Summary Of The Life And Death Of Great American Cities By Jane Jacobs

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Malls as the center of community life not only restricted the sense of personal freedom and identity of the shoppers and businesses, but it changed the sense of community that kids and adults had once created together on the streets. In The Life and Death of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs talks a lot about the ideal city, while criticizing the city as it was in her time, during the prime of urban decline in the 1960s. Here, Jacobs describes a lesson that the slowly disappearing street life provided for city children:
In real life, only from ordinary adults of the city sidewalks do children learn -if they learn it at all- the first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other… The lesson that city dwellers have to take responsibility for what goes on in city streets is taught again and again to children on sidewalks which enjoy a local public life… Such instructions must come from society itself, and in …show more content…
Here, Jacobs describes the ultimate advantage of urban life. When city living goes how Jacobs likes, children are out playing on the sidewalks while the adults of the neighborhood are walking to and fro, and are able to manage and teach these kids indirectly by taking a small piece of responsibility for what happens on the streets of their neighborhood. The children, in turn, have a sense of freedom, but also learn to feel this same sense of local responsibility that they have observed while growing up on the streets. They have an obligation, like the ones before them, to make sure that their neighbors and their families are safe, even if they don’t exactly know each other. It follows then, that Jacobs strongly opposes the idea of setting up specific areas such as playgrounds and recreational centers in the place of these streets, because it would take away this important lesson that
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