Jane Jacobs criticized mid-20th century urban planning that diminished street life and sidewalk vitality. She advocated for "four generators of diversity" - mixed primary uses, small blocks, mixed building ages, and high concentration of people and buildings - to generate urban vitality. Diversity, including human, economic, and physical diversity, is key to a vibrant city according to Jacobs. While she makes good observations about street environments with mixed uses attracting continuous activity, increased surveillance is not a fully effective solution for safety and standardizing human behavior risks inefficiency.

1. BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) INARCHITECTURE
THEORIES OF ARCHITECTUREANDURBANISM(ARC61303/ARC2224)
SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2015) [5 MARKS]
NAME: BENNY TAN SHIOWEE ID: 0315447
LECTURER: MS. IDA MARLINA MAZLAN TUTORIAL TIME: 4PM - 6PM
SYNOPSIS NO: 1 READER TITLE: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES
AUTHOR: JANE JACOBS
In the book of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs is attack on current city
planning which bring down the vitality of the street life and nature of sidewalk at 1961. The street life
is a way to prevent the areas turn into slums. In this book, Jane Jacob advocated the "four
generators of diversity" to generate vitality in urban city. They are primary mixed uses, small blocks,
mixed of building ages and concentration of building and people. From Jane Jacobs's observation,
her thesis states the vitality of the city is depends on the diversity. It is including human diversity and
economic and physical location diversity. She states that the mixed primary uses of building
including all types of residents and mixed ages building is helpful in the diversity of city. I agreed and
saw the same street environment in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan and Melbourne, Australia. The streets
have a wide pavement for the users to walk along the street and it is full of different kind of shop
(parks, fashion shop, bars, restaurant) in a street which attract people to walk into the street. This
street environment is matching with Jane Jacob's observation which makes the street has its own
street life to achieve the vitality. Jane Jacobs states that a district must have several functions to
make it used at all times of the day and do not stand empty in off hours. This against the current
zoning of city which concentrating office buildings and commercial centers. In result, the areas
bustling with people during the day but become ghost towns at night which is not livable for people.
The reason is the middle class businessman choose to stay in the suburb rather than stressful inner
city. This will probably affect the following generation to think that the cities were some place to go to
but not to live in. The is one ofthe problems in the rise ofcities.
In a nutshell, I agree to some of Jane Jacobs observation and suggestion that she mentions in the
book. On the other side, I not agree to have more people in the streetor short block building to watch
and protect each other in order to solve the sidewalk safety problem. The reason is every human
have their own characteristics and if we standardized human to do one things as robot will not be
efficient in this case.
WORD COUNT: 405 DATE: 11 April 2016 MARK: GRADE:
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