BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HONOURS) IN ARCHITECTURETHEORIES OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (ARC61303/ARC2224)SYNOPSIS: REACTION PAPER (MARCH 2015) [5 MARKS]

NAME: BENNY TAN SHIOWEE ID: 0315447LECTURER: MS. IDA MARLINA MAZLAN TUTORIAL TIME: 4PM - 6PMSYNOPSIS NO: 1 READER TITLE: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN

CITIESAUTHOR: JANE JACOBS

In the book of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs is attack on current city

planning which bring down the vitality of the street life and nature of sidewalk at 1961. The street life

is a way to prevent the areas turn into slums. In this book, Jane Jacob advocated the "four

generators of diversity" to generate vitality in urban city. They are primary mixed uses, small blocks,

mixed of building ages and concentration of building and people. From Jane Jacobs's observation,

her thesis states the vitality of the city is depends on the diversity. It is including human diversity and

economic and physical location diversity. She states that the mixed primary uses of building

including all types of residents and mixed ages building is helpful in the diversity of city. I agreed and

saw the same street environment in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan and Melbourne, Australia. The streets

have a wide pavement for the users to walk along the street and it is full of different kind of shop

(parks, fashion shop, bars, restaurant) in a street which attract people to walk into the street. This

street environment is matching with Jane Jacob's observation which makes the street has its own

street life to achieve the vitality. Jane Jacobs states that a district must have several functions to

make it used at all times of the day and do not stand empty in off hours. This against the current

zoning of city which concentrating office buildings and commercial centers. In result, the areas

bustling with people during the day but become ghost towns at night which is not livable for people.

The reason is the middle class businessman choose to stay in the suburb rather than stressful inner

city. This will probably affect the following generation to think that the cities were some place to go to

but not to live in. The is one of the problems in the rise of cities.

In a nutshell, I agree to some of Jane Jacobs observation and suggestion that she mentions in the

book. On the other side, I not agree to have more people in the street or short block building to watch

and protect each other in order to solve the sidewalk safety problem. The reason is every human

have their own characteristics and if we standardized human to do one things as robot will not be

efficient in this case.

WORD COUNT: 405 DATE: 11 April 2016

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