting improvements respective to housing, businesses, and general presentation. Usually hidden behind less abrasive, or less stigmatized terms such as; “urban renewal” or “community revitalization” what the process of gentrification attempts to do, is remove all undesirable elements from a particular community or neighborhood, in favor of commercial and residential enhancements designed to improve both the function and aesthetic appeal of that particular community. The purpose of this paper is to make the reader aware about the significance of process of gentrification and its underlying impact over the community and the community participation.
For the past decade, Irvine California has been among the nation's safest cities to live despite its rapid expansion. Despite being one of the safest cities in the country, Irvine invests a good amount of time and money to design and,nonchalantly, implement security mechanisms that seem a bit excessive. Without prior knowledge about the city, one can easily find themselves going around in circles (literally), or going in the complete opposite direction. The architects of the city planned out the layout to match the one of the University. We don’t normally see just one location with these security measures in place, rather an array of buildings and “public” spaces that are barricaded or concealed away from people who aren’t residents of the area. Steven Flusty argues that cities like Irvine are built by either people who are paranoid of others breaking in or they become paranoid by the buildings that surround them. The physical boundaries that are put in place prevent any
In this essay, I will discuss the topic of urban public transportation and how it relates to the Church and Wellesley BIA. The nature of transportation in Toronto is a highly complex topic. As discussed in the article Transportation: The Bottleneck of Regional Competitiveness in Toronto, there are many concerns with transportation in regards to international transport, roads, highways, rails, bike lanes, buses etc. (Keil, Roger, Young, 2008). These transportation variables all have a greater economic, health, and environmental impact. The article goes on to describe that mobility in Toronto suffers because its management is uncoordinated, and there is a gap in regional interaction (Keil, Roger, Young 2008). The scope of this essay will be to
Very few people would want to live in a place where they don’t have security. Whether it be in cities or subdivisions, Jacobs, if alive, would ascertain that there needs to be a sense of connectedness to maintain communal safety. Public living “bring[s] together people who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion” (Jacobs 55). Now that families typically center themselves around suburban lifestyles, residents should understand that the same connections that Jacobs says were to be made in cities need to now be made in subdivisions. Jacobs was scared that with houses being spread out in the suburbs, little interaction between neighbors would take place. In order to avoid this, neighborhoods need to promote a sidewalk lifestyle that they currently do not (Jacobs 70). With Kotkin stressing how urban areas are no longer preferable places to raise a family, saying only seven percent of their populations are children, he lacks compassion for the transients that now inhabit cities. Undoubtedly, those who now inhabit the city should also feel safe in their environments. Nowadays, members of a city isolate themselves from interactions with other citizens making it difficult to establish a social
"Public Places Have Eyes." PC/Computing Mar. 2000: 100. General OneFile. Thomson Gale. Glendale Community College Library Media Center, Glendale, AZ. 18 Jan. 2008.
Again, this section will give a working definition of the “urban question’. To fully compare the political economy and ecological perspectives a description of the “urban question” allows the reader to better understand the divergent schools of thought. For Social Science scholars, from a variety of disciplines, the “urban question” asks how space and the urban or city are related (The City Reader, 2009). The perspective that guides the ecological and the social spatial-dialect schools of thought asks the “urban question” in separate distinct terminology. Respected scholars from the ecological mode of thinking, like Burgess, Wirth and others view society and space from the rationale that geographical scope determines society (The City Reader, 2009). The “urban question” that results from the ecological paradigm sees the relationship between the city (space) as influencing the behaviors of individuals or society in the city. On the other hand...
As previously implied, cities are currently the antithesis of even the barest sense of sustainability. To succinctly define the term “sustainability” would be to say that it represents living within one’s needs. When it comes to the city, with almost zero local sources of food or goods, one’s means is pushed and twisted to include resources originating far beyond the boundaries of the urban landscape. Those within cities paradoxically have both minimal and vast options when it comes to continuing their existence, yet this blurred reality is entirely reliant on the resources that a city can pull in with its constantly active economy.