The Death And Life Of Great American City Analysis

Hero turned a villain. Back in the starting 1900’s cars were the deal. Just in a span of fifteen years they introduced a new culture to the society. They changed everything from the outlook to the perception of the world, which suddenly squeezed. Like a hero, countless songs poems and books were written on them. People could imagine going anywhere. They no more had to rely on walking, horses, carts, and trains etc. for going to places. And Ford made them cheaper, by applying assembly line. This pushed a domino, and other industries also started following the fast paced productions. Life became faster. (MAYRAND-FISET, 2013)
Simultaneously came along modernism supporting cars and tall buildings, which completely changed the way for the development
In ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ Jane Jacob was the first one to really comment and criticize the modern planning ideologies. In the very first chapter she questions worth of garden city, city beautiful and radiant city planning ideologies, central to which were the tall buildings and the personal vehicles. She further explained that it’s not these mega visions but the minutest of interactions that the cities provides, that helps the cities thrive.
She further elaborated how much the sidewalks have been ignored, on the transformation of the multifunctional streets to mono-functional roads. The streets she argues were spaces for children to play under the continuous protection by eyes of the passerby, for shops to display and open up to the road. These two major elements with the introduction of modernism were converted into sidewalks and malls respectively. Hence striping the street of its liveliness and making it just a thoroughfare for cars to their destinations. The destination became much more important than the
The first, to make lively cities, the streets and the roads need to be multifunctional for different people to use them and interact. Secondly, these neighborhoods or blocks are to be made shorter so that they become walkable and there are multiple thoroughfares to a destination. Third, the city as a whole need to be compact and dense so that life is visible, unlike the endlessly wide roads of the modern cities. Fourthly, the city should have a variety of buildings (by age and height) unlike the monotonous towers of modernism. She argues that without these the cities would look dull.
Further she adds that given these diversity of activities one need to move around to experience them. The transportation should not hamper the complex and dense land use. Widening the sidewalks would provide more functions to the street, decreasing the road size and hence the need to use vehicles. Jacobs doesn’t directly points out towards a car-free neighborhood but wanted it to be free of its dominance. (Jacobs, 1960)
‘New urbanism’ started in 1980’s as a very diverse movement emulating and modernizing the age old methods of city planning. By this time the modernism had failed to make the city as livable as they already were. And therefore a different approach was taken to go back to the old cities, understand there principals and modernize them to apply them in the contemporary