The Death and Life of Great American City is a book written
by Jane Jacobs to criticize 1950’s city planning strategies, which are
responsible for the decline of city neighbourhood in United States. She argued
that modern urban planning overlooked and oversimplified the complexity of human
lives in diverse communities. She also opposed the large-scale urban renewal
programs that affected entire neighbourhoods and built freeways through inner
cities.
In this book, she explained about the origin of current
orthodox urbanism and suggested a new concept on city planning. Jacobs
highlighted the anti-urban biases of the Garden City advocates, which proposed
that communities should be self-contained units removed from noisy and
congested city as they thought that commingled land usage create a chaotic and
negative environment.
In their opinion, the street was a bad locus for human
interactions so the houses should be turned away from the street, while the
super-blocks fed by arterial roads were superior to small blocks with
overlapping cross-roads. Any significant details should be dictated by
permanent plan rather than shaped by organic dynamism and the population
density should be discouraged or disguised to create a sense of isolation.
Apart of this, Jacobs also surveyed about Radiant City
project proposed by famous architect, Le Corbusier. It is a vertical city
concept with regimented neighbourhood planning, easy automobile access, and the
insertion of large grassy expanses to keep pedestrians off the streets into the
city itself, with the explicit goal of reinventing stagnant downtowns. Jacobs
found that both of the urbanism city planning ignore the importance of public
circulation in society.
In contrast, she frames the sidewalk as a central mechanism
in maintaining the order of the city. She mentioned that city are fundamentally
different from town and suburb principally because they are full of strangers.
The
challenge of the city is to make its inhabitants feel secure and socially
integrated in large volume of rotating strangers. The healthy sidewalk is a
critical mechanism for achieving this goal to prevent crime, facilitate contact
with others and preserve civilization.
Hence, Jacobs proposed a city with dense mixed-use
development and walkable streets, with the "eyes on the street" of
passers-by helping to maintain public order. The healthy city sidewalk does not
rely on constant police surveillance to keep it safe, but self-enforcing
mechanism by neighbourhood. Sidewalk life permits a range of casual public
interactions, without fear of "entangling relationships" or
oversharing one’s privacy. (Batabyal, 2016)
Moreover, Jacobs thought that sidewalks are great places for
children to play under the general supervision of parents and other natural
proprietors of the street. It also helps the children to learn the fundamental
city life by taking public responsibility. Over countless minor interactions,
children absorb the fact that the sidewalk's natural proprietors are invested
in their safety and well-being, even lacking ties of kinship, close friendship,
or formal responsibility.
Jacobs criticized orthodox urbanism for viewing the city
neighbourhood as a modular, as she argued that a great city is the mobility of
residents and fluidity of use across diverse areas of varying size and
character, not modular fragmentation. She also recommends effective city
planning by using parks, squares, and public buildings as part of the street
fabric, intensifying the fabric's complexity and multiple uses rather than
segregating different uses. (“The Death and Life of Great American Cities -
Wikipedia,” n.d.)
I like the concept of city planning proposed by Jacobs, as
she reminds me about the issue faced by current society, which is the lack of friendly
neighbourhood and ownership in community especially in city. In older days, people
built a close relationship with neighbour through interactions as they will meet
the others frequently when they walking around the area.
Harmony neighbourhood still can be observed in Kampung
Tanjung Sabtu, where the villagers remain the traditional lifestyle. There is
no advanced or modern town planning strategy in this village, the buildings and
roads are built randomly. All of the buildings like houses, mosques and
restaurants are built according to their needs and connected the road. Most of
the people go around with feet or bicycle instead of cars.
The community know everyone who lives in the village and well
aware of the things that happen in their surroundings. They will notice unusual
things or strangers in their area very quickly. Although there is no security
guard, fence or cctv in the village, people still feel safe as they trust each
other. The children can just play and mingle around freely. People enjoy their
life in this environment and refuse to change their village into ‘developed
town’.
Batabyal,
A. A. (2016). Review of “Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs by
Robert Kanigel.” New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
The
Death and Life of Great American Cities - Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved April
21, 2020, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities
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