OK, here's the goal: one chapter from urban sociologist/anthropologist Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" per day, for the next...17 days. Today I read chapter 5, "The Uses of Neighborhood Parks." I said it in an earlier post, but I will say it here again: what amazes me about Jacobs is that she can talk about sidewalks for about 50 pages, and still not exhaust the topic, or bore the reader to death. Now that, my friends, is a sign of genius. She has to be one of the best observers I've ever known. ("Known" used in a very presumptuous way; obviously I never met or "knew" this woman, who died at 90 years of age 5 years ago.)
So here's what Jacobs (can I call her Jane, since this isn't a term paper?) made me think about, with regard to city parks:
1. She's right. City parks usually become nothing more than dispirited vacuums, rather than anchors of social stability. The assumption among city planners is that parks will embue a neighborhood with positive effects, when rather, they actually more often than not become both producers of and hosts of negative urban effects (i.e., housing hoards of indigent men and perverts who just catcall all day long--this I remember distinctly happening during me and T's trip to downtown Denver's park this past March). This is a reminder of a lesson learned in chemistry in 11th grade, which applies here: the concept of entropy. Things tend towards disorder and chaos, unless massive amounts of energy are invested to push against disorder and decay. In the same way, for a park to become an economic asset or have "staying power" over the decades in a city block, requires lots of work on the city dwellers' part. Well, actually, the city planners need to be more careful, too: if the location of the park doesn't have a natural diversity of users and their schedules (that is, if the park isn't surrounded my mixed-used buildings), it is bound for disaster.
2. Hmm. Jane noticed that a tenament stoop invited more diverse, lively and safe company than a nearby park did. She noted that the people all convened there, by choice, being of all ages and balanced in gender, not due to any amenity a park would offer (i.e., open space, playground), but because they all found it to be an agreeable place to share leisure, and enjoy each other and the passing city (p. 94). What is the magic thing that makes some certain place an agreed-upon hang out place? Convenience and high traffic on everday errand paths? That is, requiring no extra effort to go there?
3. Jane notes that some parks, no sane mother would send her children into. This reminds me of the park where mom would frequently send me to ride my bike when I was 8 or 9, across the street from her apartment in a decidedly urban area in metro Denver. What was it about that park that made it OK in a mother's eyes? There were hints of vandalism, and a bit more open space than was probably helpful there (I remember Andrew commenting on bums spending the night there), but also, I do think it got a fair amount of use and play. I also wonder how that park is doing nowadays; did it prove to have staying power? Also, thanks, mom, for letting me go there and explore on my own. That I count as a very fond childhod memory.
4. I love how Jane mixes urban studies with thinking on class. She notes that blue-collar mothers occupy parks with their kids earlier in the afternoon than white-collar mothers, b/c blue collar husbands get home earlier for supper and this the wives have to go and get cracking on the cooking. She also postulates that the class of neighborhood or class of park frequenters doesn't matter for the success of the park; rich and poor alike like their parks (and perhaps for the same reasons). I want to think things through and piece puzzle pieces together to the same degree as Jane does!
5. Why do city parks have closing times posted?
6. This is for you, Thomas and Cathy: "Superficial architectural variety may look like diversity, but only a genuine content of economic and social diversity, resulting in people with different schedules, has meaning to the park and the power to confer the boon of life upon it" (p. 101). Does that make your craft seem powerless, being entirely dependent on its surroundings? Or, from a more optimistic approach, is the task of architecture to harness the powers of the city toward good?
7. Jane names 4 elements of design that abet generalized patronage/usage by city dwellers: intricacy, centering, sun and enclosure. Basically, the first allows for users to never get tired of a complex layout; the second allows for creative uses of a central public space (oh! this was SO the case in NYC's Riverside Park, which hosted a long free concert series every summer on its largest pier...78th street? I totally can't remember). The 3rd and 4th elements are obvious. People and plants like sun; people also like and thrive within felt boundaries (ever hear about that study someone did that found that kids set on a playground with a fence around it utilized a lot more ground than kids set on a playground with no fence around it?).
8. Shout-out to my dog, Columbia. She got mentioned in this chapter as a university that put two-and-two together and used its drama department to put on musical shows and plays in the long-shunned, crime-, bum-, forty-bottle- and streaker-ridden Morningside Park. These activities became "demand goods," and caused the park (which is like a no-man's land separating prestine Upper-West Side from more colorfuul Harlem below) to evolve into a peace-maker between university and neighborhood, rather than as hostile "Turf." I wonder if Yale has fared so well in its New Haven surroundings?
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