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The Death And Life Of Great American Cities
''The Death and Life of Great American Cities'' is a 1961 book by writer and activist Jane Jacobs. The book is a critique of 1950s urban planning policy, which it holds responsible for the decline of many city neighborhoods in the United States. The book is Jacobs' best-known and most influential work. Jacobs was a critic of " rationalist" planners of the 1950s and 1960s, especially Robert Moses, as well as the earlier work of Le Corbusier. She argued that modernist urban planning overlooked and oversimplified the complexity of human lives in diverse communities. She opposed large-scale urban renewal programs that affected entire neighborhoods and built freeways through inner cities. She instead advocated for dense mixed-use development and walkable streets, with the "eyes on the street" of passers-by helping to maintain public order. Orthodox urbanism Jacobs begins the work with the blunt statement that: "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding." She des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book '' The Death and Life of Great American Cities'' (1961) argued that " urban renewal" and " slum clearance" did not respect the needs of city-dwellers. Jacobs organized grassroots efforts to protect neighborhoods from urban renewal and slum clearance – in particular plans by Robert Moses to overhaul her own Greenwich Village neighborhood. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly through an area of Manhattan that later became known as SoHo, as well as part of Little Italy and Chinatown. She was arrested in 1968 for inciting a crowd at a public hearing on that project. After moving to Toronto in 1968, she joined the opposition to the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of expressways in Toront ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Letchworth
Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is noted for being the first garden city. The population at the time of the 2011 census was 33,249. Letchworth was an ancient parish, appearing in the Domesday Book of 1086. It remained a small rural village until the start of the twentieth century. The development of the modern town began in 1903, when much of the land in Letchworth and the neighbouring parishes of Willian and Norton was purchased by a company called First Garden City Limited, founded by Ebenezer Howard and his supporters with the aim of building the first "garden city", following the principles Howard had set out in his 1898 book, ''To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform''. Their aim was to create a new type of settlement which provided jobs, services, and good housing for residents, whilst retaining the environmental quality of the countryside, in contrast to most industria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non Place
Non-place or nonplace is a neologism coined by the France, French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places" in their anthropological definition. Examples of non-places would be motorways, hotel rooms, airports and shopping malls. The term was introduced by Marc Augé in his work ''Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity''. The perception of a space like a non-place is strictly subjective: any given individual can view any given location as a non-place, or as a crossroads of human relations. For instance, a shopping mall is not a non-place for a person who works there every day. The concept of non-place is opposed, according to Augé, to the notion of "anthropological place". The place offers people a space that empowers their identity, where they can meet other people with whom they share social references. The non-place ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eyes On The Street
Natural surveillance is a term used in Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) models for crime prevention. These models rely on the ability to influence offender decisions preceding criminal acts. Research into criminal behavior demonstrates that the decision to offend or not to offend is more influenced by cues to the perceived risk of being caught than by cues to reward or ease of entry. Consistent with this research CPTED based strategies emphasize enhancing the perceived risk of detection and apprehension. Natural surveillance limits the opportunity for crime by taking steps to increase the perception that people can be seen. Natural surveillance occurs by designing the placement of physical features, activities and people in such a way as to maximize visibility and foster positive social interaction. Potential offenders feel increased scrutiny and perceive few escape routes. Natural surveillance is typically free of cost, however its effectiveness to deter crim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Raymond Unwin
Sir Raymond Unwin (2 November 1863 – 29 June 1940) was a prominent and influential English engineer, architect and town planner, with an emphasis on improvements in working class housing. Early years Raymond Unwin was born in Rotherham, Yorkshire and grew up in Oxford, after his father sold up his business and moved there to study. He was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford. In 1884 he become an apprentice engineer for Stavely Iron & Coal Company near Chesterfield. Unwin had become interested in social issues at an early age and was inspired by the lectures and ideals of John Ruskin and William Morris. In 1885 he moved to Manchester and became secretary of Morris's local Socialist League. He wrote articles for the League's newspaper and spoke on street corners for its cause and for the Labour Church. He also became a close friend of the socialist philosopher Edward Carpenter, whose Utopian community ideas led to his developing a small commune at Millthorpe near Shef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clarence Stein
Clarence Samuel Stein (June 19, 1882 – February 7, 1975) was an American urban planner, architect, and writer, a major proponent of the garden city movement in the United States. Biography Stein was born in Rochester, New York into an upwardly-mobile Jewish family. While a youth, his family decamped to New York City, where he was immersed in the milieu surrounding the Ethical Culture Society, attending its Workshop School and developing his sensibilities within the context of Progressive thought: the integration of physical and mental labor, the importance of a universal humanistic philosophy, the concept of a nurtured individualistic sensibility. Intense and self-absorbed, the young Stein had a nervous collapse shortly before he was scheduled to leave for college, experiencing a bout of what was then called neurasthenia for which he was sent to Florida to endure a rest cure. He returned to New York and worked in his family's casket business, where the combination of physical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine Bauer
Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster (May 11, 1905 – November 21, 1964) was an American public housing advocate and educator of city planners and urban planners. A leading member of the "housers," a group of planners who advocated affordable housing for low-income families, she dramatically changed social housing practice and law in the United States. Wurster's influential book ''Modern Housing'' was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1934 and is regarded as a classic in the field. Early life On May 11, 1905, Catherine Krouse Bauer was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to Alberta Krouse Bauer, a self-educated homemaker, and Jacob Bauer. Her father, a state highway engineer, was an early advocate of superhighways and implemented the first cloverleaf interchanges in America while serving as New Jersey's Chief Highway Engineer. Bauer's younger sister was Elizabeth Bauer Mock, a curator and Director of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Patrick Geddes
Sir Patrick Geddes (2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932) was a British biologist, sociologist, Comtean positivist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology. Following the philosophies of Auguste Comte and Frederic LePlay, he introduced the concept of "region" to architecture and planning and coined the term " conurbation". Later, he elaborated "neotechnics" as the way of remaking a world apart from over-commercialization and money dominance. An energetic Francophile, Geddes was the founder in 1924 of the Collège des Écossais (Scots College), an international teaching establishment in Montpellier, France, and in the 1920s he bought the Château d'Assas to set up a centre for urban studies. Biography The son of Janet Stevenson and soldier Alexander Geddes, Patrick Geddes was born in Ballater, Aberdeenshire, and educated at Perth Academy. He studied at the Royal Col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford made signal contributions to social philosophy, American literary and cultural history and the history of technology. He was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford. Mumford was also a contemporary and friend of Frank Lloyd Wright, Clarence Stein, Frederic Osborn, Edmund N. Bacon, and Vannevar Bush. Life Mumford was born in Flushing, Queens, New York, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1912. He studied at the City College of New York and The New School for Social Research, but became ill with tuberculosis and never finished his degree. In 1918 he joined the navy to serve in World War I and was assigned as a rad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Garden Cities Of To-morrow
''Garden Cities of To-morrow'' is a book by the British urban planner Ebenezer Howard. When it was published in 1898, the book was titled ''To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform''. In 1902 it was reprinted as ''Garden Cities of To-Morrow''. The book gave rise to the garden city movement and is very important in the field of urban design.Anderson, p. 173. Background This book offered a vision of towns free of slums and enjoying the benefits of both town (such as opportunity, amusement and high wages) and country (such as beauty, fresh air and low rents). Howard illustrated the idea with his "Three Magnets" diagram. His ideas were conceived for the context of a capitalist economic system, and sought to balance individual and community needs.Sacred-texts.com. Introduction to ''Garden Cities of Tomorrow''. Visited October 20, 2009. Two English towns were built as garden cities, Letchworth and Welwyn. Though they did not completely measure up to the ideal, they provided a mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City Beautiful
The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. It was a part of the progressive social reform movement in North America under the leadership of the upper-middle class concerned with poor living conditions in all major cities. The movement, which was originally associated mainly with Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and Washington, D.C., promoted beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and civic virtue among urban populations. Advocates of the philosophy believed that such beautification could promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life, while critics would complain that the movement was overly concerned with aesthetics at the expense of social reform; Jane Jacobs referred to the movement as an "architectural design cult." History Origins and effec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ville Radieuse
Ville radieuse (, ''Radiant City'') was an unrealised urban design project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1930. It constitutes one of the most influential and controversial urban design doctrines of European modernism. Although Le Corbusier had exhibited his ideas for the ideal city, the Ville contemporaine in the 1920s, during contact with international planners he began work on the ''Ville Radieuse''. In 1930 he had become an active member of the syndicalist movement and proposed the ''Ville radieuse'' as a blueprint of social reform. The principles of the ''Ville radieuse'' were incorporated into his later publication, the Athens Charter published in 1933. His utopian ideal formed the basis of a number of urban plans during the 1930s and 1940s culminating in the design and construction of the first Unité d'habitation in Marseille in 1952. The development of an ideal In the late 1920s Le Corbusier lost confidence in big business to realise his drea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
