City Planning

Paper Summary:

This paper highlights the main theories in Jane Jacobs' book on city planning, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". The paper presents an overview of Jacobs theories, explaining the core arguments underlying her theories and her effective use of examples that support those theories.

From the Paper:

"The explicit value preached by Jane Jacobs is diversity in functionality. However, Jacobs claims that the designers and planners of cities do not "live in an ideological vacuum" (Jacobs, 24). If this is true, then her attack on the basic principles of the orthodox city planning methods of her time must also be in part an attack on the basic principles of the society that supported such methods. When she condemns the Decentrists for dismissing the city as a "foreground for noise . . . souvenirs, and shrill competitive advertising," the product of "self-centered, ill-advised individuals,"(21) she is, whether she realizes it or not, taking issue with their politics. Competition, advertising, self-centeredness, and individuality are all associated with capitalism, and, as cities are products of business and industry, the very core of capitalist philosophy, to want to truly understand and strengthen the city is to do the same for capitalism."

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