Week 1

I find it kind of funny how a description of what makes cities so great is given in the introduction to the first reading, and what they stress are the tourist-y traps such as the statue of liberty, golden gate bridge, etc. While these a very prominent and important sites, I don’t feel that they should be mentioned as the first reason why cities are so important. Rather, the attention should focus on what truly makes a city so special which is the connections between residents, the interactions of food, culture, music, and art all working together to create the lifeline of the city. One of my favorite quotes about this magic of cities was offered by Jane Jacobs, she referred to this interaction and connectedness as “the ballet of the street”.

I really support the idea that by attempting to put order into cities, planners and developers managed to ruin the magic of cities. As mentioned in the first reading developers came into cities with this overarching idea that order was needed and that separation of uses equaled order. Through this idea, suburbs (or the death of great American cities) were created. By designating large shopping malls, convention centers, and areas of separate uses only connected by highways, cities were meticulously being taken apart. The separation of uses developed and promoted throughout the last thirty years really created more problems than ever imagined.  Hope for the future of cities is coming back to life in recent years though. Young people everywhere are beginning to see past the “promises of suburbia” and returning to cities and therefore perpetuating their diversity and growth. Richard Florida has coined this as “the rise of the creative class.”

Many times in papers such as these, it is easy to get the impression that there are only two polar opposite options when considering the problems of cities. They mention individualist vs. communitarian communities, centralized vs. decentralized education systems, and regionalists vs. decentralists just to name a few. The problem with this outlook is that it promotes a way of thinking in which answers are either left or right, rather than comprehensively including both left and right. This then promotes the idea that one must either be pro-city or pro-rural, but the truth is that there is a place and need for all degrees of density.  Andres Duany used a concept from ecology to describe this idea, he considered it a “rural to urban transect” in which increasing levels of density could be found. Using this theory helps to please people with varying outlooks on cities. This way everyone can see that all types of land, from pure natural preserves, to farms and low density towns, to dense urban centers all have their place in society.

I just believe that is important to look at these issues seen in our landscapes today not as “America’s urban problems” but as “America’s problems”.  All densities of towns from rural to urban impact each other and feed off of each other, and in order to solve the problems in one area, we must look at the ways we are living in all areas.