This article introduces evaluation of Jane Jacobs who has many names which are a sociologist, an urbanist and an environmentalist. Also, a lesson from her thoughts is very appealing to me in terms of the relationship between human and surroundings.
Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is a memorable woman preventing one of notable architects, Robert Moses, from performing his project in New York with her clearly organized defense against his deft antithesis. Robert Moses planed to change New York’s Greenwich Village with high-tech design by paving expressway and replacing blocks. However, his plan was frustrated by Jane Jacobs’s strong belief in different idea about good cities. She supports the terms which are initiative, smaller population, true complexity (reality) and harmonization between social and physical components of a city and these are what Robert Moses should have consider.
There are many designers and architects overlooking these words while they focus on their own design languages related to the process of design. They try to make our life and cities better place with the tools that they have sharpened but the lack of consideration of good cities and good designs bear excessive development and this excess occurs other social problems. According to Jane Jacobs, what is important is keeping our eyes on reality and experiencing the world as it is rather than trying to shape world by abstract theories like those of Le Corbusier and other principled moderns. I agree with her partly because I need some ground to prove it is wrong that I learned about design which was based on kind of abstract theories. However, it is definitely true what Jane Jacobs suggests about what the ideal world has to be.
Reading this article, I remind some designers who choose materials considering just the shape of their works but the relation to environments. They literally seem to compete to be famous regarding uniqueness as all about design. They need to think about the purpose of their works; design for whom and what.
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2 comments:
First of all, I perfectly agree with the E, J opinion.
This article is focused on Jane Jacobs and her work as well as consisted of two parts. One part of the article emphasized her activity work in New York. The other part shows her life and work. I am concerned about her thoughts about between city and surroundings. She asserted that cities developed and evolved by time are stand to sense and have harmony with nature and history even though this cities did not systematically build. The other side, cities planned by one person are under the control of designer. When I study the city architecture and unban planning, I always thought what is the right? Most books and information give nearly same concepts that advocate designer thinking but I also did not like artificially created surroundings. From this point of view, her work is really helpful to keep up my mind about design. After reading article, I remind that good city is based on the neighbor, the natural development and the history. Not good arrangement and calculated design.
Where is the article?
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