The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Essay Example

The healthy as addressed by Jane Jacobs is one that develops spontaneously, without any human interference on its development. Such a city is one which is left to develop like living organisms that do not have the qualities of planning which would make them seem artificial or out of place. Jacobs criticizes the way in which cities are planned, making the entire city so well planned and adding parts within it that would seem to be parts of nature. The planning for such a city is utterly misguided because it does not give room for the development of parts that would be used for the purpose of human activities, such as a place to spend leisure hours. It can be said that Jacobs is attempting to state that planning cities to the last, detail makes them thoroughly artificial and these environments also make the people living within them to behave in an artificial way. This means that people within these strictly planned cities end up living unnaturally; they do not have the opportunity to live their lives the way they would normally have done. The environment that has been created for them does not have the qualities that an environment, which has developed naturally, has within it. One of the most fundamental human characteristics is personal interaction, and this cannot be achieved in strictly planned cities. The creation of parks within such cities, to make them look natural, does not normally work. Human beings, in such situations, tend to shun such environments naturally, and in the process, they are rarely used. Therefore, parks end up not being put into the use they were meant to meaning that they have become useless to the residents of the city. In relation to this, Jacobs states “the more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets, the more successfully….its people thereby enliven and support well-located parks that can thus give back grace and delight to their neighborhoods instead of vacuity.” (Jacobs 111) Jacobs believes that cities have to be viewed as living beings and ecosystems, and as such have to be left to develop on their own. She makes the suggestion that as time goes by, the buildings, streets, and neighborhoods within the city naturally develop into organisms, which respond to the environment around them and adjust to it accordingly. In fact, they become such dynamic organisms that their response comes to depend on how the people interact with them and how they make use of them. Every element of the city, such as sidewalks and parks, as it develops, comes to have a specific function and each of these elements cannot function by themselves. Instead, they come to need each other to function, just as the various parts of an organism do. The ability of diverse elements of cities, to function systematically together, shows that cities are indeed natural ecosystems. According to Jacobs, it is therefore, necessary to let cities develop at their own time so that people can have a better understanding of how they work and how it is possible that these systems come to break down. With a better understanding of how cities function, it will be easier to structure them in such a way as to make them better. This understanding will also be instrumental in developing a healthy environment within which to live. The Philadelphia that is described in the book is a city, which has been structured to be entirely artificial. It is without life because most of the people who are supposed to be living there have either moved away are no longer interested in coming out of their homes. The effort to restructure old neighborhoods in this Philadelphia, although noble, does not consider the lives of the people living within such neighborhoods. Most of the people are poor and cannot possibly afford to live in a place such as the ones, which have replaced their homes. As a result, the majority of these people have to move away to find places that are cheaper to live within. The resulting restructuring of neighborhoods, therefore, ends up achieving nothing because the restructured areas become lifeless. The regular human activities on the streets ended, and this essentially means that the city dies. Jacobs holds the belief that the city cannot exist without there being any street life and other human activities within it. This is the reason why she insists that cities have to be left to develop naturally, because this encourages more people to come and live within it, hence making it more diverse and ensuring that it is vibrant. When she refers to Philadelphia, one gets the impression that Jacobs is attempting to show that it lacks the diversity that is necessary to make it vibrant. She says, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” (Jacobs 238). This is because; it has been developed to cater for only those who can afford it that are the well off, to the exclusion of all others. It can further be said that the restructuring projects make the lives of the people living in such neighborhoods even worse than they were before. Therefore, it is best for neighborhoods to be left intact, the way that they have developed over time. It is Jacobs’ belief that diversity, both cultural and architectural is what makes cities such attractive places to be. Without such diversity, then cities would turn into boring places with a bleakness that one would find depressing. She states “You can neither lie to a neighborhood park, nor reason with it. 'Artist's conceptions' and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighborhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.” (Jacobs 101) For Jacobs, the ideal city is one, which is extremely diverse, having a mixture of people and ideas to make it a vibrant place. If a city is vibrant, then a conducive environment is created to ensure that all the people living within the city are healthy. According to Jacobs, a city does not necessarily have to be well planned in order for it to be a healthy place. On the contrary, a healthy city is one that caters for people from all occupations as well as for their ideas. A healthy city does not just mean clean streets; it also means that there are activities taking place on such streets. The activities born out of the people’s reaction to their environment make cities healthy places within which to live. Without a natural environment, then life becomes immensely difficult for the residents. In addition, Jacobs is vehemently against the planning approaches which rely on planners who have been brought in from outside. Instead, she prefers having people from within the area that is to be restructured, to be actively involved in the planning of their area so that their needs provide the guidance that is required, for proper planning to be done. Therefore, it can be concluded that the ideas that Jacobs proposes for cities in this book for a healthy city are quite radical and that they go against any proposals that one would come up with for city planning. However, what she says is indeed true because life in cities cannot be the same if it were strictly planned in accordance to the human ideas of order. Instead, they should be left to develop in their own way, and this will enable them to achieve a healthy character. Work Cited Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. Print. Read More