Jane Jacob
American-Canadian urbanologist .Her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), proved to be one of the most influential works in the history of city planning and has been particularly important to America's New Urbanists. In it, Jacobs advocated the free and spontaneous growth of cities, condemned modernist planning, decried urban renewal's wholesale destruction of communities, and argued for high-density neighborhoods and multiple-use buildings as the foundations of vital, socially successful city living.
Side walks and safety:
What is the relationships between sidewalk, buildings and street?
Jane Jacobs wants to restore dignity to streets and sidewalks by understanding the kinds of activity and relationships they support, while re-evaluating parks and open space including their dependence on streets and sidewalks for their vitality, interest and safety (The Maryland Institute College of Art February, 2008）
Jane jacobs said that, "a sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction.it means something only in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it or border other sidewalks very near it
Side walks and safety:
Jacos argues that a properly functioning sidewalk is a deterrent against crime. A busy sidewalk, used day and night by different populations on their way to work, home or leisure, checks crime. Meanwhile, proprietors and neighbour, situated close to the ground, provide "eyes upon the street," a citizen surveillance system that builds trust, not destroys it.
One of the traditional planning is the idea that parks and open space are in and of themselves healthy, positive additions to urban and suburban life – genuine and inarguable improvements over the asphalt and concrete of urban streets and sidewalks.
Jacobs “turns this idea around” by suggesting that it is cities (their activity, their density, the interest that they bring in the form of foot traffic, the enclosure they provide by way of buildings and streets) that make parks successful. The lack of sufficient city life renders parks both dull and dangerous.
Just about the parks- I found it quite interesting, in her book Jacobs has a chapter about what makes a good park. Again it comes back to the idea of mixed use- parks surrounded by areas with lots of different uses are safer and more enjoyable because there are different shifts of people using them- e.g. mothers and children in the morning and afternoon, workers at lunch time, people dining at night time. I guess it really highlights the point that simply planning an open space or park won't have positive outcomes, the people must be considered.
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