The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Peculiar Nature of Cities

The Death and Life of Great American Cities as described by the author Jane
Jacobs is, an attack on principles and aims of modern, orthodox city planning and
rebuilding (Jacobs, 1961:3). This is an awakening and revolutionary attack on the
problems brought about by urban renewal based on modernist, orthodox urban
planning. Orthodox, modernist urban planning was the strategy of the government,
characterized by high-rises on expansive, open greens. Unfortunately, this response led
to mass displacements of disadvantaged families (Menjares, 2014).

Also, these

projects involved billions of federal dollars and are often conceptualized in a

paternalistic approach (Jacobs, 1961:19); that is, without public involvement.
The peculiar nature of cities described in the first part of the book tells us about
the three uses of a citys sidewalks: safety, contact, and assimilating children. Streets
and their sidewalks are a citys vital organs. According to Jacobs, if the street looks
interesting, the city looks interesting, if the streets are dull, the city is dull. There she
pointed out the first problem: if a citys streets are safe from barbarism and fear, the city
is tolerably safe from barbarism and fear. Cities are full of strangers and to keep the city
safe is a fundamental task of a citys streets and its sidewalks. No amount of police can
enforce civilization where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down
(Jacobs, 1961). The casual enforcement said here are the users of the street-both the
residents and the strangers. Thats why a well-used city street is apt to be a safe street
and a deserted city street is apt to be unsafe.
Since everyone uses the streets, (local and strangers) the city streets must do
most of the job of handling them and keep them safe as they come and go. Jane
Jacobs shared the three qualities of a safe street. One, there must be a clear
demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Two, there must
be EYES UPON THE STREET, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural
proprietors of the street. The buildings must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn
their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind and three, the sidewalk must have
users on it fairly continuously both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street
and to induce the people on buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in

sufficient numbers. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by
watching street activity.
City sidewalks also serve a social function. They are a place for public contact
where people can meet and socialize, where people engage in chats upon encountering
other people. This is not forced upon the locals by government, but is entered into
willingly, and serves to enhance trust among those living in the neighborhood or those
passing through. The absence of this trust is considered by Jacobs to be a disaster for
the city street.
Trust is a necessary element if the streets are to be successful in their social
function. The trust of a city street is formed overtime from many, many little public
sidewalk contacts. The sum of casual, public contact at local level is a feeling for the
public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of
personal or neighborhood need.
Sidewalks are also used in the assimilation of children as discussed in part three.
This use of sidewalks tells us how children are much safer while playing on the
sidewalks than they are while playing in a park or playground. She explains the reason
for this is that sidewalks on lively streets are always being watched by everyone else on
the street. She goes on to say that sidewalk interaction is vital to rearing a child. She
says that by being in an atmosphere of a mixture of adults, the children learn things
from all the different types of people women and men, young and old. So by mixing
residential and commercial and allowing the children to play in the sidewalks, they get
exposure to men and women of all ages from whom they will learn valuable life lessons.
She says these lessons cannot be learned merely by the parent telling the child, but the
child must experience it in action.
Aside from the uses of sidewalks, Jane Jacobs also studied the uses of
neighborhood parks. She shared different public parks and their characteristics, one is
the Rittenhouse Square. The mixture of uses of buildings here directly produces a
mixture of users who enter and leave the park at different times. They use the park at
different times from one another because their daily schedules differ. The park thus
possesses an intricate sequence of uses and users. This square is busy fairly
continuously for the same basic reasons that a lively sidewalk is used continuously:

because of functional physical diversity among adjacent uses and hence diversity
among users and their schedules.
Another is the Washington Square. The users all operate on much the same daily
time schedule because of a non-varied use of buildings around it. They all enter the
district once. It came what usually fills city vacuum-a form of blight. It need not have
been office work that depopulated this park according to Jacobs. Any single,
overwhelmingly dominant use like residential dwellings imposing a limited schedule of
users would have had a similar effect.