The photo not only captures New York‘s Central Park indicated by trees and accumulation of people, but it also exhibits the skyscrapers that indicate its business district location. The photo of ice skaters supports Jane Jacob’s belief that instead of “automatically uplifting their neighborhoods, neighborhood parks themselves are directly and drastically affected by the way the neighborhood acts upon them” (Jacobs 95). She believes that parks do not secure a cities success, but rather that apark’s vitality comes from that of its surroundings. The economic stability in the surrounding city secures a flourishing park. The park’s success is shown in the photo as people feel safe enough to take their friends and family ice skating during Christmas time. http://www.z-mation.com/phpbb/files/ny_wollman_rink_central_park_ice_skating_christmas _10_190.jpg
3 comments:
"No matter what you try to do to it, a city park behaves like a problem in 'organized complexity,' and that is what it is. The same is true of all other parts of features of cities. Although the interrelations of their many factors are complex, there is nothing accidental or irrational about the ways in which these factors affect each other."
In parts of cities which are working well in some respects and badly in others, we cannot even analyze the virtues and the faults, diagnose the trouble or consider helpful changes, without going at them as problems of organized complexity.
Essentially, the park and the city work hand-in-hand in producing 'organized complexity.' The parks and cities themselves show the essential features of organization. Although seemingly interspersed and random, the acts within the cities and parks a involve dealing simultaneously, a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole.
In a way, this picture shows an illustration of what the Decentrists wanted. "Commerce should be segregated from residences and greens." With the belt of green trees asundering the connection between the skyscrapers and the community, there is an obvious segregation distancing the two. The Decentrists believe that the "planned community must be islanded off as a self-contained unit, that it must resist future change, and that every significant detail must be controlled by the planners from the start and then stuck to." However, Jane Jacobs does not agree at all with this view and see it as a complete failure. She says that the Decentrists "were incurious about successes in great cities." Rather "they were interested only in failures."
I totally agree with these other guys.
I'm not sure Jane Jacobs would be a huge fan of the city because it seems very separate and planned out. The pretty trees and recreational things seem to be a safe distance from the commercial area. Jane Jacobs would hopefully say that these sort of attentions are not the sort of things that make a city successful. To have things very regimented and planned out to keep a city self sufficient and the layout mechanized that not only is the city cut off from society, but sectors of the city are segregated from them self. I think this is the death of a city. Not necessarily this picture of whatever city this is though. I don't know anything about it.
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